How to Get People to Do the Work in Your Restaurant

Hey there restaurant pros, it’s David Scott Peters and welcome to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast. For over 2 decades I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurateurs I coached and it’s now the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success. What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account instead of the restaurants dictating those things for them. Success is a restaurant owner has freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieving it is using the restaurant prosperity formula. This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula. Leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts, and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success. In this episode, number 152, we’re tackling how to get people to do the work. L

Hey there restaurant pros, David Scott Peters here. Today we’re going after one of the most frustrating questions in the restaurant business. How do I get people to actually do the work? Not nod in the meeting, not say, yep, makes sense. Not agree with you while standing in front of you and then going back to doing it the old way 15 minutes later. I mean, actually do the work. You know, use checklists, track waste, follow the prep list, ring in the food, hit the labor budget, coach the team, follow the opening procedures, oh, complete the closing standards. Communicate like a manager instead of leaving everyone a scavenger hunt of sticky notes and vague text messages. That work. Because this is where so many restaurant pros get stuck. They know what needs to happen. They have the system. They have the tool. They have the form. They have the meeting. They have the conversation. But the behavior still doesn’t change. And that is maddening. You start thinking, how many times do I have to say the same thing? The answer is, as many times as it takes if you’re only saying it. That’s the problem. Most restaurant pros try to get people to do the work by talking more. Another meeting, another reminder, another text, another note on the clipboard, another hey guys. We really need to be better about this. And let me tell you something with love. We really need to be better about this is not leadership. It’s a weather report. It describes the storm, but it doesn’t move anybody out of the rain. If you want people to do the work, you need more than communication. You need a leadership structure that turns expectations into behavior. That’s what we’re going to break down today. Because the truth is this. People do the work when the work is clear, trained, owned, visible, coached, measured and protected. When one of those pieces is missing, behavior drifts. And when behavior drifts long enough, it becomes culture. That is why this matters. This is not about being bossy. This is not about micromanaging. This is not about barking orders from the office like some clipboard dictator with a caffeine problem. This is about creating a restaurant where the standards are clear enough, important enough and protected enough that people know exactly what doing the job actually means. Because that is how you get your freedom back. Let’s talk, let’s actually start with the hard part. You cannot make people care as much as you do. You just can’t. And if your whole leadership strategy depends on finding employees who magically care like owners, You’re setting yourself up to be disappointed for the rest of your life.

Employees can care, managers can care deeply. Some of them will surprise you and step up in ways that remind you why you got into this business in the 1st place. But they are not you. They do not have your risk. They do not have your debt. They do not have your sleepless nights. They do not have your name on the lease. They do not have your bank account attached to the outcome. So if your plan is I just need them to care more, you’re already in trouble. The better question is not how do I make them care like I care? The better question is how do I build a restaurant where the right work gets done even when people don’t feel personally inspired every minute of the day? That’s what systems do. That’s what leadership does. That’s what standards do. You are not trying to create a restaurant that runs on everybody’s mood. You are trying to create a restaurant that runs on expectations, training, ownership and accountability. Because mood is unstable. Motivation is unstable. Memory is unstable. A busy Friday night is unstable. But standards? Standards give people something to come back to. That’s the foundation. If you want people to do the work, stop trying to lead them through hope. Hope is not a system. Hope is what you have when you haven’t installed the system yet. I was recently talking to my team after my last seminar, and this idea came up in a very real way. Ryan on my team was talking about a restaurant pro who he was talking to who was doing everything himself. You know the type. Nobody can do it the way I do it. Nobody plates it right. Nobody preps it right. Nobody handles the kitchen. Nobody can talk to the guests the way I can. Nobody can carry the load.

