How This Lawyer-Turned-CEO Utilizes ‘Restorative Justice’

I was a lawyer before I became a founder and CEO.  I worked in prosecution and criminal justice where I spent many years thinking about “wrongdoing” and how to handle it productively.  As a CEO, I was surprised that these themes around wrongdoing and redress were still often daily concerns for me.  I learned that how we handle discipline in our companies speaks volumes about the company cultures we are trying to create, and whether we will be able to deliver on them.  And remarkably, one of the ideas I learned about as an attorney—known in legal circles as “restorative justice”—became one of the most effective techniques I used as a CEO.

Traditional responses to wrongdoing and redress are punitive, and they pervade our educational system, many households and most workplaces I worked in. Their premise is simple: if someone does something wrong, punish them for it.  For example, in junior high, I was caught passing notes in class and was given detention. Forced to stare at a wall and unable to engage in anything productive, I wondered: how was this supposed to teach me a lesson? Punishing me for not paying attention with additional time…not paying attention…seemed flawed, even then. Instead of reflecting on my own behavior, this punitive response made me resent those that had put me there. I became more adept at passing notes without being caught.

When I became the CEO of Homeroom, a restaurant I co-founded, I had to confront my own beliefs about wrongdoing and punishment. Working in a restaurant presents daily challenges when it comes to managing behavior. The industry is demanding, with long hours, low pay and a workforce that is often young and inexperienced. The traditional approach to discipline—write-ups, suspensions and firings—felt uncomfortably similar to the punitive systems I’d grown up with. If an employee was late, they’d be written up or sent home. But this method of punishment didn’t sit right with me. It felt like detention all over again, and it only served to create resentment among employees.

At the same time, wrongdoing matters. It affects others and cannot be ignored.  When an employee is late for a restaurant shift, it negatively impacts other employees who now need to do double duty serving customers or cooking food. It impacts the guest who receives worse service, which in turns hurts the business. Managers are impacted because they now need to step in and help, and they need to take the time to deal with the late employee.

Recognizing the punitive approach seemed flawed, but that wrongdoing could not be ignored—I decided to try a different approach. I was inspired by the legal concept of restorative justice, which is a philosophy that seeks to “right wrongs” rather than punish. Instead of punishing lateness, my leadership team and I started having restorative conversations with employees. We would ask them to acknowledge the impact of their actions and come up with ways to make it right.

The results were astonishing. Instead of getting a write-up and being sent home (like detention—being punished for not showing up to work with an additional lack of work), employees were asked to confront the impact of their behavior and fix it.  When asked to think through all of the impacted parties and how to make it right for them, employees began seeing the bigger picture and coming up with creative solutions. They would offer to pick up side work or extra shifts for other staff members to make it up to them. They would be extra attentive to guests who might have received poor service, and reach out to do something special for their table. They would take the burden off the manager by writing up their own action plan for making things right with others and be responsible to follow up with it.

Restorative justice shifted the focus from punishment to accountability. It wasn’t about whether someone had broken a rule; it was about whether they were committed to the community we were building. This approach helped build a sense of cohesion and pride among staff, and also paved the way for us to let go of high-performing jerks who were not interested in this level of personal accountability.

Restorative justice also allowed us to build stronger relationships and create a more supportive work environment. I learned again—this time as a CEO—that the real power of discipline lies not in punishment, but in the ability to foster understanding, accountability and growth.