Lessons in Leadership from Potatoes

Chef, restaurateur, entrepreneur, father and new Samsung ambassador, Josh Emett, talks about leadership, workplace culture and peeling potatoes.

How would you describe yourself as a leader?

I’m very much about allowing people to do their jobs. Sometimes it’s easier for me to just get in and do it. Especially when trying to train someone to take over from me, especially if they don’t do it quite the way I want it. But it gets to a point where you question, how much is enough? Did the guests notice between what I put on the plate and what they put on the plate? They don’t, so you should stop worrying about it. I also like to allow people to make their own decisions. That’s what I’m there for. If they ask me a question, we’ll figure it out together and come to a decision.

Do you see younger people coming through with this sense of entitlement that people often criticise younger generations for?

I’m still a bit old school and pigheaded. I think that eventually people have to fall in line if they want to start delivering on things. You can go out these days and invent your own job and invent your own career. And that’s great. That’s change taking place, that’s the new world we live in. But if you want to be a chef, there’s certain procedures you’d have to go through to get there. You’re not just going to open restaurants and expect to deliver on a certain standard, because you’re without the proper training and knowledge. Eventually you’ll get found out.
In terms of my profession, I don’t think the staff have a lack of energy. I think people generalise and say, ‘Oh, they don’t want to work.’ I don’t necessarily think that they don’t want to work, I just think they want to work on the things they want to work on. They want to work on things that make them feel good. I think from an employer point of view, you need to figure out what those things are and make sure you’re hitting them.

But if peeling potatoes doesn’t make you feel good, you’ve still got to get them done.

We all have to peel potatoes every now and then, that’s just part of life. But as long as there are other elements in there that tick the boxes, that’ll make them feel good about life.

Going from the potato to supply chain, the transparency, is there more consumer demand to know where the potato comes from? To know where the meat patty comes from?

100 percent. There’s lots of stuff going on in respect to food beyond taste. Especially around plant-based or vegan food, or how much meat we should be eating and what varieties of meat or what fish we should be eating. The messages are mixed and hard to decipher.

That also plays into the restaurants and the business of what we do and what we are trying to cater for. You have UberEats and all these other disruptive things that are either really good for your business, or not so good for your business.

There are a million things going on that you have to consider. But in essence, we’re still running good old fashioned brick and mortar restaurants and we’re catering for experiences. People want experiences still. In fact, they want even better experiences. It’s interesting how it’s changed.

Going back to that culture, as it’s such an important thing to incentivise the new employees coming through and to keep them excited, engaged and productive. Have you got any advice for how you do that?

It’s definitely about creating the right atmosphere at work and getting them passionate about what you’re doing. That can take multiple different forms or ideas, because everyone’s in it for a different reason. They want to do something that they really love and feel good about every day. That’s the key to it.

Make sure that you’ve got people in the right roles, are learning the right things, and have got a good career path where they can see where they’re going. Funnily enough, money’s not always in the mix these days.

In terms of productivity for yourself and the way you are able to work, what has changed for you in your move over to the Samsung Galaxy Note10+?

In certain parts of my life, I don’t like change. I like routine. I like things that don’t disrupt my daily life. But it was probably time for a change. I enjoy really nice new things that have interesting parts to them to play around with.

I use a reasonable amount of things on my phone, but I don’t use a hundred apps or anything like that. I use the things that are really relevant to my life and I use them all the time. I go back to the same stuff every day; whether that’s checking the football scores, or turning on the music in my house, or banking apps, those sorts of things. They need to be really easy and functional.

The biggest thing for me has been signing documents. Almost every day, I feel like I’ve signed another document and used the old school way to scan it. But then with the Galaxy Note10+ you’ve got the S Pen in there, so you can pull it out and sign your life away and send it off. That’s brilliant. You don’t even need to go near a scanner.

And then there’s the ability to take notes, because you can pull out the S Pen and write notes on the Note10+. I’ve made all sorts of notes on everything from food, to what I’m doing at home, to Instagram ideas. Especially when I’m eating out. Every time I eat out, I write notes, I take photos. I’m still old school like that, I write everything down. Sometimes it sits there and I never look at it and other times, I’ll look at it constantly.

The other great thing about that is that you can continue to add to a list. Rather than having a page, you can continue to add notes to the bottom. It’s one reel.

The infinity display is great because I need glasses these days. I can see from a distance, but anything up close, I can’t see so a bigger screen is actually really good for me. It is literally a full screen, which is great.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

My dad always said, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re in the top 5 percent of anything you do. I think that’s still really good advice. It doesn’t really matter what you do, whether it’s flipping burgers, or doing high end restaurants, or trying to get three Michelin stars, just be at the top in your bracket.

But, I also think it’s about detail. Everything’s always in the detail. Don’t think people don’t notice. Take care of the detail and the rest will take care of itself.