Cutting Onions

Leadership Lessons Learned From the Restaurant Industry

Bobby Shaw

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781642795790
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Cutting Onions shares restaurant executive Bobby Shaw's journey from starting out as an hourly employee at McDonald's to becoming a senior executive in the restaurant industry, what he learned along the way, and how it changed the course of his life and countless others.

The importance of culture is referenced by many leaders trying to build an organization, but it isn't always reflected in the day-to-day actions of that organization. This leadership guide chronicles the journey of one leader through one of the most challenging and rewarding industries, eventually inspiring hundreds of other leaders along the way to do more than they ever thought possible. Bobby dives into the challenges he overcame and how, along the way, he learned the importance of building a strong culture in which people wanted more for each other than they wanted for themselves. Cutting Onions tells the story of a restaurant that figured it out and tied the results they achieved right back to their culture, represented by the simple, everyday things that, as all leaders learn, are the most important.

Chapter 1

The Art of Cutting Onions

You may be asking why I titled this book Cutting Onions. Contrary to what that title suggests, this is not a cookbook. It does, however, have a lot to do with my life in the restaurant industry and how the restaurant industry has changed my life. Cutting an onion was one of those foundational skills that I learned at Chipotle, and like Neil Peart taking drum lessons well into his career, I was well into my career before joining Chipotle and learning how to properly cut an onion.

Fast forward several years and I was standing in my kitchen cutting an onion to prep for dinner when I realized that cutting an onion and leadership are very similar. I know you may be asking yourself…cutting onions and leadership? What do they have to do with each other? Let me back up a minute. As I mentioned earlier, many years ago during my time at Chipotle, I learned that how you cut an onion matters. When you cut an onion properly, you have to take your time; you have to show a lot of patience; you have to do it with finesse. You really have to use skill. It’s as much about the technique as getting to the end result, and that’s the structure of great leadership as well.

How is your leadership influencing those around you? Leaders have to think about how they’re going to lead a team, lead a family, or even just lead themselves. You have to think about how you’re going to approach leadership and how you’re going to execute that leadership.

As a chef, you would never just cut an onion haphazardly. You would think about what you are making and approach the onion in a manner that would produce the best flavor for the dish that is being prepared. Leadership has to be approached the same way. There is a right technique, a right style, and a right attitude for leading your team in the right direction. You can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach. It can even be unique to each individual you are leading, rather than unique to the situation. Much like with an onion, you may have to alter your technique depending on the onion you are cutting and the dish you are making.

How you do anything affects the end result. You can have the right onion, but if you approach cutting an onion with the wrong technique, it’s going to totally damage the onion to the point that it’s not really going to be useful in the recipe that you’re trying to make.

Let’s say that you are preparing onions for salsa or guacamole. The first thing you do is peel the outer skin off the onion. Then you want to cut the onion in half. At this point, you take the time to really look at the onion and see there is natural ribbing in the onion that you can use as your guide. Making small cuts across these ribs will produce a diced onion with perfectly sized onion pieces for your salsa or guacamole.

If you use the wrong cutting method, you will end up with onions that are too big, which will ruin the final product. The onion will overpower the other ingredients. Yes, you’ll still be left with salsa, but it won’t be very good salsa.

Leadership is no different. If you’re leading a team, you have to know what conclusion you are trying to get to and how to lead your team in the best way to accomplish that goal. As a leader, you have to think about the outcome and how each member of your team performs in order to make the end result the best it can be, but you also have to think about how you are going to show up and perform too.

Much like when cutting onions, you have to think about how you approach that team. First, you have to pick the right knife because it would never work to cut onions with, let’s say, a dinner knife. Knowing what kind of knife you need for the task is critical, and knowing how to pick that right knife is even more important. If you are slicing bread, you would use a serrated bread knife because it holds onto the bread while you’re cutting it. If you were cutting an onion, you would use a chef’s knife, which gives you more control over the cuts you are making. Then, you have to think about how you hold the knife. It sounds really simple, right? But the specific way you hold the knife is really important because that determines how you control the blade. If your hand is all the way around the handle, you’re able to guide the knife with your index finger, which will allow you to move the knife properly, and give you the best control to get the result you want to achieve.