And Ryan challenged him with a different perspective. Is it actually impossible for someone else to serve your food or have you never really reverse engineered the work so someone else could do it? That’s the question because a lot of restaurant pros say nobody can do it like me. When the real truth is I have not broken the work down well enough, trained it well enough, and inspected it consistently enough for someone else to succeed. That’s not an insult. That’s an opportunity. If only you can do it, you don’t have a business. You have a job with employees watching you work. That is not freedom. That is the trap with a payroll company. So today we’re going to talk about how to get people to do the work by making the work transferable. That word matters, transferable. If the standard lives only in your head, it’s not transferable. If the process depends on your mood, it’s not transferable. If the correction only happens when you explode, it is not transferable. If the system only works when you’re standing there, it is not transferable. And if it’s not transferable, you will always be trapped. So let’s define the real problem. Most restaurant pros think the problem is compliance. My team won’t comply. My managers won’t follow through. My employees won’t listen. Sometimes, sure. Sometimes you have the wrong person. Sometimes someone simply refuses the standard and then you have to deal with that. But often the first problem is not compliance. The first problem is clarity.

People cannot do work they do not understand. And I don’t mean they sort of understand it. I don’t mean they heard it once. I don’t mean you mentioned it in a pre-shift while three people were checking their phones and one person was wondering if the ranch got made. I mean they understand what done looks like. what done right looks like. That is where getting people to do the work begins. Clear work gets done more often than vague work. Vague work gets interpreted, and interpretation is where standards go to die. Let’s take a simple example. You say, make sure the line is ready. What does that mean? Ready means different things to different people. To one cook, ready means I think we have enough stuff to survive the first hour. To another cook, ready means the backups are stocked, pans are full, utensils are clean, labels are correct, equipment is working, towels are in place, tickets can start right now, and nobody has to run into the walk-in in the middle of the rush like their pants are on fire. Same word, different standard. That is why people don’t do the work. Not because they’re stupid. Because you used a vague phrase and assumed your picture was their picture. Dangerous assumption. If you want people to do the work, the first step is define the work in observable terms.

Observable means I can see it. I can check it. I can point to it. I can tell whether it happened or not. Think about it this way. Being more professional is not observable. Greet every table within 60 seconds is observable. Keep the kitchen cleaner is not observable. Wipe and sanitize the prep table every time raw protein is finished is observable. Communicate better is not observable. Closing manager sends the end of night recap by 10.30pm with sales, labor, waste, comps, unresolved issues is observable. That is how you get people to do the work. You turn vague expectations into visible standards. Now, once the work is clear, the second step is training. And I want to be very, very careful here. Because this is where restaurant pros lie to themselves. They say, I trained them. But what they really mean is, I told them. Those are not the same thing. Telling is not training. Telling is information. Training is behavior transfer. If they cannot repeat the behavior without you, they are not trained. If they cannot explain the why, they are not trained. If they cannot hit the standard under pressure, they are not trained. If they cannot teach it to the next person, they are not fully trained. That’s the bar. And I know that bar sounds high, good. It should. because you’re not building a hobby. You’re building a restaurant that has to produce a consistent guest experience, control costs, protect margins, develop leaders, and eventually give you your life. That does not happen with drive-by training. Drive-by training sounds like this. Here’s the checklist, make sure it gets done. Here’s the waste tracker, fill it out if something gets thrown away. Here’s the schedule budget. Try and stay close. Here’s the recipe. Make it like this. No! That is not training. That is dumping responsibility without transferring competence.

