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Most CHROs I speak with tell me the same thing: the hardest challenges they face aren’t being solved inside traditional HR forums.
That’s why I created Future of Work Leaders—a private, invite-only community for Chief Human Resources and Chief People Officers who want to think beyond policies and programs and focus on what’s actually shaping the future of work and employee experience. Members include CHROs and CPOs from companies like Tractor Supply, Novartis, LEGO, Norfolk Southern, Saks Global, PwC, Northrop Grumman, and more. We come together monthly in small virtual sessions and once a year in person to tackle the conversations most organizations aren’t having yet.
If you want to move beyond traditional HR to focus on the future of work, then apply to join the Future of Work Leaders Group.
How do you maintain a consistent culture across nearly 4,000 restaurants and a workforce of over 125,000 people? For a hyper-growth brand like Chipotle, this isn’t a thought experiment—it’s the central challenge that defines its success or failure.
On a recent episode of the Future Ready Leadership podcast, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jason Kidd, the Chief Operating Officer of Chipotle. We dove into what it takes to run an operation of this scale, and unpacked a powerful and unexpected set of lessons for any leader, particularly those in HR.
At Chipotle, operational excellence and people leadership are not separate functions. They are deeply and surprisingly intertwined, woven together by a shared culture and a relentless focus on execution. I’ve distilled the top five most impactful and, in some cases, counter-intuitive takeaways from our discussion for you to consider.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
The Most Important Operating Principle? Master the Mundane.
In a world that lionizes innovation and constant change, it’s refreshing to hear a leader champion the opposite. When I asked Jason about the secret to effective operations, his answer was simple: become “the master of the mundane.”
He emphasized that success doesn’t come from flashy, one-off initiatives, but from executing the basics with incredible consistency, every single day, without fail.
For a CHRO, this means the most valuable training isn’t another abstract leadership seminar, but a rigorous program on executing foundational processes flawlessly. It suggests that performance management should heavily reward consistency, not just innovation. This is about building an organizational muscle for reliability, which starts with how you hire, train, and reward.
“To be the master of operation, of operating, is to be the master of the mundane. If you can just make it as mundane as possible, which is just executing the basics, you’re going to be really successful as an operator...”
The Simplest Hiring Rule: Just Hire Happy People.
When discussing how to spot future leaders among thousands of frontline employees, Jason offered a surprisingly simple hiring philosophy: “I try to hire happy people.”
His rationale is both practical and profound. He explained that you can’t expect an employee to genuinely smile and create a positive guest experience under the pressure of a busy lunch rush if they aren’t naturally inclined to do so in the calm of an interview. You can teach someone the technical aspects of making a burrito bowl, but you can’t easily teach an innate disposition.
The strategic implication for CHROs is clear: for customer-facing roles, a candidate’s innate disposition may be a more critical hiring signal than their resume. Building a strong service culture starts with hiring people who are already wired for it.
A Single Scorecard Binds Operations and HR Together.
Silos are the enemy of execution. At Chipotle, Jason explained that success relies on deep, cross-functional alignment, driven by a single, shared scorecard that every leader uses—from the restaurant general manager all the way up to the C-suite.
Crucially, this scorecard isn’t just about financials. It holistically measures the health of each restaurant by encapsulating “people aspects” like turnover, engagement, and internal promotions right alongside food safety audits and financial metrics like sales and profitability. This ensures every leader, regardless of function, is calibrated to a single, holistic definition of operational health.
This is a critical takeaway for any CHRO aiming to be a true strategic partner. In this model, the COO is held just as accountable for people metrics as the CHRO is. It dissolves the traditional barriers between “operations” and “HR,” creating a culture of shared ownership over the entire employee and customer experience.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
AI’s Real Job is to be an “Assistant,” Not a Replacement.
Chipotle isn’t shying away from technology, but its approach is refreshingly practical. Jason described their use of AI in hiring through a partnership with Paradox, which resulted in their AI chatbot, “Avacado.” Avacado acts as a sorting tool and personal assistant for restaurant managers, handling the initial screening and scheduling of candidates. This saves managers an enormous amount of administrative time.
This philosophy directly echoes Kidd’s core principle of mastering the mundane. Here, technology is not a replacement for human judgment but a tool designed specifically to absorb the most mundane tasks—candidate screening and scheduling—freeing up managers to focus on what truly matters: a face-to-face connection with a potential team member.
“We view AI as an assistant, not a replacement. People still want a human to build their burrito bowl. AI’s job is to handle the friction behind the scenes—the scheduling, the inventory, the sorting—so our managers can spend more time leading their teams and connecting with guests.”
Hyper-Growth is Fueled by Radical Upward Mobility.
Chipotle’s growth numbers are staggering—the company is on track to open between 315 and 330 new restaurants this year alone. But the most powerful statistic is the one that fuels this expansion: an internal promotion rate that hovers near 90% for new restaurant general managers.
This isn’t just a talking point; it’s a core business strategy. Jason highlighted that a new employee can reach a general manager position, with a salary in the range of $80,000 to $90,000, in as little as 18 months to three years. This creates a clear and rapid career path that turns a frontline job into a genuine career opportunity.
This transforms talent development from a support function into the primary enabler of the company’s P&L growth. The key question for a CHRO isn’t just “Are we retaining people?” but “Is our leadership pipeline robust enough to fuel next year’s expansion targets?”
Are Your Leaders Masters of the Mundane?
What the Chipotle model reveals is that elite operational discipline and a deeply human-centric people strategy are not in conflict; they are mutually dependent. It showed that at a high-performing company like Chipotle, you cannot separate how you treat your people from how you run your business. They are two sides of the same coin.
The lessons—from championing consistency to hiring for happiness and building a shared definition of success—provide a clear blueprint for any organization looking to scale its culture along with its operations. It leaves us with a critical question to ponder. As you look at your own organization, where could “mastering the mundane” unlock the most value, and how can you better align your entire leadership team around a single scorecard that truly matters?
