#240: Scott Boatwright, CEO of Chipotle – Remove complexity to unlock performance

One of the most underrated interventions in business today is removing complexity. And oftentimes when we find ourselves with an imbalance in a restaurant, the root cause isn't always about employee capability. It's about operational complexity that we've added that limits performance. Ever wonder how a great team of people working on a great product can still underperform? Welcome to How Leaders Lead.

I'm David Novak and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. Today I'm sitting down with Scott Botwright, the CEO of Chipotle. He joined the company back in 2017 as chief operating officer, so believe me, this is a guy who knows everything about this business right down to the recipe for their secret sauce. Now I'm sure you know, Chipotle serves millions of customers a week. They have to move fast, scale big, and stay consistent, all while delivering on their main promise of quality.

That's why Scott is all about operational excellence. As you'll see for yourself today, when something's off, he doesn't just come in and point fingers at people. He looks at the system behind it, because he knows what all leaders know. When you remove complexity, you unlock performance. And this conversation is full of ideas to help you do that in whatever industry you're in.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (50 minutes, 9,516 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.