Real training has four parts. Explain why it matters. Show the standard. Watch them do it. Correct the miss. That’s it. Why? Show. Watch. Correct. If you skip one, you weaken the training. Let’s use the waste tracker. If you only say write down waste, you get bad data. Someone will write down lettuce and nothing else. Someone else will write stuff. Someone else will write nothing because they got busy. And someone else will throw away a whole pan of product and then say, oh, I didn’t know that counted. So training has to be specific. Why does this matter? Because waste is money leaving the building. Because food cost does not get controlled by guessing. Because the P&L tells what happened weeks ago, but the waste tracker tells you what happened tonight. What is the standard? Every wasted item gets recorded before it hits the trash. Item, quantity, reason, manage your initials. What do you do with the information? You review it daily. You look for patterns. You change prep, ordering, portioning, or training based on what the data tells you. Now, it’s not paperwork. It’s leadership. That’s how you get people to do the work. You do not just hand them the form. You train the behavior the form is supposed to create. The third step is ownership. If nobody owns the work, the work floats. And floating work becomes Forgotten work. This is one of the biggest traps in restaurants. Everybody is responsible. The team is responsible. The managers are responsible. The kitchen is responsible. The front of house is responsible. Great, wonderful, useless. The team is not a person. The team does not complete the checklist. The team does not review the waste tracker. The team does not fix tomorrow’s prep based on tonight’s waste. The team does not send the manager recap. A person does. So if you want people to do the work, name the owner. Not forever. Not because nobody else helps, but because one person has to own the result. This is where a lot of restaurant pros create accidental chaos. They hand out tasks but they don’t assign ownership. There is a difference. A task is fill out the form.

Ownership is you are responsible for making sure this form is accurate, reviewed and acted on every day. A task is make the schedule. Ownership is you are responsible for building a schedule to the labor budget, adjusting based on forecasting and explaining misses in the manager meeting. a task is close the restaurant. Ownership is you are responsible for making sure the next shift walks into the restaurant that is clean, stocked, secure, and ready to operate. That is different. Ownership means the person is accountable for the outcome, not just the activity. And if you want managers to act like managers, you have to give them outcomes to own, not chores, outcomes. Here’s where Shayna The example becomes useful again. And like I said in the last episode, I used these examples with respect. Shayna is doing the real work. She is not pretending everything is perfect. She is looking at numbers, the people, the standards, and the uncomfortable places where the restaurant needs stronger leadership. That is what strong restaurant pros do. In one coaching conversation, Shayna had a waste tracker. but it was not being used consistently. Now, that is a normal restaurant problem. The tool exists. The intention exists. The need exists. But the behavior is not consistent. And the coaching response was direct. If the chef is responsible for that system and the waste log is not being done, then it is a job performance issue. Not because they’re trying to make paperwork sacred, Because the work matters. If the chef owns food costs, then the chef cannot ignore one of the tools that protects food cost. That is the difference between having systems and assigning ownership. A waste log on the refrigerator is not ownership. A chef who’s responsible for daily completion, review, and correction is ownership. That is how you get people to do the work. You attach the work to a person, a standard, a business result. The 4th step is visibility. What matters must be visible. If the work disappears into somebody’s memory, notebook, phone, or good intentions, it is easy to ignore. Visible work gets done more often. Invisible work becomes I forgot.

And I forgot is one of the most expensive phrases in the restaurant business. Now visibility does not mean you need a complicated tech stack for everything. Sometimes a clipboard works. Sometimes a whiteboard works. Sometimes shared docs work. Sometimes your POS report works. Sometimes a checklist on the walk-in door works. The tool is not the point. The point is that the work can be seen, checked, and discussed. If you want people to do the work, stop letting important work hide. Put it where the work happens. Opening checklist where opening happens. Closing checklist where closing happens. Waste tracker where waste happens. Key item tracker where key items are counted. Manager log where managers actually use it. Labor tracker in a manager rhythm. Food buying on budget in the ordering process. Don’t bury systems in a binder nobody opens. A binder can store standards. It does not create behavior by itself. Behavior happens where the work happens. So make the standard visible at the point of execution. That phrase matters. Point of execution. If you want the cook to track waste, the waste tracker cannot live in the office drawer. If you want the manager to inspect the bathroom, a checklist cannot be hidden on a Google Drive folder titled Operations Final Final Updated New. You know that folder exists somewhere. Don’t lie to me. The standard has to show up where the decision happens. That is how you reduce forgetting. That is how you reduce excuses. That is how you make the work real. The 5th step is cadence.

