Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Nobody cares about my future!

What do you do if you have a boss that isn’t engaging your strengths, recognizing your true value, giving you the direction you need to move forward, or in general being the true leader that you would be if you were doing his job? Yeah, ok. I wish I had a nickel for every time someone got caught in the trap of not taking responsibility for their own career advancement. Waiting for your boss to figure it out and create an environment conducive to your future?

”So, how's that working for you?”

If your answer to the above question is “Not so well” then do something different.
- Recognize that the only person who will get you anywhere is you. Stop being a victim to your own lack of success.
- Get engaged and do something about it. Stop complaining that the boss isn’t doing their job.

So, what's your area of responsibility in your current position? Is it service, hiring, training, food quality, food or beverage costs, cleanliness? Surely, you've been assigned a specific area of responsibility.

Is your area of responsibility performing at its optimum level? Is it an example of how your department should be executing?

If your answer is yes – then go help another department or area. Engage that leader and help them get to an exceptional level of execution. Do it to help, not to prove wrong. Assist, bust your butt, do whatever you can to get someone else winning the way you are and expect nothing in return. Get them promoted! The more people waving your flag saying how great you are, the better.

If your answer is no – well, there's your problem! If you can’t get your own area right, why would you expect your boss to do anything different? Get a coach, find a mentor, read, research, engage your team, and do whatever it takes to get your team pumping out the results that are expected.

Initiative is one of the most important qualities I look for in an exceptional leader. You have to be able to engage yourself first before you can expect someone else to engage you. I would much rather try to get a horse to slow down then keep kicking it to run!

And don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you to go it alone…..if you don’t have the answers, ask for help and keep asking until you find someone willing to help. If people keep telling you no when you ask for help, you are asking the wrong people.

You haven’t asked me yet.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

You might as well quit!

So you are the Manager, General Manager, Area Director or Multi-Unit Supervisor in the restaurant industry. When questioned about what your job description may be the answers that I hear most often are….

-Protect the image and standards
-Deliver a great product to every guest, every day
-Ensure the financial success and long term viability of the business


Similar to the canned responses that you might hear when you ask a police officer why he or she does what they do, “to protect and serve”. I hate that answer.

However when you ask these same people what they love about their jobs they will tell you….

-Teaching the employees and managers how to be successful
-The interaction with the guests and providing them with a great experience
-The pace, atmosphere, energy, and competition


So the difference between their job description and what they love to do are not aligned. The one thing that I do know is that if you aren’t doing something you love, it becomes mundane, repetitive, and well hell you end up not doing it very well. So you might as well quit. I know someone famous said if you find a job that you love it will never seem like work! So how do you combat the gap between the job and what you love? Well align them!

What exactly is it you are teaching that creates your love for the job?-The standards, specs, and service expectations!
When you are engaged with the guest, what actually are you doing?-You are validating that the overall value and experience are being delivered by your people because the standards, specs, and expectations are being met!
Why do you love the pace, atmosphere, energy, and competition so much?-Because you get a chance to deliver the standards, specs, and service expectations better than anyone else!

So, if you find yourself bored with the day to day operations like, follow up, order taking, line checks, and repetitive processes that happen everyday in the restaurant business either quit and go do something else you love or realize that those processes are exactly what make this job so great. Be the basics of the business and the restaurant business is alive and in living color!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Funny thing happened on my way to work

So I am headed to one of my restaurants and I am reflecting on why I can’t seem to make the headway fast enough to make this the best operation in the industry. I think to myself, “Self, you have been doing the same thing you always do in these situations and it works, what is happening here?”

Being the introspective fellow I am I mull it over and over and over. Can’t find it in that big ole noggin of mine. Then the revelation comes, I’ll just ask. So one by one I talk to the managers, the hourlies, and heck anyone I can pose with the question, “What am I doing wrong here?” Slowly but surely I begin to hear the same notion…”Andy, we are doing our best too and that isn’t good enough!”

Uh oh….I don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to do…now we are in big trouble. So all my vast years of mentoring, coaching, debate, and thought provoking leadership leads me to this, “I better start at the beginning and see where I went wrong.”

Question: Do we have enough food coming in to the building?
Answer: We have been struggling with that issue. Our orders don’t seem consistent and we have to shop locally to keep up with what we are short on.
Diagnosis: No one knows the ordering system process and I hadn’t bothered to check and make sure they knew how to order, I assumed

Question: Do we know how to make the food that matches the recipes and the pictures?
Answer: Well Andy we are making it just like the last guy showed us, right?
Diagnosis: Food Quality has eroded over time with the lack of follow up and training and I was silently approving of the plates I saw every time I visited, I assumed they were going over this

Question: Do we have enough people and do they know how to serve the guest?
Answer: We have the most tenured staff writing our schedules and they do a pretty good job of getting people in here and we really don’t get that many guest complaints
Diagnosis: Trouble here, the inmates are running the asylum and the standard of guest service is being measured by how many people are upset versus how many are happy. I assumed everyone knew what to do with the guest.

I have fallen into the leadership trap of ASSUMPTION. I assumed that the institutional knowledge that existed would keep the business running strong. I assumed that the management knew exactly what to do and were just performing poorly. I assumed that everyone knew exactly how important the guest was and took care of them with high expectations.

Yeah, Yeah, I know, assuming makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”

Cure: Back to the Basics of what we serve, who we serve, and who serves it. Bring your team together, honestly communicate where you as the leader went wrong, and start over.

People don’t wake up and think to themselves, “Boy I am going to do a really crappy job today” they just get led that way. Learn from my mistake. There are only three kinds of people in the world:

Don’t know – teach them (this is most of them!)
Don’t care – move on, nothing to see here!
Can’t do – move on but even in my experience in the business, I can count the people that belong in this category on one hand….