Table of Contents

The Demand

This week, you decide whether your leadership is organized by geography — front of house, back of house — or by discipline: Product, People, Performance, with Perspective and Profit held by you. If you keep running the geography truce, you will keep hitting a ceiling on every person whose capability exceeds their zone, and the business will crack the day you or your GM leaves.

The Work

  1. Map your current leadership structure as it actually operates today — who runs what, and whether that role is defined by zone (floor, kitchen, bar) or by discipline (Product, People, Performance).
  2. If you are a single-unit independent absorbing multiple disciplines yourself, name explicitly which discipline you are wearing in each task this week — People Lead, Product Lead, Performance Lead. Naming the work you are doing changes the standard you bring to it.
  3. Run the Trust Calibration Framework on your next authority decision this week: how much can this person hurt me, what is the evidence they won’t, what is the cost if I am wrong, and is that cost survivable. Answer all four before extending a key, code, or authority.
  4. Identify your Mikey — the highly skilled person who corrodes culture. If you have one, treat their removal as a casting decision, not a performance review, and act on it this week.
  5. Write down which categories of decisions your team is currently allowed to make wrong without escalating to you. If the list is empty, pick one category this week and hand it down explicitly.
  6. If you have the revenue to support a first leadership hire, decide this week which discipline you retire from first — usually People or Performance — and start that hire’s [Scope Handoff Document].

This week, you name your current structure as geography or discipline in writing, and you take one concrete step toward the discipline cut — a decision-rights list, a Mikey removal, or a first Discipline Lead hire.