Erin Wade: The Mac and Cheese Empire
Erin Wade, a Princeton-educated attorney, shares how she built a multi-million dollar mac and cheese empire by engineering a revolutionary workplace culture. She discusses her 'color code of conduct' for harassment, open-book management, and leading with precision.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Erin Wade's Personal Journey and Surfing Obsession
Overcoming Overthinking and Connection to Food
Transition from Law to Entrepreneurship: The Homeroom Idea
Early Mistakes and Lessons in Restaurant Management
The Power of Structured Freedom and Intelligent Autonomy
Implementing Open-Book Management and Financial Transparency
Solving Operational Problems Through Employee Engagement
The Collective Success Model for Decision Making
Restorative Justice: A New Approach to Workplace Discipline
Hiring Practices and Identifying Red Flags
The Color Code of Conduct for Addressing Harassment
The Decision to Sell Homeroom and Post-Sale Reflections
Managing for Impact vs. Intent in the Workplace
The Importance and Power of Professional Titles
Defining Personal and Professional Success
5 Key Concepts
Intelligent Autonomy
This concept describes a leadership approach where leaders create clear structures and boundaries, within which employees are given complete freedom and creativity. It's like a 'coloring book' where outlines are provided, but individuals express themselves uniquely within those confines, leading to more effective freedom than boundless liberty.
Open-Book Management
A management practice where a company's financials are shared with the entire team, and employees are taught financial literacy. The goal is to engage everyone in improving key numbers and share the results and successes, fostering a collaborative and transparent work culture.
Collective Success Model
A framework for decision-making that requires evaluating how a decision will benefit three parties: the customer/community, the employees, and the company. Decisions are made by maximizing the largest degree of overlap for benefit to all three, moving beyond self-serving interests.
Restorative Justice (Discipline)
An approach to workplace discipline that focuses on fixing a wrong and making things right, rather than solely on punishment. It involves a conversation where the person who made a mistake understands who was affected by their actions and then proposes ways to repair the harm.
Impact vs. Intent
This principle emphasizes that in relationships and professional interactions, the actual effect or outcome of an action (impact) is more important than the underlying motivation or purpose (intent). Even with positive intent, a negative impact requires accountability and apology.
7 Questions Answered
Erin Wade had an 'aha moment' after a depressing day at her law job, realizing there was no place to get really good mac and cheese in Oakland. After being fired from her law firm, she saw it as an opportunity to pursue this unique restaurant idea, knowing her worst-case scenario was returning to a life she already disliked.
Initially, Erin Wade created too much freedom with no dress code or vacation policy, which led to chaos and confusion among employees who lacked clear guidance. She learned that structured boundaries are necessary for true freedom and effective operation, especially in a restaurant setting.
By sharing financial data and teaching financial literacy, open-book management empowers employees to understand how the business runs and identify areas for improvement. This leads to bottom-up solutions, like identifying and correcting inconsistent cheese portioning that saved the company significant money, and fosters a sense of collective ownership and impact.
The 'Color Code of Conduct' is a system developed by Erin Wade's team to address customer harassment by assigning a color (yellow, orange, red) to different levels of discomfort or threat. This system dramatically reduced high-level incidents by allowing staff to quickly and uniformly escalate situations, preventing low-level issues from escalating and empowering employees without requiring justification.
After a decade of running Homeroom, Erin Wade felt her original vision of creating a positive workplace had been achieved, and she wanted to pursue new projects like writing a book and spreading her management ideas more broadly. Personal factors, including a divorce and the uncertainty of the pandemic, also contributed to her decision to start a new chapter.
Managing for impact means prioritizing the actual effect of one's actions on others, rather than just the good intentions behind them. It acknowledges that even positive intentions can lead to negative impacts, requiring accountability and adjustment to ensure actions truly benefit the team and customers.
Titles are incredibly important because they reflect how the world sees us and, more importantly, how we see ourselves. Embracing a more serious or accurate title can expand one's network, lead to new opportunities, and instill greater pride and a higher standard for one's work and identity.
26 Actionable Insights
1. Choose Meaningful Hard
Recognize that life’s most rewarding pursuits are often challenging, and consciously choose to engage in ‘meaningful hard’ work or activities over ‘meaningless hard’ ones for greater fulfillment.
2. Trust Your Body’s Feelings
Pay attention to your body’s primal responses to situations and choices, as these intuitive feelings can be a valuable guide for what feels right and brings genuine joy.
3. Structure for Freedom
As a leader, create clear structures and boundaries (like a coloring book) within which individuals have the freedom to express creativity and autonomy, preventing chaos and providing guidance.
4. Practice Open Book Management
Openly share company financials with your team, teach financial literacy, and engage everyone in improving key numbers, then share the resulting success to foster collaboration and collective ownership.
5. Use Collective Success Model
Employ a stakeholder analysis framework for decision-making by evaluating how choices benefit customers/community, employees, and the company, aiming to maximize positive overlap for all parties.
6. Manage for Impact
Prioritize the actual impact of your actions and communications over your intentions, acknowledging that even good intentions can have negative outcomes, and adjust behavior accordingly.
7. Practice Restorative Justice
When addressing misbehavior, focus on understanding the harm caused and asking ‘what are you going to do to make it right?’, empowering individuals to take responsibility and creatively resolve issues.
8. Implement Harassment Color Code
Establish a clear, color-coded system (e.g., Yellow, Orange, Red) for staff to report and managers to respond to customer harassment, ensuring consistent action and preventing escalation.
