Article
How to Get Your Managers to Run Your Restaurant Without YOU
Imagine picking up the phone right now, calling your restaurant and telling them that a family emergency just came up, you will be out of the country for three months, your flight leaves in two hours and there is no way they can contact you while you are gone.
How comfortable would you be making a call like that? How comfortable would your staff be to receive it? What shape would the restaurant be in when you returned?
If your restaurant can't run properly without you there, you'll never be able to grow. You can't expand until the place can run efficiently and consistently without you. But on some level you already know that. You also know that you can't just toss the keys to a manager, walk out the door and expect that everything will be peachy.
No matter what you might like to think, if you are involved in all the daily operating decisions you are really just making it up as you go. Nobody else can duplicate what you do because it is all coming out of your head -- there is no system to it. That approach can work ... but it requires that you be there all the time. (Now you know why you have to put in so many hours.)
There has been a lot written in these pages about the importance of working on your business rather than working in your business so I will assume that you understand the difference. But there are several things you must grasp before you can effectively extract yourself from the responsibility for day-to-day operations and turn that work over to others.
You may think the job is to groom a manager to be able to run things without you. That's the ultimate solution, of course, but there are really two tasks required to reach that end. The easiest one is bringing the manager up to speed. The most difficult part of the transition is allowing you to actually relinquish control. This is the key element that many people fail to recognize and it is, in my opinion, the principle reason why passing the baton is often so difficult.
Let's look at both pieces of this puzzle, starting where it must begin: with you.
Letting Go is Hard to Do (But Absolutely Vital)
This could easily be a book in itself but we have neither the time nor space to do an exhaustive examination of all the possible elements. So let me touch on a few key points. Some are obvious, some are more subtle and they may overlap.
Get organized. To give your managers a fair chance to be successful, you must establish and document your systems. This can be as simple as creating an opening and closing checklist or as involved as writing a detailed procedures manual. Whatever form it takes, a system will present on paper the steps you have to take to ensure that each critical aspect of the operation works properly. You can teach someone else systems. You will never teach them to think exactly like you do.
Along with systems and procedures, you must also establish operating standards. Without something that can be measured, how will you be able to tell if you are on track or not? How many times can the phone ring before being answered? How long before a drink order is taken? What temperature must hot food be when it arrives at the table? The list can go on as long as you like.
Rigidly maintained standards reassure the public what they can expect from you and they tell your staff what you expect from them. You know how you want it to be; now, write it down.
Look for the other right answers. Our education system often teaches us, perhaps subtly, that there is often only one right answer to a question. Get the right answer and you'll do well on the test. If we are talking about something like the gravity of peanut butter, perhaps there is one right answer to that question; but in life, there are lots of right answers.
Think about it. Couldn't you take any sort of operating problem, present it to two dozen different operators and get two dozen different ways to handle it? Wouldn't all those answers be "right"? Different flavors of right, perhaps. Some more effective than others, perhaps, but essentially all legitimate approaches to the issue.
Before you can let go, you must be willing to seek out, and accept, those right answers that are different from yours. This involves realizing that other approaches may be as good, or even better, than your own. It means being willing to get the results in ways you never considered.
People solve problems in different ways and this sometimes makes it hard to work together. However if you understand and respect these differences, you can begin to use them. Instead of discounting the ideas of people who think differently, search them out. Allow them to focus on the types of problems they love to solve, then sit back and marvel at the great ideas they come up with.
Focus on results rather than activities. Position descriptions are like a road map to your organization. Properly constructed, they help workers to better understand the game you are asking them to play. Labor litigation also provides real incentives for operators to document the content of each position.
The problem with most job descriptions is that they are little more than lists of activities. Several times, I worked in operations with activity-based job descriptions. Occasionally I had to conduct a performance appraisal for a worker who was not meeting my standards.
They invariably defended their performance by showing how they had performed every task on their job description. This is akin to claiming to be the world's greatest lover by virtue of having memorized the manual. It is also about as effective.
My "Law of Creative Laziness" says, "Never do any more work than necessary to get the results you want." Since your reputation and profitability is based on the results your crew can achieve, why not just define their positions in terms of the results you are after instead of the activities that may (or may not) be involved?
Defining results allows people to interpret their jobs in a way that works for them. The immediate advantage is increased productivity, enhanced guest service, improved morale, reduced turnover ... and more constructive performance appraisals.
Seek alignment, not agreement. Somebody once said that "leadership is getting the herd to move roughly west!" and I think that is an accurate description of the reality of it.
Within the parameter of "roughly west" you will have people who are headed straight west at a dead run and you will have some who seem to be milling around. Some days you will move faster than you will on other days, but if the general movement of the organization is toward the west, you are OK.