This is the rhythm of accountability. And this is where restaurants either build momentum or lose it. A system that gets checked once in a while is a system waiting to die. A system that gets checked in a rhythm has a fighting chance. Daily, weekly, every shift, every manager meeting, every inventory period. Whatever the cadence is, the team needs to know when the work gets reviewed. Because when there is no cadence, Follow through becomes random and random follow through teaches the team that the standard may or may not matter depending on your mood, your stress level, or whether you happen to notice. That’s not leadership, that’s roulette. If you want people to do the work, build a rhythm where the work is reviewed. Let’s use food cost. If you take inventory every week, then every week you should be asking, is the kitchen doing its job? Are we within our target? Are we within theoretical? Is waste being tracked? Is everything going through the POS? Are key items moving the way they should? Are we buying to budget? Are we adjusting based on sales? That conversation should not happen once a quarter when you’re already angry. That conversation should happen in cadence. Because cadence creates expectations. Expectations create preparation. Preparation creates better behavior. That’s how the work starts to stick. The 6th step is coaching. This is where a lot of restaurant pros lose the room. They either avoid the conversation entirely or they come to it really hot. They say nothing for three weeks, then explode over a missed checklist like the person personally robbed their grandmother. That is not coaching. That’s a delayed frustration wearing a name tag.

Coaching is faster, calmer, and more specific. The goal of coaching is not to make the person feel bad. The goal is to close the gap between current behavior and the standard. That’s it. Here is the standard. Here is what happened. Here’s the gap. Here’s what needs to change. Let’s try that in restaurant language. The waste tracker is blank last night. We trained that every wasted item gets recorded before it goes in the trash. What happened? Then listen. Maybe they got slammed. Maybe the clipboard was missing. Maybe the closing manager didn’t know it was their responsibility. Maybe the team has not been trained on what counts as waste. Fine. Now coach. Starting tonight, the clipboard stays here. The closing manager verifies it before leaving. If nothing was wasted, write no waste and initial it. Blank is not acceptable because blank gives us no information. That is clear. That is calm. That is coaching. Now if the same person misses it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day, that is no longer a first-time coaching issue. Now you’ve moved toward documentation. But don’t skip the coaching. If you skip coaching, accountability feels like punishment. If you coach clearly first, accountability feels like leadership. That distinction matters. The 7th step is consequence. There it is. The word that makes restaurant pros suddenly need to check their phone. Consequence. Not punishment. Not anger. Not revenge. Consequence. A consequence simply means the standard matters enough that something happens when it’s ignored. That’s it. If a standard has no consequence it is not a standard. It’s a suggestion. And suggestions are optional. Now let me be very clear. You do not start with consequence. You start with clarity. You train. You assign ownership. You make the work visible. You create cadence. You coach. Then when somebody refuses to do the work, you can apply consequence. That might be a direct conversation, It might be retraining. It might be removing responsibility. It might be a written warning. It might be a final warning. It might be termination. But something has to happen.

Because if nothing happens, the team learns. They learn the checklist is optional. They learn waste tracking is optional. They learn side work is optional. They learn being on time is optional. They learn managers’ instructions are optional, right? They learn your standards are negotiable. And once the team learns that, getting people to do the work becomes 10 times harder. Not because they’re bad, because you trained them that the work doesn’t really matter. That’s the hard truth. And that is also the opportunity. If you train the old behavior by what you allowed, you can train a new behavior by what you protect. That is leadership. Now let’s talk about resistance because the moment you start getting people to do the work, resistance will show up. I promise you. Someone will say, we’ve never done it that way. Someone will say, this is too much. Someone will say, we don’t have time. Someone will say, this feels like micromanaging. Someone will say, why do we have to write everything down? Someone will say, I’ve been doing it this way for years. Good for you, Chad. Then this should be easy.

