The Non-Negotiables List

<Mostly Spoiler Free>

Are you obsessed with The Bear like I am?? It is some of the best creative art on television right now. I love the show because I have a passion for food but also because it tells the story of family, team, and the struggle to build something special together - and it parallels many of my own experiences in my professional career.??

Season 1: The Turnaround? - Carmie, the show’s protagonist inherits a struggling family restaurant and has to take the business and the team to a new level.??

Season 2: The Pivot - Carmie believes that he can create something even bigger and better with this group but it requires them to take risks, skill up, and believe in themselves.

Season 3: In Search of Excellence - How do you go from good to great? What does it take to be truly excellent and what are the pitfalls along the way?

In the first episode of Season 3, Carmie writes a list of 27 ‘non-negotiables’ which he believes are the keys to success based on his past experiences.? Let’s just say things don’t go exactly as planned.? It made me reflect on his list, what things align to my own experiences, and what things do I believe are crucial to high-performing organizations.? While I wouldn’t call these non-negotiables, they are philosophies that I have learned and try to live by.

1. Treat everyone with mutual respect.? If this isn’t your foundation in your culture it becomes toxic very quickly.? This is probably the only thing on this list that actually is a non-negotiable.? You get one mistake here and then you’re off my team.? Something I learned from John Gordon in our multiple times working together.??
2. It’s not about you.? Too many times you see leaders driven by their own egos and organizations chasing vanity metrics or awards.? For me, it has to always be about the customer - that has to be the north star.? The second your north star becomes a Michelin Star (in the case of The Bear), an industry award, profit-first, or what will make your board happy, you have lost your way.? Great organizations put the customer at the center of everything that they do.
3. First seek to understand, be curious. A mantra Jim Smith and I lived by when we led innovation teams at Fidelity.? Be curious about your customers, about your teammates, about your craft, and about the world around you.? In the show and in real life the most successful and innovative people all have this trait.? They ask a lot of questions and they spend a lot of time listening instead of talking.
4. Progress over perfection, but good is the enemy of great.? I know…two pithy truisms that seem at odds with each other.? I think the sweet spot lies in the middle - committing yourself to putting something out to the world knowing that it is not perfect, knowing that only through feedback will you make it better, but also knowing you can never settle for ‘good enough’.? Any startup entrepreneur knows this one well and lives this every day.
5. The magic is in the team.? The best results come from teams that tap into the diversity of thought and collaborate with no egos.? Sean Belka once told me ‘you can get a lot done if you don’t care who gets the credit’.? I’ve had the great fortune of being on some magical teams and all I can say is you can feel it in the air when it is happening.? Everything becomes effortless, everything comes into focus and you can feel things moving faster.? The best work is ensemble work (another reason I love The Bear).
6. Don’t let the debt build up. In The Bear this manifests in the process of thoroughly cleaning the kitchen every day and breaking down boxes before they go in the dumpster.? We all know what happens when you let things go and they pile up over time.? It becomes much more costly to fix .? In tech, we actually use the term ‘tech debt’ to describe this phenomenon but organizations build up debt in other ways like letting your brand wither without a refresh or under-investing in your employer value proposition.??
7. Make something everyday.? Make a meal, make a journal entry, make a sketch, make music.? Make something! This comes from the product leader in me and is a practice I picked up from Chris Clarke - one of the great product people in the game.? The act of physical creation activates a different part of your brain and the satisfaction you get from finishing the thing you make cannot be underestimated.
8. Hone your craft.? You and everyone on your team is a craftsperson at what they do.? People who dedicate time and energy to learning, to practice, and to bettering themselves at their craft ultimately achieve mastery.? In the show you see each of the characters constantly investing discretionary effort to hone their craft. The math is simple - if you can get just 1% better each week at whatever it is you do, however you wish to measure it, by next year you’ll have improved by 68%.? Who wouldn’t love a 68% improvement in their KPI?
9. Expect nothing, earn everything.? This one I picked up from my son who is a competitive rower.? I wish I could take credit for teaching it to him.? He goes into every season, every race knowing that he’s got to earn his seat in the boat - it is never a given.? I think about it every day at work though.? Every day we have to earn the trust of our customers and our employees and everything they give back to us.
10. Find joy in your work. ?We spend too much of our lives working not to find some pocket of joy in it.? Even those who are blessed to ‘do what they love’ find challenging and frustrating times - we all do.? The key is finding where the joy exists - whether that is in the people you work with, the mission that you are on, or the opportunity to grow as a person. Chef's kiss to you Suzanne Hamill for teaching me this one.

That’s my list.? Drop me a comment with your non-negotiables.