Lots of responsibility. We're counting on you. We trust you. And if you screw up, just tell us about it; don't worry about it. We're not encouraging you to screw up, but for heaven's sake, if you do, don't worry. We're in this together, and we don't know what we're doing either, so come on and join in.
That sense of community rests on three pillars. The first is integrity the knowledge that the company is what it appears, and claims, to be The second pillar is professionalism the company does what it says it's going to do The third pillar the direct, human connection, the effect of which is to create an emotional bond, based on mutual caring.
In the end, they agreed that it came down from their commitment to five core values: caring for each other; caring for guests; caring for the community; caring for suppliers; and caring for investors and profitability in descending order of importance.
'We wanted to raise the bar,' he said. 'Instead of trying to do it all, we wanted to be the best at a few things. We physically gave up our licenses in other states so we couldn't work there, and we went from taking every job to questioning every job.' That meant getting rid of customers, including some who'd been around the company for a long time.
If you want to have the choice, you have to fight for it. All successful businesses face enormous pressure to grow, and they come from everywhere customers, employees, investors, suppliers, competitors you name it. As we shall see, those forces will make the choice for you if you let them, in which case you will lose the opportunity to chart your own course.
Not everyone on every team is interested in growing, but the only way to keep a nineteen-year-old restaurant like Union Square Cafe on it's toes is to staff it with people who want to figure out a better way to do everything every day.
They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, make great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives.