Your Best Chef Might Be Your Worst Manager (And That’s Not Their Fault)
I’ve watched it happen more times than I can count.
The best barista in the building gets promoted to café manager. The sous chef who never misses a beat gets the head chef job. The bartender everyone loves gets the keys to the venue.
Six months later, they’re exhausted. The team’s frustrated. And the owner is wondering what went wrong.
Nothing went wrong with the person. Something went wrong with the thinking.
Michael Gerber nailed this in The E-Myth Manager.
He calls it the Manager’s Myth: the belief that if you’re great at the work, you’ll be great at managing the work.
You won’t. Not automatically. They’re two completely different jobs.
The technician trap
Most hospo managers are technicians who got promoted. Brilliant on the tools. Fast on the line. Great with guests.
So what do they do when service gets busy? They jump on the pass. They pull the shots. They fix it themselves.
It feels like leadership. It isn’t.
It’s the same thing they were doing before, just with a bigger title and more stress. And it means the venue only runs well when they’re standing in it.
Gerber’s point is simple. A manager’s job isn’t to do the work. It’s to build the way the work gets done.
That’s the shift. From “I’ll just do it” to “here’s how we do it here.”
Work on your area, not in it
If you’re a manager reading this, here’s a question worth sitting with.
If you took a week off, would your section run to the same standard?
If the answer is no, you haven’t been managing. You’ve been holding it together with your own two hands. I know, because I’ve been there.
Great managers think like business owners inside the business. The kitchen has its own numbers: COGS, waste, prep times. The floor has its own: average spend, table turns, Google reviews. Your job is to own those numbers and build the systems that move them.
That means opening and closing checklists, recipe cards, role cards, SOP’s, and clear standards for what “great” looks like every day.
Not because systems are exciting. Because they help ordinary people (often with little experience) deliver 5-star experiences consistently, including on the nights you’re not there.
To the owners
If you’re an owner about to promote someone, this bit’s for you.
Promoting your best person and wishing them luck isn’t a development plan. It’s a gamble. And you’re gambling with your best person.
Before you hand over the keys, ask three questions:
Do they want to lead people, or do they want recognition? Both are fine. Only one makes a great manager.
Do they understand the numbers (performance metrics) they’ll be responsible for? If not, who’s teaching them?
Have you given them systems to manage, or just chaos to survive?
That last one stings a bit. But Gerber is right. Most poor performance isn’t a people challenge. It’s an environment challenge: unclear roles, unclear standards, poor or no systems.
Gallup’s research backs this up. In It’s the Manager, Clifton and Harter found that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement.
Your managers make or break your culture. Your culture makes or breaks your guest experience. And your guest experience makes or breaks your profit.
So investing in your managers isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s one of the highest-value decisions you’ll make.
The bottom line
Great managers are made, not born.
If you’re a manager, stop being the hero of every service. Start building the system that makes heroes unnecessary.
If you’re an owner, stop promoting and hoping. Start promoting and developing.
The best hospo businesses I’ve worked with all have one thing in common.
Their managers run the operation, and the owner runs the strategy.
That’s where profit and freedom live.
If you want help aligning you and your managers around systems, that’s exactly what BLUEPRINT is built for.