Resistance does not always mean the system is wrong. Sometimes resistance means the system is finally touching the behavior that needed to change. That’s important. Do not confuse discomfort with failure. When you introduce real standards, the old culture will push back. People who liked ambiguity will resist clarity. People who benefited from weak follow-through will resist inspection. People who were comfortable winging it will resist systems. People who avoided responsibility, well, they’re going to resist ownership. That does not mean you quit. It means you lead. But you also need to be smart. Not all resistance is rebellion. Some resistance is confusion. Some resistance is fear. Some resistance is overload. Some resistance is bad system design. Some resistance is the team saying this process makes no sense in the real flow of the restaurant. Listen for that. A strong leader protects the standard without being stubborn about the method. That’s a powerful distinction. Protect the standard. Improve the method. If the standard is all waste is tracked, protect that. But maybe the clipboard needs to move. Maybe the form needs to be simpler. Maybe the closing manager needs 5 minutes built in to the close. Maybe the kitchen team needs a better container or a place to stage waste before it gets recorded. Fine, improve the method. but do not abandon the standard. That is how you lead through resistance. Here is the line I want you to remember. If the work is too hard to follow, simplify the system. If the work is clear and trained and still ignored, protect the standard. Do not mix those up because some restaurant pros use accountability when they actually need better training. Others keep retraining forever when they actually need accountability. Both are mistakes. If the person does not understand, train. If the person lacks skills, train. If the system is clunky, simplify. If the person understands, has skill, has tools, has time, has ownership, has been coached and still refuses, then hold them accountable.

That’s fair. That’s clean. That is leadership. And that is how you keep accountability from becoming emotional. It becomes a process, not a blow up, not a grudge, not a personal attack, a process. The standard was clear. The training happened. The work was assigned. The work was visible. The cadence was set. The coaching happened. The behavior still didn’t change. Now we decide. This is how adults run a business. Not I want to talk about managers. Because if you want people to do the work, your managers have to do their work first. A lot of restaurant pros have managers who are really just experienced employees with keys. They can open. They can close. They can jump on the line. They can comp a meal. They can calm a customer down. They can cover a call out. Good. Useful. But that is not the full job. A manager’s real job is to make sure the standard is executed through other people. That is management. Not doing all the work themselves. Not being the best damn server with an alarm code. Not being the fastest cook who can also count drawers. A manager gets work done through people, systems, and accountability. So if your managers are not getting people to do the work, ask yourself, Have I trained my managers how to inspect work? Have I trained them how to coach misses? Have I trained them how to document repeated issues? Have I given them authority to correct standards? Have I backed them when they enforce standards fairly? Have I made their job about outcomes, not about tasks? Because If you have not done that, you may be blaming managers for not doing work you never trained them to do. That one stings, but it’s useful. Managers need standards too. They need a manager checklist. They need a meeting rhythm. They need numbers. They need decision rights. They need to know what they can fix without asking you. They need to know what must be escalated. They need to know what you’ll inspect. They need to know what you will not tolerate and they need to know you will back them when they protect the standard. If you undermine managers every time an employee complains, don’t be shocked when your managers stop managing. You taught them it wasn’t safe. So if you want people to do the work, build managers who can protect the work.

