Jul 22, 2026 · 21 min · 10 segments
*Kathleen McDonough and Derek Williamson built Shifting People on a belief: take care of your people and everything else follows.* *Anthony built The Return on the opposite arrow. Episode 2 puts both…
Derek WilliamsonGuestAnthonyHost
Kathleen McDonoughGuestSo Kathleen, I'm going to start with you.
best case for people first you've got.
Not the LinkedIn version, the one you defend in a room full of operators who think that might be soft.
I mean, the natural one is if you're taking care of your people, they're taking care of your guests, right? And I think if you flip it and say anything else, that anyone else comes above people, you go into a really scary place where no one trusts each other and culture gets thrown out the window and you end up in one of those restaurants that has people stealing and people not trusting each other and just bad things happening.
So I think it all... hinges on trust and people first is, I know they say like restaurants are kind of like families.
So Derek, before I touch that, I want you to find the hole.
If somebody wanted to tear that apart, what she said, where would you start?
I think, you know, there are elements that I obviously, you know, I'm also people first a lot of the time.
And, you know, Anthony, in one of your episodes, you talked about Reducing, you know, or sorry, having fewer staff on so they can have more tables so that they can maximize how much they're getting in tips or like, that's a perfect example where now we are directly trading off one for the other.
And, you know, at the same side, like there's another extreme where like, it's not guest first beyond everything, because obviously we can't have like one server per one table.
But I think that the really important thing here is that you have to keep in mind the guest, you know, the guest as the priority before you factor in, you know, the employee.
Like, I think there's there's an important prioritization there, right? Because you can't be trading off one for the other.
And it's interesting, like it's good to know that you're not entirely aligned, right? Because there's so many principles that you can look at when you say you're the people or guests first.
So Kathleen, I'm going to start with you.
best case for people first you've got.
Not the LinkedIn version, the one you defend in a room full of operators who think that might be soft.
I mean, the natural one is if you're taking care of your people, they're taking care of your guests, right? And I think if you flip it and say anything else, that anyone else comes above people, you go into a really scary place where no one trusts each other and culture gets thrown out the window and you end up in one of those restaurants that has people stealing and people not trusting each other and just bad things happening.
So I think it all... hinges on trust and people first is, I know they say like restaurants are kind of like families.
So Derek, before I touch that, I want you to find the hole.
If somebody wanted to tear that apart, what she said, where would you start?
I think, you know, there are elements that I obviously, you know, I'm also people first a lot of the time.
And, you know, Anthony, in one of your episodes, you talked about Reducing, you know, or sorry, having fewer staff on so they can have more tables so that they can maximize how much they're getting in tips or like, that's a perfect example where now we are directly trading off one for the other.
And, you know, at the same side, like there's another extreme where like, it's not guest first beyond everything, because obviously we can't have like one server per one table.
But I think that the really important thing here is that you have to keep in mind the guest, you know, the guest as the priority before you factor in, you know, the employee.
Like, I think there's there's an important prioritization there, right? Because you can't be trading off one for the other.
And it's interesting, like it's good to know that you're not entirely aligned, right? Because there's so many principles that you can look at when you say you're the people or guests first.
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