Creative Reaction

Over the weekend here in Boston, a well-known chef did something so surprising, it made the headlines. He kicked a patron out of his restaurant.

While his restaurant had made mistakes, every effort was made to appease the unhappy customer. Rather than listening to reason, the customer continued to complain so obstinately, that it upset other patrons, causing one table to leave and another patron to slam a glass of wine, breaking it.

Quoting Chef Andy Husbands,

“I love my staff, and they work very hard, and I have to back them up. And this woman was being really unfair and mean.”

How would his staff have felt if Husbands did not back them up? How many other patrons would have stormed out had he not ejected this toxic customer? I think it is clear that Husbands values morale and acted to protect both the atmosphere and the reputation of his establishment. His patrons agreed. They gave Husbands a round of applause for his actions.

Mike Myatt of Blogging Innovation has heard way too much about Equality & Team Building, the idea “that for teams to be productive, employees have to feel ‘empowered’ by having an equal voice”. In fact, he calls this “ridiculous”.

“Whether you look at athletic teams, military teams, executive teams, management teams, technical teams, design teams, functional teams, or any other team, you’ll find that the best of the best have structure, a hierarchy of leadership, a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities and expectations, clear and open lines of communication, well established decisioning protocol, and many other key principals, but nowhere is equality found as a key success metric for teams.”

“Great leaders and highly productive organizations always focus on team building as a key priority”, says Myatt. If you want to be an effective leader of a productive company, read his post.