Your best people might leave. Train them anyway.
This piece was originally shared on LinkedIn in response to recurring conversations with founders and leadership teams around this topic.
I’m publishing it here as part of an ongoing body of thinking around restaurant strategy, market entry, and operational decision-making.
One of the harder parts of leadership is accepting that development does not guarantee retention.
When a business is growing, career paths are easier to map. New roles appear, the structure changes, and you can show people what “next” looks like.
When growth slows, that path is less obvious. But the responsibility to develop good people does not disappear with it.
Give people exposure to the next level, build their capability ahead of the role and hold up your end of the bargain.
If that gap doesn't close in a reasonable timeframe, they may well leave. Sometimes, because someone offered them the next step… Sometimes for more money.
And that's okay.
It's a job, not a marriage. You're better off having someone doing great work while they're with you than creating a culture where people are stuck, frustrated and just going through the motions.
Develop them properly. If the opportunity comes, you’re ready. If it doesn’t, you still had a stronger team whilst they were with you.
Since first sharing this, I’ve seen the same issue surface repeatedly — particularly with businesses entering new markets or scaling too quickly. The underlying challenge is rarely strategy itself, but how early decisions constrain execution later.
Andrew Jobes is the founder of Jobes & Co., a Dubai-based advisory working with restaurant and hospitality businesses across the Middle East and international markets.