How I Get Employees to Care About the Business Like Their Own

Most small business owners are experts at the work — the advanced degrees, the craft, the thing they put their name on. Where they get stuck, Andrew Lamppa told host Zaneta Chuniq Inpower on this episode of Unscripted Small Business, is the moment they have to hire someone else to do that thing. The result is stress, micromanaging, and a fog of missed expectations, with the owner stuck as “the central cog in all the other aspects of the business.”

Andrew, who runs Built to Benefit in Michigan, spent 14 years owning a brunch restaurant — growing it from a greasy spoon to a seven-figure, 25-employee establishment — before turning those hard-won lessons into a consulting practice. His whole approach comes down to one word: clarity, and the systems that make it stick.

The owner becomes the bottleneck

Andrew works with owners who have anywhere from two to a dozen employees — people who aren’t just managing the team, they’re doing much of the work too. The trouble is expecting a new hire to “magically do the thing as good as they do.” That gap breeds confusion about roles and quality, especially when an employee’s last job accepted B-level work and the new one expects A-level. He shared one client so worn down by constant questions that he wanted a sign on his door: “If you knock on this door one more time, I will hurt you.”

Employee Success Agreements: a job description on steroids

Andrew’s first deliverable with any client is an Employee Success Agreement (ESA) — what he calls “a job description on steroids.” Being an employee, he says, is a two-way street: the employer wants someone who functions highly in the business, and the employee wants to enjoy the work. The ESA spells out exactly what’s expected, which alone solves a ton of problems, because so many owners admit they don’t actually know what their people are doing all day.

The CARE framework for engagement

Andrew argues employees can care about a business almost as if it were their own — because we care about things we value, and things that are rare and valuable earn our care. He breaks it into four steps he calls CARE: Clarify expectations and identity through core values; Acknowledge individuals by speaking possibility into their lives from real evidence; Reward results with a purposeful, regular incentive plan rather than a once-a-year holiday bonus; and Empower people with a behind-the-scenes view so they can make decisions without knocking on the owner’s door.

“We care about things that we value. And if the job is unique and valuable enough where they can’t just quit and go get another job somewhere else at a competitor, they’re going to care about it more.” — Andrew Lamppa

Open the books (at least a little)

Andrew cites a striking gap in perception: most small businesses profit around 8–10%, but most employees think the owner nets around 35%. Owners hide their numbers to avoid looking rich, when a little transparency would actually earn empathy. He described a client who promised bonuses for hitting revenue goals; for five straight years the team hit the revenue but actual profit fell, so the bonuses never got paid. Once they saw the real numbers in a team meeting, one employee said it would “take all of us to make this business work” — a light-bulb moment that turned assumption into shared ownership.

“It’s not what you bring in. It’s what you can keep.” — Andrew Lamppa

High performers want a scoreboard

Measuring performance, Andrew admits, is “not having its shiny moment right now” — but high performers genuinely want to know how they’re doing. He reaches for sports: a lacrosse game with a fallen-over paper scoreboard just isn’t as engaging to watch. Yes, metrics can be over-done and micromanaged, but the employees who don’t want to know how they or the company are doing are usually the ones you don’t want anyway — and tolerating them quietly drags down everyone who does care.

“No athlete wants to get on the field and not have a scoreboard that they can look at.” — Andrew Lamppa

The Team Clarity Snapshot

For owners who want a starting point, Andrew offers the Team Clarity Snapshot — a done-for-you baseline that looks at every team member: what they do, why they do it, and how well they should do it. Its real power is de-personalizing the performance conversations owners tend to avoid. Instead of a manager-to-employee confrontation, it inserts a third-party artifact so the two can be curious together about the Employee Success Agreement — and it finally answers the question, “what are people doing all day?”

Lessons from 14 years of running a restaurant

Andrew is candid that he bought his restaurant and “drove it into the ground” before rebuilding it with systems, data, and values. Three takeaways carried over into his consulting: caring has to start with the owner genuinely caring; core values are the best tool to “transplant your brain into someone else’s head” so people decide well in your absence (their value of generosity changed how staff handled a menu mistake); and incentivizing against metrics works — moving from scratch-paper tallies to a point-of-sale system gave him data on table turns and ticket times, weekly meetings, and payouts that meant more guests, fewer errors, and less wasted food.

“Core values, I think, is the best tool to transplant the way you think — transplant your brain into someone else’s head.” — Andrew Lamppa

Don’t climb the mountain alone

Andrew’s closing charge to owners: business ownership is not for the faint of heart, and too many owners refuse the help that’s available — free, paid, mentoring, or coaching. Don’t be a single person on an island, carrying the flag alone.

“Seek someone that can be a battle buddy, that can join you in the arena, get dirty, and really help you win the fight every day, week, month, all year long.” — Andrew Lamppa

You can connect with Andrew Lamppa through Built to Benefit, start with the Team Clarity Snapshot, or find him on LinkedIn as Andrew Lamppa.