Communication Lessons From The Bear

So the latest streaming phenomenon is The Bear, which just completed its run on Hulu but is available anytime. A second season has been ordered.

The IMDB description is as follows:

A young chef (Carmy) from the fine dining world returns to Chicago to run his family's sandwich shop.

Which sets new records in succinctness. The problem is that it is one of those deals where the exposition takes place as the show goes on, so almost whatever you say you are verging on a spoiler.

A little more background. It’s a Chicago Beef Sandwich restaurant—check here if you don’t know what that is—but it’s good.

The people at HBO always said that one of the secrets of a good show was to take the viewer into a world where they would never otherwise get—think Sopranos, Girls, Sex and the City, Entourage, etc. (We’re not even including historic worlds like Rome or Game of Thrones).

Anyway, here we are placed directly into a restaurant kitchen, and they do a magnificent job of letting you feel like you are right there. The speed, stress, noise, and pure chaos (all contained in submarine-like cramped quarters) are everywhere. I mean, I was having PTSD and I’ve never stepped foot in a restaurant kitchen.

As different as it might be from where I have worked, it seemed to me that there are communication lessons to be learned from The Bear that could be transferable to quieter environments.

Habitual Daily Communications

There’s a meeting before every shift, called the shift meeting. The meeting is quick and to the point, because there is a lot of saucing and chopping to be done and opening time is what we call a hard deadline.

In my view, this is one of the best internal communication tools ever created. In other industries, it is called a huddle. It skips over all the issues of internal stakeholders without email and employees with email who don’t read IC emails. The biggest problem is to scale it you need adept communicators throughout an organization, but that’s not a problem they had to deal with at The Beef.

Regular, scheduled time to relax and get to know each other

It was called the family meal at The Bear, and it was when the entire staff stopped right before opening and ate a meal together. There were even specific recipes for family time, like the spaghetti recipe.

As the dysfunctional kitchen made its profane journey to being a functional kitchen, these family dinners served as both healing time and as a bellwether.

We probably can’t get this done daily in most workplaces. I know there are lots of workplaces that put social events on the calendar.

Many of those are on the mix and mingle model. What is interesting about family meal is everyone around one table, an archetypal human experience. I wonder if that couldn’t be replicated.

You need a system

When Carmy arrives at the restaurant, the kitchen has a system—everything has a system—but it’s basically just yelling and mass chaos that ends up producing food in spite of itself and to the detriment of the nerves of anyone who works there.

If you have worked in any kind of agency, this might sound more than a little familiar to you.

Carmy institutes a system used in high-end restaurants—Escoffier-style French brigade—which might seem out of place at The Beef and gets eyes rolling when he lets the kitchen know what he is doing. Fancy words aside, the system is just a division of labor and a workflow that tames the kitchen to sustainable urgency and chaos.

And that’s the key. Sustainable success needs some kind of a system. People who have worked with me will be surprised that I am saying this because I have normally chafed at such things (See doing purchase orders and my timesheet).. You need a system—it needs to be smart and right for the environment—but nothing is sustainable or scalable without it.

Culture Matters and It’s More than Superficial

When Carmy arrives, the culture of The Beef is toxic. Essentially, it’s a profane and unruly environment where interactions are marked with insults and abuse and disputes are settled by force. Carmy aims to change that.

Two specific examples. First, he calls everyone “chef,” even line cooks with no culinary training at all. He explains it is a sign of respect. Second, when someone tells you something, you are expected to respond “heard.” (Workplaces could use this in today’s electronic communication world).

The thing is that superficial measures are not enough. The culture did change, but only when real respect is shown….like when Sydney compliments Tina for her mashed potatoes. Also, the culture gains respect when people see it start to produce results.

So when your boss senses stress and calls for a potluck or an employee of the month award or a newsletter article, try to influence that decision. When changing the culture at any organization, real trumps superficial, and remember….it will take time and it needs to actually work.

Conclusion

The Bear is an extreme example of a workplace. For spoiler purposes, I haven’t even touched other layers of dysfunction and grief. It’s non-stop. (For a bonus, watch for how “psychotic” workplaces haunt people for years.)

Even so, there are lessons even for somewhat less chaotic work environments, where there are people and there is a daily grind that must express the strategy.