Hell’s Kitchen performance lesson #7: Remove bottom performers
This article is from my list of nine surprising high performance lessons from Hell’s Kitchen. The show is chock full of swearing, apologies for any colourful language that finds its way in here.
Summary
- One bad performer does significant damage
- Remove them sooner than later
- Be quick. Be clear. Move on.
One bad apple DOES spoil the barrel¹
It turns out the Osmond’s were wrong, the damage one bad apple (aka employee or contestant) can have is significant.
This is not new.
Chaucer might have created the expression in the 1600s², in 2008 the Rotterdam school of management tested the impact of one bad actor on teams, and the Wall Street Journal wrote about it in 2011. Do a search on ecosia³ or duck duck go⁴ and you’ll find many, many more references.
Hell’s Kitchen proves this, over and over again
If it is hard to imagine how one bottom performer can ruin a business across teams here is a common Hell’s Kitchen example:
The bottom performer is on the meat station messing up beef and chicken (over under cooked, wrong timing, etc). Since not every person, or even every table, orders meat what’s the big deal?
So that every customer at a table can eat at the same time, stations need their entrées ready together. If a station screws up (late, early, wrong) then the rest of the table might have to be re-done, adding any where from 6–12 minutes to the bill time. If this happens just a few times, then the whole kitchen is backed up, and diners across the entire restaurant are left eating bread and complaining to their servers. Customers probably don’t pay at Hell’s Kitchen, but in other organizations this kills businesses.
In every business our individual work is connected to our teams work, to other teams, other divisions. One person’s failure impacts others.
This isn’t about one mistake, we all make them. This is about consistent poor performance, and especially the inability to fight back, to turn it around. Chef Ramsey, and the top performers, can’t have this. The bottom performers are nominated and sent home.
Whenever a particularly poor performing, or hard to work with, contestant is sent away team performance improves.
Fire people quickly, clearly and with respect
Way, way back when I was fired, twice. Both times young me felt like the earth had been ripped out from underneath him. Long term it worked out and I’m way better off for getting out of those jobs that I hated (sandwich shop and bar porter), but it still hurt. I worried about how I would make rent, what I would do next, and why I was such a screw up (I’m okay).
When you fire someone you probably impact:
- their ability to make rent/pay mortgage
- their ability to buy groceries
- their self worth
- more
Respect
Firing someone is a big step that has a significant immediate impact on that person. There are still times when you need to do it ie. if they are having a signficant negative impact on the team. Removing them will help everyone, long-term it might even help the person you are firing.
Just do it with awareness and respect. You’re dealing with real human people, so do it right.
Between being the (too young) general manager of a restaurant, and leading at Apple Retail for almost thirteen years I have had to let go of a lot people. Many of them were really good humans³ (still are, I assume) who just weren’t successful in role. Some were good humans who I had to deal with at their worst, and sure, a few were low quality people. While I don’t regret firing them, there are a number where I regret how it all went down.
Four steps to quality exits
Assuming you have already tried to improve their performance, have been clear about how they are underperforming, and the consequences of not changing, here are some tips to help you provide clean exits.
- Do it sooner rather than later
If you are short staffed, or super busy, you might want to delay. Don’t. The sooner they are gone, the sooner your team can regain performance, the sooner you can hire better people, the sooner that drag is gone. Do not think about staffing, think about their performance and negative impact, everything else can be figured out. Bonus: If they are being fired they are probably unhappy in their current job. The sooner they leave, the sooner they can find a new job, and move on. Everyone wins. - Leave no room for doubt
It’s a tough conversation. Don’t make it confusing. You do not owe a long explanation as to why. In most organizations you will already have had multiple conversations, if they still don’t get it, they aren’t about to (that’s often part of the problem), no need to drag out the final talk. Be clear and to the point. - Share next steps
It can be confusing to be fired. There are many questions, desire to argue, to change, etc. Sharing next steps is important as it gives the terminated employee something specific to hang on to and provide a clear way to end the converastion and move on. They are also practical. In Hell’s Kitchen this is as easy as “Give me your jacket”. In your world this might be about last shift worked, payment, where they walk to after this, where their stuff is. Use next steps to move off of other questions that are unanswerable (why me?) and to give clarity to the person you are letting go (your shifts are coverd). - Don’t be a jerk
If you’re letting someone go, you may have all sorts of unhelpful feelings about them. They may be a jerk, a slacker, hard to work with, always late, or they may be a great person who’s struggling, who knows. There is a reason you are firing them. There is no reason to rub it in.
Be quick. Be clear. Move on.
Impact
The reality is that removing bottom performers often turns around teams faster than developing top performers.
So while there is room for everyone to get better, some people need to get better doing something else, somewhere else.
Starting now.
I hope you enjoy this series of performance lessons from Hell’s Kitchen. If you have a comment, feedback, or idea add it below, shoot me an email, or send me a tweet.
Keep reading.
Ian
¹ Not to get too political about this, but as defund the police (which is probably better expressed in most cities as: “Change the funding model of police so they can better do their jobs and others can also help to improve the safety and well being of our communities!” But that’s much harder to put on a shirt. Also in some cities you still need to call the police on the police.) protests exploded in 2020 many supporting traditional policing spoke about “a few bad apples”. Those people didn’t seem know the whole expression and missed this key lesson from Hell’s Kitchen.
² It’s pretty cool that one of the first uses of this is from the 16th century and is about a cook. It’s like Chaucer saw Hell’s Kitchen coming.
³¹If you’re not using it yet https://www.ecosia.org is basically bing, but every time you do something like 40 searches they plant a tree. This episode of “How to Save a Planet” gets into more detail about how it works.
⁴Duck Duck Go keeps your browsing private. Unlike google they do not sell predictions about your actions based on where you live, how often you are at home, or your favourite coffeeshop, what you look up on the internet, what you start to look up and then stop, etc to advertisers.
³There are two people in particular who I had to let go that I often think about when scrolling through LinkedIn. Both were (still are I assume) great people who were not cut out for or successful in the jobs they had for me. Both of them now have jobs that (according to LinkedIn) suit them and they are killing it. I doubt we will ever re-connect, but it is nice to know that in helping our team to be more ssuccessful we helped these people (long term) be happier and more successful.
