SpotOn

I started doing something simple: at the end of every week, before I closed my laptop, I'd think about one or two things that happened that week that I wanted to make sure got acknowledged. Then I'd send a message. Or put it in the next 1:1. Or mention it in standup. It took ten minutes. Maybe less. It changed the team's relationship with me more than any structured feedback session ever did. Praise isn't a quarterly event. It's a weekly minimum.

Let's meet at the NRA Show this weekend! As I prepare to go wheels up this weekend to National Restaurant Association Show, I'm so excited to see so many great thinkers, leaders, and friends in the Hospitality space. If you're around, shoot me a DM and let's meet up. PS Here's hoping they bring back the Nathan's hot dogs!

The deadline is slipping. How do your engineers respond? 1) The Hider Knows it's off track. Says nothing. Hopes something magically changes. It never does. 2) The Panicker. Raises the alarm loudly but with no plan. Just noise. Anxiety becomes contagious. The team freezes. 3) The Planner. Surfaces it early. Brings a revised scope, a new date, and a clear ask. Every time. The difference between the types isn't confidence. It's practice. Most of the time, your team communicates bad news as well as you've created the conditions for safely bringing issues up. Which of these did your team learn from watching you?

There are 3 types of engineering managers... And we often cycle through all three without realising it. The Rescuer - jumps in at the first sign of friction. Feels helpful. Quietly teaches the team to wait for rescue instead of solving it themselves. The Delegator - steps back and calls it empowerment. The team feels abandoned. Problems compound in silence. The Multiplier - asks the right questions. Not "let me fix this" but "what do you think we should do?" Makes the team better at solving problems themselves. The goal isn't to stay in one mode. It's to notice which one you default to under pressure.

I’m constantly talking to operators who are navigating how to find margin at a time when staff are harder (and more expensive) to come by, customers are more cost conscious, and inputs are all over the place. Many look at fixing their margin problem primarily through lens of getting more customers through the door. David Cantu does an awesome job in the interview below walking folks through the “profit leakage” that sneaks in from basic things like turning off the lights and burners. Cannot suggest this listen enough!

The seniority paradox: the more experience you have, the harder it is to stay open. Pattern recognition is a superpower... until it isn't. You've seen this before. You know how it ends. Except this time, you might be pattern-matching a problem that only looks like one you've solved. Experience speeds up your thinking. Active open-mindedness is what keeps that speed from becoming overconfidence.