This means that the job of the leader is to determine in what direction the company should be moving, communicate that direction to the staff and then help the herd to move that way. It is not to enforce a set of rules merely to preserve the illusion of control.
Every once in a while, you will have someone wandering off to the north. North is a good direction. There is nothing wrong with north; it's just not the direction you want the herd moving. (There is a time for everyone to head off in their own direction. Your job as an effective leader is not to fight that urge, merely to channel it in an appropriate manner.)
When someone in your westbound organization wanders off to the north, you first need to find out if they are lost or if they are truly northbound. If they are lost, give them a little course correction and point them back toward the west. If they are truly northbound, put them in touch with an organization that is moving north. Everyone will be happier! (For example, hockey great Wayne Gretzky is a skilled athlete, but if you are going to play basketball, Wayne will either have to lose the skates, or go next door to the rink where he will fit right in.)
Control is a myth and if you are willing to let it go and just concentrate your attention on what direction your organization is moving, everything will work more easily.
Become a teacher and coach. As a manager, I believe your real job is not to run the joint -- it's to teach your staff how to run the joint. You will never be able to move on to new projects (or get away to spend more time with your family) unless your crew can assume responsibilities that presently fall to you ... and the only way they will be able to do these new jobs is if someone teaches them.
If you are doing anything that someone on your staff is capable of doing -- and you are not giving it to them to do -- it is disrespectful. You are standing in the way of their professional development. Stop it. Overtones of disrespect will quickly destroy working relationships in any organization.
Failure to pass down routine tasks may also deliver a message that you do not think the other person is capable of doing the job properly. Whether that conclusion is correct is irrelevant. Your reluctance to let loose of tasks, especially simple ones, could be interpreted as your way of keeping power in your own hands.
The organization suffers because qualified people leave for jobs where they can advance their skills, while managers perpetuate the job overload that leads to exhaustion, stress and burnout. So that encapsulates the hardest parts of the process of grooming your replacement: getting yourself out of the way. Now we look at how to effectively get your management ready (and eager) to carry the load.
How to Bring Your Key People Up to Speed
Once you get organized and make the mental shifts I just outlined, grooming your managers to assume your responsibilities will seem almost intuitive. Here are the main steps in the process:
Give your job away a piece at a time. Take a look at where you spend your time. Do you spend hours doing the schedule? There is no law that says you have to do it, only that a schedule needs to be done. If you have it down cold, or if it is driving you crazy, teach someone else on your staff to do it.
. . .Do not insist that they do everything exactly the way you would. All you really need is consistency of the results. If they can get the same or better results without breaking any laws, why waste energy insisting on the manner in that has to happen?..
After all, at some point in your career someone had to trust you with the job for the first time. Delegation will be a relief to you and a job upgrade for them.
The same thinking applies to other typical manager jobs like taking the inventory or doing most ordering. Someone on your staff, with a little coaching, can learn to handle these tasks as well (or better) than you can, and it will not be hard to keep score on how they do.
As a start, identify three activities that occupy your time -- jobs that others on your staff are already capable of doing. If these folks are willing to take on the new responsibilities, give the jobs to them.
Do not insist that they do everything exactly the way you would. All you really need is consistency of the results. If they can get the same or better results without breaking any laws, why waste energy insisting on the manner in which that has to happen?
When you are comfortable that the new tasks are being well-handled, identify three of the common jobs on your list that others in the organization are capable of learning and with your newfound free time, start teaching them.
The results of this process are simply wonderful. You take jobs that wear you down and give them to people who get excited about them. You continually reinvent your own job, which tends to keep you fresh and excited. Your staff will become more confident, more skilled and more involved in the success of your operation.
Does this mean that things will happen differently than the way you would have done them? Almost certainly. Does this mean that you will not get the results you want? Not at all. The right things will still happen -- the herd will continue to move roughly west -- but with fresh energy from many other people who are fully engaged in the process. If you are getting the results you want (standards met and all), why would you get picky about how someone is doing it?
Give people latitude. All the great pilot training in the world will never make anyone a great pilot. At some point they have to solo.
If you never give your staff the chance to solo -- the chance to test their own ideas without you second-guessing and preapproving every move -- they never find out how good they are. They will continue to bring every little decision to you for action or approval.
Putting the responsibility back on your staff to find their own answers may slow things down a bit in the beginning, but it took you a while (and probably a few spectacular failures) to develop the skills you have today. Don't deprive your staff of the opportunity to make their own mistakes; it is part of the learning process. Besides, they couldn't mess it up any worse than you did when you were first learning, could they?