That’s the multiplier. Let’s make this practical. I want to give you a simple framework you can use this week. I call it the work transfer test. Take one thing in your restaurant that is not getting done consistently. Just one. Do not pick nine things. Do not create a three-ring binder and ruin everyone’s Tuesday. Pick one. Maybe it’s the closing checklist. Maybe it’s the waste tracking. Maybe it’s the manager log. Maybe it’s side work. Maybe it’s labor adjustments. Maybe it’s inventory. Maybe it’s ordering to budget. Then ask these seven questions. Number one, is the work clear? Can people tell exactly what done right looks like? Number 2, has the work been trained? Not told, trained. Why, show, watch, correct? Number 3, who owns the result? One, name, not the team. Number 4, is the work visible where it happens? Can it be seen, checked and discussed? Number 5, what is the cadence? When is it reviewed? Every shift? Daily? Weekly? At the manager meeting? Number 6, How will misses be coached? What will you say the first time it’s missed? Number 7, what happens if it keeps getting in missed? What is the consequence? Those 7 questions will expose why the work is not getting done. And I promise you, most of the time you’ll find the gap before you ever get to bad employee. The work was vague. The training was weak. Nobody owned it. wasn’t visible. There was no cadence. Misses were ignored. Consequences were unclear. Fix those things first. Then if somebody still refuses, you’ll know what to do. Now let’s use a specific restaurant example. Let’s say your closing checklist is not getting done. You keep walking into the next morning and finding the same problems. Floors are not right. The line is not reset. Labels are missing. Trash is not handled properly. Bathrooms are not checked. The opening team starts angry. The closing team says we were busy. And you feel like you’re trapped in a world of the dumbest version of Groundhog’s Day. Apply the work transfer test. Is the work clear? Does the checklist say exactly what must be done or does it say vague things like clean kitchen and stock station? Has the work been trained? Did someone walk the closing manager through what each item means, what the standard looks like, and how to verify it? Who owns the result? Is the closing manager responsible or is it everybody? Is the work visible? Is the checklist in the closing path or hidden somewhere nobody uses? What is the cadence? Does the opening manager review the close every morning and report issues or misses or does everyone just complain privately until it becomes gossip? How are misses coached? When the close is bad, does the closing manager hear about it quickly and specifically? What happens if it keeps getting missed? At what point does this become a formal performance issue? That is how you get people to do the work. You don’t just say the close needs to be better. You build the structure that makes better closes the normal expectation. Now let’s use food going through your POS system. This came up in a coaching around waste and theft and the phrase was simple. No ticket, no taco. Everything goes through the POS. Food made for a guest, food comped, food tasted, employee meals, owner meals, mistakes, remakes.

If it leaves inventory, it gets accounted for. Now, how do you get people to do that work? Clear standard. Nothing gets made, handed out, eaten, tasted, or comped unless it’s entered in the POS system or tracked through the approved process. Training, Explain why it matters. If the food disappears without being recorded, your food cost is wrong, your theoretical is wrong, your discounts are wrong, and your decisions are wrong. Ownership? The shift manager owns enforcement. Visibility? Post the phrase where the behavior happens, no ticket, no taco. Cadence, review comps, voids, employee meals, and waste by shift. Coaching, if someone makes food without a ticket, correct it immediately. Consequence, if it keeps happening, it is no longer a misunderstanding. It is a standard violation. Simple. Not always easy, but simple. And simple standards are powerful because people can remember them under pressure. No ticket, no taco. We don’t babysit chicken. Before it hits the trash, it gets tracked. The close is not done until the opening team can win. Those kinds of phrases help managers coach behavior without turning every correction into a lecture. That matters. Because if your standards are complicated, they won’t survive the rush. Let me say something important here.

Getting people to do the work does not mean doing more work yourself. That’s the trap. Restaurant pros hear all of this and think, great, now I have to inspect everything, train everyone, coach every miss, and follow up on every clipboard. No! At first, you may have to lead more directly. But the goal is not to make yourself the inspector of everything forever. The goal is to build a management rhythm where the work is owned by the right people. Your job is to install the standard. Then your managers protect the standard. Then the team learns the standard. Then the standard becomes culture. That is the progression. If everything always comes back to you, have not built the system. You have built a longer leash. and you’re still tied to it. So when you install this, think about levels. Level one, you define the standard. Level 2, you train the managers. Level 3, the manager trains the team. Level 4, the manager inspects the work. Level 5, you inspect the manager’s inspection. That last one is important. You don’t inspect every bathroom forever. You inspect whether the manager is inspecting the bathroom. You don’t personally review every waste entry forever. You inspect whether the kitchen manager is reviewing the waste and making changes. You don’t write every schedule forever. You inspect whether the manager is building the schedule to budget and adjusting to actual sales. That is how you move from being the doer to being the leader. And that is the point. Now let’s talk about the emotional part.

