I used to run a small restaurant.

In a field where every challenge is hard fought and seldom rewarded, we bucked the trend. Whilst I put my initial success down to a relentless personal dedication, I am proud that the company truly became an anomaly when we developed a whanaungatanga and embraced a different management style, what I called at the time “full Communism”.

Initially I was motivated to conform to a mistaken belief of what strong leaders looked like. I worked 100-hour weeks and was overly ambitious and demanding of the team. Whilst now an employer, given my age I had only just been an unsatisfied employee. Being told “we’re a family” only to find out that meant this restaurant will bend the rules and ask you to come in on your rostered days off. Whilst Civil & Naval was now using the fresh lime juice that my last boss deemed unnecessary for an exceptional cocktail program, we weren’t set up to be receptive to the innovations of the next generation. The memories of poor management were fresh, top-of-mind and motivating.

I relinquished responsibility responsibly. Whilst I always paid a living wage, a schema of more distributive fairness was necessary. We discussed remediation openly as a team rather than a faux “family”. Developing not only a system of equitable rewards for any contribution above base duty but clear and transparent procedures in arriving at those rewards. I encouraged unionism and boycotted suppliers not able to meet living wage requirements. We put in place a peer support network as a last resort safety net for employment relationship problem resolution. We removed hierarchical job titles like barista, head chef, or bar manager. With no chain of command, the now-rudderless business should have diminished.

Instead, we had fostered a collective custodianship over its success.

I was raised a Catholic by my parents, two half-hearted atheists who were told that was the "right" way to raise kids. I was born and grew up in (mostly rural) VIC, Australia but we moved around a lot. I attended 6 primary schools in 7 years. My Dad, a Kiwi, and my mother being British and an overstayer I was considered a “Citizen of the Realm”, not achieving citizenship of any country until the age of 13 when I moved to Ōtautahi/Christchurch. Immediately following the earthquakes, I moved again. In Pōneke/Wellington I would work in restaurants and not long after, make plans to open one of my own.

It’s hard to pin down my 'culture'. With so much upheaval it was hard to identify a specific, salient community. When I moved back to the South Island in 2013, I joined a raft of younger people remodelling the city post-quake. In doing so, I think I finally put down roots and found peers through collaboration and the sharing of ideas.

Value-wise, my greatest influence would have to be my best friend.

In high school we read heady 19th century philosophers and without a whiff of comprehension stitched together a mutt of a belief system we christened ‘Mediocre Nihilism’ (ignorant to the fact it was already invented, dubbed Optimistic Nihilism)

If nothing matters, embrace the absurd and find humour in all things (even the sombre).

If everything is pointless, take a breath and reject the cynicism. Find beauty or excellence where you choose. Take interest in experience for its own sake.

Although you can’t prove they exist, others bring delight and you can be absolutely hedonistic in showing compassion, empathy and doing good deeds.

I am passionate, and can be dedicated when that passion lines up with a challenge.

I tend to immerse myself fully in any new interest. Zealous, I will read, watch, consume and experiment with nothing but the flavour of my fervour. Google often notices and changes my catered feeds and ads to suit, further saturating me and creating tunnel vision.

Externally, I present a constant upbeat attitude and therefore a capability to step up when required all-the-while maintaining a natural lightheartedness. I will turn to humour to cope during stress and in a team environment can generally bring smiles to people when things get hard.

I appreciate the small things wherever they may present. That might be some overlooked excellence, a small victory or a genuine effort. I honed this skill through managing small teams for so long but it also allows me to break down problems and celebrate accomplishing fractional goals.

I believe every strength is a weakness and vice versa.

Whilst I am dedicated, that can make me head strong. Passionate therefore, sometimes aimless or frantic. I can turn to humour as a mask, and struggle when asked to express myself genuinely.

When I'm stuck on a problem, I tend to double down. I feel shame when I have to turn to help, instead digging in.

I have quit saxophone, sea scouts, karate and a plethora of equally embarassing hobbies and commitments. A couple of small businesses later and I think I've proved I can have grit when required. I'm determined to not make coding a dalience.

There is no conflict as ancient and as deep seated as the battle between the day shift and night shift.

After 10 years and 10 times that in terms of combinations and variety of team members I still didn't crack it, but made inroads. Sometimes you can only encroach a solution, or at least mitigate a problems severity.

Originally, I tried negotiating with the source of the (sometimes genuine, mostly petty) complaints, 'The Openers'. I sought to point out the disparity in hours and sleep schedules. That, and the sales-per-employee gap created on a licensed venue. When neither worked we changed the roster to muddy the line between the warring parties. The "walk a mile" strategy was desperate and equally unfruitful.

If you don’t know already - ‘Closers’, like chefs - are a different species all together. There can be no intercession when you’re already asking somebody to work unsociable hours around overly sociable people all-the-while maintaining a patina of merriment. To make the openers happy would be asking an already sleep deprived acrobat of inebriation to also execute one-hundred-and-two cleaning tasks perfectly and in-order at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Needless to say, working with each group individually didn’t work.

Communication was also key. Rather than solve structural problems, listening in the right context was often all that was necessary. We established firm rules about where a complaint should go first (AKA, not a group chat for discussing the roster) and a peer support network as a last resort safety net for when management (me) failed to deliver. When I listened, I found out that the issue was very rarely that “the dishwasher was left on last night” instead, an underlying resentment had been allowed to fester. It was incredible how often these were dispersed by simply airing a grievance and being heard correctly.

That said, we did identify recurring conflict situations and find practical solutions too. The bins weren’t taken out again? Well, maybe we can hire a company that can pick them up from the storage area rather than the street. The laundry wasn’t folded correctly? Maybe bartenders should never have been tasked with laundry in the first place, surely there a company for that.

As the owner, I had to foster relationships between two clashing teams.

Further breakthroughs were made when we removed hierarchical job titles. The roster was small enough that “head” was not necessary in front of your role, and nobody needed to feel subordinate. More effective, was simply allowing for moments of staff bonding. We created a “change-over” – an hour or two where AM and PM shifters worked side by side instead of jumping ship the second the other arrived. We closed more. At the cost couple of days without trade and a pizza or two we created friendships but more importantly, mutual understanding.

Maybe the two species could co-exist?