I am not suggesting allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Your responsibility is still to ensure that the company proceeds smoothly in the right direction, but this is not the same as doing it all yourself. In fact, the less essential you are to resolving the issues of the day -- the more that problem-solving is encouraged and supported at the staff level -- the smoother the operation will run and the happier the staff will be. People don't argue with their own information.
You have to get your ego out of the way so you can actually enjoy the fact that the place may run better without you being there. It can be a tough pill to swallow, but when you start to measure your success by the success of your staff rather than by your own activities, you will free yourself from a great burden.
Coach like crazy. You can approach management either as a cop or a coach. Cops look for problems and notice things that are done "wrong." Coaches look for strengths and reward what is happening right.
Coaches see what talent they have to work with and devise a game plan to win with the skills available on the team. Coaches realize that the talent resides in the players and if the players do not develop to their full potential, the team will never reach its full potential.
Coaches know that motivation comes from inside, not from others. The best coaches do not try to force people to do anything they do not want to do or are incapable of doing. Like farmers, coaches realize that while contented cows may not necessarily give more milk, they don't kick the bucket over as often and are a lot easier to live with.
When you start to see yourself as a coach, it will change the way you approach your job. The way you measure personal success shifts away from the number of problems you have identified and solved, and moves in the direction of tracking the number of wins your staff enjoys. You will measure your success by the success of your crew.
To improve your coaching skills, get good at asking questions. Great coaches ask insightful, probing questions that cause their players to think. It is hard to get yourself in trouble if you either ask or answer questions. It is only when you make statements (preach or lecture) that you tread on dangerous ground.
Good coaches are also good listeners. They listen respectfully, trying to understand how their players have things "wired up." They welcome "mistakes" because they reveal the extent of their student's understanding and suggest what skills need to be worked on next.
A Case in Point
To help explain what I am getting at, here are a few examples from my time as foodservice director at the U.S. Olympic Training Center (OTC) that will illustrate at least one way to relinquish control without abdicating your leadership role. The situation did not arise in an independent restaurant, but the circumstances could certainly apply in any foodservice business.
Within a week after my arrival at the OTC, my staff was doing almost everything that my predecessor had taken on as his job. One of the first things I noticed was that he was coming in at 5 a.m. every day to do the ordering. I looked at that and said, a) I don't know how to order for this operation, b) I don't want to do the ordering and, c) I'm not the best person to handle ordering even if I knew how and wanted to do it.
It was obvious to me that my head chef was totally capable of doing the purchasing. I asked him if he would like to handle it, and I thought he was going to hug me. A look of relief spread over his face and he said, "Please let me do it. I spend half my day cleaning up the messes that [the old manager] makes because he doesn't know what I have and he doesn't know what I need."
I told him I had no problem with his taking over the ordering as long as we could maintain a certain cost per meal and inventory turnover. He said, "Just show me how we are going to keep track of that and I'll take care of the details." In a flash, I was essentially unemployed.
Now that I had more time, I could look around for other opportunities. I hit on catering. Actually, it was more like the catering hit on me. In addition to the training center, the Olympic complex was also the headquarters of the U.S. Olympic Committee and about half the amateur sports organizations in the country, such as the U.S. Swimming Federation. There were always coaches conferences and other events going on, the catering for which was handled primarily by outside caterers because the reputation of OTC foodservice had been so bad.
The state of OTC catering became very apparent to me when we did a small party for the judo team a few days after I took over the department. Because this event was booked by my predecessor, I had not been part of the planning for the party. When I dropped in to take a look at it, I was shocked.
It was a totally amateur effort. Not only that, but the staff was clueless. To illustrate how bad it was, there was a bag of chips lying on the bar. I asked the person putting the party together where I could find the basket and I got a blank stare. Basket? The very word seemed to confuse him.
When I suggested we could put the chips in a basket, he got excited. "Wow," he said, "that would really be neat!" At that point, I guess formal catering meant taking the chips out of the bag.
I realized that catering was a huge opportunity, not only to save a lot of money for the sponsoring organizations, but also to break up the routine and provide a creative outlet for my staff. I brought in a superb caterer for a week to get us pointed in the right direction and we took it from there. In a very short time we developed a catering program so good that it eliminated the need for any outside vendor.
Pass the Baton
After running the catering program for a year and a half I started getting bored with it, so I asked one of my supervisors if she would like to take it over. She said, "I'd love to, but I don't really understand it that well."
I suggested that she work closely with me for a couple of months until she understood what I was doing and why it made sense to me to do it that way. I told her that once she grasped the reasoning behind the way I was doing it, she would be on her own and was free to do anything she wanted. We spent a few months together, she came up to speed and I gave her the job. She did some amazing things that had never even occurred to me. I was blown away, the clients were delighted and she discovered how good she was.