Because this is not just operational. This gets personal. Restaurant pros often avoid getting people to do the work because they’re afraid of their reaction. They don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want someone to quit. They don’t want confrontation. They don’t want to hear you’ve changed. They don’t want the eye roll. They don’t want the pushback from the long-term employee who liked the old way better. I get it. But here’s the truth. Every standard you protect will disappoint someone who benefited from the standard being weak. Let me read that one again. Read it again in your mind. Ready? Every standard you protect will disappoint someone who benefited from the standard being weak. That does not mean you’re doing it wrong. It may mean you’re finally doing it right. Your job is not to keep everyone comfortable. Your job is to build a restaurant that works, a restaurant that works for the guests, a restaurant that works for the team, a restaurant that works for the numbers, a restaurant that works for you. And sometimes that means someone has to be uncomfortable. Sometimes that someone is you.

Leadership is uncomfortable because it requires you to stop tolerating the very thing that made the old culture easy. Easy to avoid, easy to excuse, easy to delay, easy to clean up yourself. But easy is expensive. Every time you avoid the conversation, you pay for it somewhere else. You pay in food costs, you pay in labor costs, you pay in guest complaints, you pay in manager frustration, you pay in employee resentment, you pay in your own exhaustion. Avoidance always sends the bill somewhere. So stop asking. What will it cost me to hold them accountable? Start asking, what is it already costing me not to? That question changes everything. Let’s bring this back to the restaurant prosperity formula. Leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Getting people to do the work requires all 5. Leadership sets the standard. Systems define the work. Training transfers the behavior. Accountability protects the result. Taking action makes the whole thing real. If one of those pieces is missing, the work falls apart. Leadership without systems becomes personality. Systems without training becomes paperwork. Training without accountability becomes a nice suggestion. Accountability without leadership becomes punishment. Action without consequence becomes another false start. You need all 5. That is why this is not about one trick.

There is no magic phrase that suddenly makes everyone do the work. There is no meeting so inspiring that your team transforms into a Navy SEAL unit with aprons. There’s no checklist that will save you if nobody protects it. The work gets done when you build the structure, then lead it consistently. That’s the unsexy answer. And the unsexy answer is usually the one that makes money. So here is your action step. Pick one piece of work your team is not doing consistently. One. Not the whole restaurant. One. Then run the work transfer test. Is it clear? Has it been trained? Who owns it? Is it visible? What is the cadence? How will misses be coached? What happens if it keeps getting missed? Write down the answers. Then fix the weakest link. Maybe you need to rewrite the checklist. Maybe you need to retrain the manager. Maybe you need to move the tracker. Maybe you need to create a daily review. Maybe you need to coach the first missed faster. Maybe you need to finally document the person who refuses the standard. Do the next right thing. Not the perfect thing, the next right thing. That’s how you build momentum. And remember this. You do not get people to do the work by wishing they cared more. You get people to do the work by making the work clear, trained, owned, visible, reviewed, coached, and protected. That’s leadership. That’s how standards become behavior. That’s how behavior becomes culture. And that’s how culture creates freedom. I’m Dave Scott Peters. Go take action.

Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant. Before you go, I want to give you these three thoughts. One, by combining leadership and taking action with systems and training, being checked by accountability, you are on your way to creating prosperity for you and your restaurant. Two, I have something I need from you. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you happen to listen to podcasts. By leaving us a review, other restaurant pros seeking out this information are able to find it. I read the reviews and hearing how this information has benefited you does wonders for me. And three, if you find any of the discussions helpful, share them. The more restaurant pros who have access to them, the better we become as an industry. For more restaurant resources or to get in contact with me, connect with me at DavidScottPeters.com. Be passionate about what you’re doing. Be persistent, but more importantly, become better and help everyone around you become better. And your restaurant is going to kick some ***.