Using the wrong approach when cutting an onion will cause you to lose control. With the wrong approach, as you cut the onion, chunks are going to go all over the cutting board—some may even end up on the floor. You’re going to get randomly sized pieces, which will change the consistency of the dish you’re making. The technique is critical when it comes to how you pick the knife, hold the knife, direct the knife, and how that knife actually slices through the onion. Just like there is an art to cutting onions in order to get what you want to have in your recipe, the same goes for leadership. There is an art to it!

While holding the knife correctly is a huge factor in producing the right kind of onion cuts, just as important is the shape of the knife. Your knife has to be in top shape to perform properly. It must be clean and sharp. You want your knife to be able to cut through the onion so crisply and easily that you’re able to retain the natural juice in the onion.

You could do everything right from a technique point of view, but if you use a dull knife, guess what? It’s not going to turn out the way you wanted it to. You began with a tool that was not going to be able to get you the desired result you wanted, so no matter what you do from that point forward, it’s not going to work out the way you had hoped. The same thought process applies in leadership. A leader has to use proper technique with each individual he or she leads. A leader also has to make sure that he or she is using the right tools to get the job done and that those tools are in good shape.

As I stood in my kitchen thinking about how important it was to train a line member to properly cut an onion and how that relates to leadership, the analogy really struck me as incredibly important. While it was extremely important for everyone who worked for me to be able to cut an onion properly, that was just the tip of the iceberg. In order to get a consistent result with the food we were making at Chipotle, the same amount of care had to go into preparing every ingredient we used.

That’s true of leadership, as well. Your team has to perform at the highest level in every aspect of their operation for the best result.

How you get there is just as, if not more, important as getting there.

Most people think the way they dice an onion doesn’t really matter, but the way you cut an onion can make or break the meal you’re making—just like the way you lead will impact the performance of your entire team.

You can ask someone to get a specific result, and they may get it. But the way in which they get that result is either going to be good, efficient, and beneficial for the team’s desired outcome, or it’s going to be a struggle, taking too much time for that person to figure out what to do.

I like to think of a dynasty versus a flash in the pan. A dynasty is the team that you see get it right all the time, while the flash in the pan team can get it right, but they may or may not be able to repeat their success. That’s the difference between a restaurant that gives you the same quality service and meal over and over versus one that provides unpredictable service or inconsistent food quality and taste. As a customer, you’re not going to be happy with inconsistency. That’s why understanding the art of what you do and doing things the right way each and every time is crucial. You have to have a consistent result.

No one wants to be a one-hit wonder. Your results need to be reproducible and predictable, whether you are thinking about cutting an onion, leading your team, or leading yourself. When you show someone how to cut an onion correctly every time they are in the kitchen, they’re going to get the result they (and you) want—consistently.

Pulling Back the Layers

You can’t get into an onion discussion and not talk about the importance of layers, which happens to be another strong correlation between cutting onions and leadership. On the surface, onions aren’t ready to eat or use in a recipe. You have to peel back the outer layer to get to the good stuff. As leaders, sometimes we have to dig a little deeper into what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with to get the best result.

When you grab an onion straight out of a bag, it’s never ready to use. It’s not ready for a recipe; it’s not ready to be diced or sliced. The onion is in its most raw form and needs to be prepared for the dish it’s going to be used in much like new leaders need to be prepared for their roles. They don’t know what you know, and they’re not ready to be in the mix. They need to be developed. They need to be taught. They need to be trained. You have to prepare the onion just like you must prepare a leader. It’s important to get under those layers and find the good stuff to work with.

When you peel back the dry outer skin of an onion, you’ll often find some blemishes on the flesh of the onion, but as you continue to peel off each layer, you’ll see the onion gets better as you go deeper. Sometimes you have to dig deep to get to the onion you want. But here’s the thing: when removing layers and getting below the surface, it’s also important to not take too many layers off. We want the onion to maintain its individuality, and we want a leader to do the same.

Keeping the Core Intact

The thing about an onion is that you cannot see the core until you get inside. You can see where they pulled it out of the ground, but it’s only when you pull back the layers and get to the center of the onion that you discover the core.

No two onions have the same size core. Each onion has the right core for that particular onion. Each onion has the root that it needs in order to become the onion that it is. It has the right root system to have supported that onion during its development. Likewise, it’s so important to maintain the root and the core in leadership because the root grounds who you are. It makes you who you are as a leader, and it makes that onion what it is as an onion.