I continued to handle the catering bookings until one day I realized that, too, was unproductive. All I was doing was taking the information from the sponsor and relaying it to the kitchen. I asked the kitchen if they would prefer to handle the bookings directly and they said it would really be easier because the sponsor would often ask them a question and they didn't know what I had told them. So I gave away the bookings, too.
At the end of my tenure with the OTC, I was getting rave reviews on parties I didn't even know we did. Some of my colleagues from other departments observed that often when there were major parties going on, I was not there. Because their model of management was so different, they accused me of not caring.
The truth is that I cared intensely, and my staff knew it. But I cared enough to give them a chance to find out how good they were without me looking over their shoulders every minute. That is the only way they would ever really solo. If they needed me, they knew they could always reach me, but it was up to them to make the call.
What Would the Boss Do?
This approach applies to day-to-day operating issues as well. When I first got to the OTC, I would get calls at night and on the weekends. (Certainly if the place is on fire, I want to be perhaps the second call they make.) But most of the calls pertained to pretty routine matters.
When they would call with a problem, I might say, "If I was at a movie and you couldn't reach me, do you have an idea of how you might handle this situation?" They would usually respond that they did. My response was, "Well then, give it a try and see how it works. We'll talk about it Monday." After a while they stopped calling.
Your staff already knows what to do when they call you -- all they are trying to do is cover their butts. If your tendency is to get angry when someone does it "wrong" (i.e., different from the way you would have done it), they will always bring things to you for approval before they proceed because nobody likes to be yelled at. If you keep yourself "in the loop," you will never be able to extract yourself from the daily grind.
Delegate With Caution
A Few Words of Caution Before You Start Giving Away Pieces of Your Job
There is a difference between delegation and abdication. Never turn anyone loose unless they have been thoroughly coached or they may panic and fail. As a world-class manager, you want to make sure they are successful in their new work. Failure will not help anyone. You may want to do a job until you have mastered it before you turn it over to someone else. In some cases, in which you know that you just do not have the temperament for a particular task, delegating it to someone who does may work out better for everyone. It is OK if your staff knows more than you do.
Don't delegate to people who don't want the responsibility. Not everyone wants to advance and it is futile to force activity on someone who does not want it. If you have a history of successful transitions and people are comfortable that they won't be set up to fail, they will be more eager to take on something new, particularly if you reward their achievement.
Reflect the new job responsibilities on the paycheck. You have to deal with the question of "what's in it for me?" It is only fair to reflect someone's increased contributions to your profitability on their check. If you don't give for what you get you will not find many volunteers for new duties. Don't view delegation as increasing costs. Rather, see it as a way to break you loose to identify more ways of increasing revenue. Even if delegation does nothing other than give you time to have a life, any additional costs will be more than offset by your own increase in productivity.
Expect mistakes. A "mistake" only shows you the extent of a person's understanding. We all slip a few times when taking on new challenges. Since no one likes to fail, making a big deal of an error will only destroy the desire to learn and add another "rule" to the book. Approach your job as a coach would ("This is good, that is good, let's work on this part now.") and you will do fine. Bear in mind that you, too, are also learning -- in this case, learning how to delegate successfully -- and you should expect a mistake or two yourself as you learn how to do it effectively.
What Makes a Great Coach?
Donald I. Smith, former football coach, hospitality industry leader and a professor at Washington State University, has always taught that the coach makes the difference. Here are some of his ideas on coaches and coaching worth considering:
"Great coaches are first noticed by their uncanny ability to produce championship teams. However, to be called 'coach,' a leader must be measured by more than balance sheets, battles won or lifetime win-loss records.
"Great coaches have one more gift. They change the lives of those they touch. I suggest that great coaches can be measured by the number of success stories they leave in their wake. For once they give their players a taste of sweet success, they will have more. They leave behind a legacy of winning, which becomes a lifetime habit. The players ultimately become champions of the coach's values, beliefs and passions for the rest of their lives."
Rigorous Standards Equals Consistency
If you have standards, but occasionally compromise them ... you don't have standards. The key to greatness is consistency and the key to consistency is RIGOR.
Rigor means strictness in your actions. As I apply that to hospitality operations, rigor means avoiding the tempting shortcuts and holding to high standards, even when it is inconvenient or you think that nobody would notice a deviation.
Lack of rigor creates inconsistency, and inconsistency leads to lack of trust and credibility with both your guests and your staff. Lack of rigor on your part tells your staff that it is OK to cut corners, and it seems that workers, particularly the younger ones, always look for the shortcut.
One of my favorite quotes is from Paul Williams in his book, "Das Energi." He says, "Nothing is more important than doing what is right. That is so absurdly obvious that most people pay no attention to it. Most people seem to think that what is obvious is beneath them. They pass up truth in favor of something more intellectually stimulating."