9. Embrace Professional Titles
Actively use and encourage the use of appropriate professional titles for yourself and your team, as this positively influences external perception and internal self-identity, expanding opportunities and pride.
10. Cultivate Powerful Self-Narrative
Consciously choose and internalize aspirational self-identities (e.g., ‘I am a runner’ instead of ‘casual jogger’) to influence behavior, motivation, and commitment towards personal goals.
11. Prioritize Personal Joy
Dedicate consistent time (e.g., weekly) to activities that are solely for yourself, engage your senses, and bring personal joy, as this can be a meditative outlet and profoundly improve your life.
12. Avoid Hated Work
Actively avoid jobs or tasks you genuinely dislike, as it is difficult to excel in them, and spending precious time on unfulfilling work can lead to regret and a lack of passion.
13. Design Your Ideal Workplace
When creating a new role or business, envision and build the kind of workplace you wish you had, one that fosters passion, offers a future, and excites you and others daily.
14. Assess Worst-Case Scenario
Before taking a significant risk, clearly define your worst-case scenario; if it’s no worse than your current undesirable situation, it provides a valuable safety net for bold action.
15. Empower Creative Service
Set clear, measurable customer service expectations (e.g., make five customers’ days magical per shift) while granting employees complete creative freedom within that boundary to foster individuality and exceptional experiences.
16. Open Weekly Financial Meetings
Conduct weekly financial review meetings that are open to all staff (and paid for their attendance), fostering financial literacy and broad engagement in the company’s performance.
17. Measure Employee Happiness
Regularly track and report on non-traditional metrics like employee happiness (daily or weekly), engaging staff in discussions about the underlying reasons for fluctuations to identify areas for improvement.
18. Weekly Company Newsletter
Distribute a weekly newsletter summarizing company trends, employee suggestions, planned improvements, and decisions not to act on certain ideas, keeping all staff informed and engaged.
19. Share Financial Success
For small businesses implementing open book management, select a dynamic number employees can impact, measure its improvement, and share a portion of the financial gains with the team.
20. Reason Out Loud
When discussing problems or suggestions, engage in open reasoning with your team, walking through the issue together instead of simply giving a yes/no answer, to foster understanding and collaborative solutions.
21. Adopt Creative Mindset
Shift away from an adversarial, destructive mindset (common in some professions) towards a creative, generative approach in business, focusing on building and collaborating with others.
22. Conduct Paid Practice Shifts
Integrate paid practice shifts or projects into your hiring process to assess candidates’ real-world job performance and cultural fit more effectively and efficiently than traditional interviews.
23. Avoid Negative Talkers
Identify and avoid hiring candidates who speak negatively about former employers, as this often indicates a red flag for future workplace dynamics and loyalty.
24. Hire for Values
Make company values a central criterion for hiring, promotion, and evaluation, ensuring that candidates not only meet performance metrics but also align with and demonstrate core organizational principles.
25. Compliment Work, Not Appearance
When giving positive feedback, focus on complimenting an individual’s work, contributions, or achievements rather than their physical appearance, ensuring a professional and universally positive impact.
26. Define Success as Meaningful Relationships
Frame your personal definition of success around cultivating meaningful relationships in both your professional and personal life, and actively work to enable others to achieve the same.
5 Key Quotes
My worst days at Homeroom were still better than my best days as a lawyer.
Erin Wade
I think the right kind of freedom for people is I think it's your job as a leader to create the structures and boundaries that within which people have freedom.
Erin Wade
I often say the most powerful story in the world is the one that we tell ourselves. And if you tell yourself, I am a runner, it makes it a lot easier to go for a run than if you think of yourself as a casual jogger.
Erin Wade
If you run things traditionally and hierarchically, people bring suggestions that are perhaps self-serving. And your job as a manager is to be like, no, or maybe to explain why. And it creates like a pretty divisive dynamic where you're at odds with each other.
Erin Wade
I think things that are hard often accompany things that are meaningful. And if something's hard and meaningless, like that was the worst thing. And I think for many people, unfortunately, work falls into that category.
Erin Wade
3 Protocols
Customer Service Challenge for Front-of-House Staff
Erin Wade- Identify five tables or customers per shift.
- Focus creative energy on making these five interactions the 'best part of people's day'.
- Utilize personal creativity (e.g., drawing art, singing, comping meals, special messages with condiments) to create a magical experience.
- Operate within established boundaries of safety and customer non-offense, but with complete freedom of expression.
Restorative Discipline Approach for Workplace Misbehavior
Erin Wade- Sit down for a conversation with the employee.
- Ask 'what happened?' to understand the situation.
- Discuss 'who was affected?' by the action (e.g., fellow staff, customers, managers).
- Ask 'what are you going to do to make it right?' to encourage creative solutions and accountability.
- If the employee consistently fails to care about others' welfare, it becomes an easier conversation to part ways.
Color Code of Conduct for Customer Harassment
Erin Wade- Yellow: 'Bad vibe' from a customer. Staff member can alert a manager and choose to keep the table or have the manager take over.
- Orange: 'Bad vibe' with an ambiguous comment (e.g., 'I like your shirt' when feeling leered at). Staff member alerts manager, and the manager is required to take over the table.
- Red: Sexually explicit comment or touching. Staff member alerts manager, and the manager is required to kick the customer out of the establishment immediately.