You never, ever remove the core. The core holds everything together. If when cutting an onion the core is removed, the onion is going to fall apart.

When you’re dicing an onion for salsa or guacamole, you need the core to hold it together. The core has to remain intact so that as you cut through the onion, you’re able to maintain the control and get the right size cut for what your recipe needs. Knowing where you came from as a leader and knowing how you got to where you are (your “core”) is incredibly important in leadership.

If a person’s root is really grounded and the core is holding that individual together, it’s going to allow them to be the best version of who they already are. Many times in leadership you’ll hear things like, you can be anything you want to be, but that’s not exactly true. You can certainly be a better version of who you already are, but you really need an understanding of who you are, where you came from, and what it is that drives you. You need to know what your core values are (pun intended) and what it is that actually holds you together as a leader.

How often do we see great teams whose strong, consistent results fall apart when the core is messed with or removed? The effects of that can spread throughout an entire team.

I’ve seen this happen over the years when there is a core team in a restaurant, and when you mess with that team, you also mess with the restaurant’s results. If you take someone out of the team without replacing his with someone just as strong or stronger, the team falls apart.

So when you’re cutting an onion, make sure you choose the right onion. You need to know exactly how to cut that onion properly to prepare it for the recipe you’re making. You want to peel back the layers to get the best part of the onion, and then you want to make sure you keep the core intact so that the onion stays together while you make the best cuts for your recipe.

As a leader, you want to make sure you choose the right people to be on your team. This doesn’t mean that they need to be carbon copies of yourself. You need people who share your core values but also have diverse viewpoints to challenge your thinking and help you be the best version of yourself. You need to lead those around you to discover the best versions of themselves and prepare them to perform at the highest level possible. And you want to create a core system that makes it easy to consistently get the results you desire.

Chapter 2

What is Leadership

Leadership is a huge topic and there are countless books with endless ways of describing it. It seems like every thought leader out there has his or her own unique way of looking at this important topic.

I don’t want to make this difficult or complicated. In fact, I want to describe leadership in as clear a way as possible. I look at leadership not through the eyes of an intellect who has studied leadership for years and years and is trying to write the next great thesis about how a new model of leadership is needed, but rather from the eyes of someone who has worked in an industry for years and years drawing the most out of every team I’ve encountered.

I have worked in the fast-food restaurant industry for most of my life. I’ve worked at every level from line cook to CEO. From my experience, I have concluded that author Andy Stanley is right: leadership is really made up of three things.

It’s Influence.

It’s Stewardship.

It’s Temporary.

Leadership is Influence

Years ago, I heard a talk by John Maxwell, an incredible author and leader who has had a huge influence on me. When listening to him, I really began to understand leadership in the right terms. Leadership is a big word. It encompasses a lot and can be hard to define in simple words, but I want to take the next few pages and lay out what I believe leadership is at its core.

First and foremost, leadership is influence. As a leader, you have the opportunity to be a positive influence, but you also have the same opportunity to be a negative influence. The good news is that you get to choose. Be a strong leader and do things right, and you will impact the people around you for the better.

There have been quite a few times in my career when someone has invested in me, and that investment has influenced me. The first time that someone in a leadership role influenced me was when I was working at McDonald’s as a young crewmember in 1984. I was working in the kitchen, and I was asked to come up to the front counter to take orders, which is not something I ever wanted to do or thought I would be asked to do.

Going up to the front counter may not sound like that big of a deal, but what you don’t know—and can’t tell—from this book is that I grew up with a pronounced stutter that made it very difficult for me to communicate as easily as I would have liked in those early days. Everyone I worked with knew that, and they were very supportive. I was comfortable working in the kitchen where my communication was limited to a smaller setting with people who knew and accepted my stutter. I had never prepared to work on the register where I had to talk to people who didn’t know me, and I never had plans of doing so.

I was working a dinner shift one night when my manager, Brenda, called back to the kitchen and asked if I would come up front. She could see that I was really nervous and not feeling good about this at all. I remember telling her that I wasn’t the right person. But she told me it would be fine. She said it was really slow that night and that she’d be up there with me the entire time. She assured me she would be right behind me and that she would back me up. She told me she would help get all the orders, and that if I had any problems, she would also help with the guests.

I remember walking up there, asking myself what in the w...