Danny Meyer: There’s nothing worse than when somebody feels like they got whacked in the back of the head, and they’re just shocked because you had never had the conversation. You hadn’t had the tough conversation that said, “Either your performance or your behavior, it’s one of the two…”

Tim Ferriss: Yep.

Danny Meyer: “Aren’t measuring up.” And that’s another reason that we have to be really clear about what excellent performance looks like, and what wanted behaviors are, which we’re very, very clear about. And by being up front with people and not having this be the first time you’re having the conversation, it takes a lot of the emotion out of it. It doesn’t mean someone’s going to be happy, but it basically sounds like — actually, something that I’ve said on a few occasions, not in the time I’m actually exiting somebody, but in the time leading up to it, is I use what I call the jigsaw puzzle analogy.

Tim Ferriss: Mm-hmm.

Danny Meyer: We’ve all done jigsaw puzzles, and the more challenging they are, you get to this point where it’s starting to take some shape, but you still have a lot more pieces that you haven’t put together than what you have in your little shape there. And invariably, you’re going to come up with a piece that looks like it’s right, and you put it down and it’s almost right. It’s so almost right that you keep jiggering it around to make it right, even though you know it’s not right, and the piece knows it’s not right. And what starts to happen is, the paper on top of the jigsaw piece starts to fray a little bit. And in fact, the jigsaw puzzle, if you keep trying, starts to fray.

Well, that’s what we do too often with employees that are almost right, but they’re not really the right fit, and it ends up not being good for the puzzle or for the puzzle piece. So I try to explain that to people. If you get that conversation with me, chances are probably 80 percent that the next conversation is, “You should go. You’re a beautiful jigsaw piece, but you should probably be part of a different puzzle.”

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Danny Meyer: It doesn’t make you wrong, doesn’t make you bad, you didn’t — now, if it’s someone who actually did something bad, that’s a very different conversation. It’s like, “You cannot work here. You’ve betrayed integrity, you’ve betrayed someone on our team, you’ve betrayed one of our guests, you’ve betrayed our investors, whatever.” If you cross any one of our stakeholders, that’s a very different conversation, lack of integrity. But if it’s just not the right fit, number one, it shouldn’t be the first time they’ve heard about it. And they may not love the conversation. Who in the world wants to be exited?