Sometimes we pin business performance all on the manager. Of course, the manager is the leader of their business unit – they set the tone, hire the people, and drive the business forward. They decide on all the activities of the business and make the difference. True? Not completely, in my view.
The problem with this argument is that if a manager works five days a week, they might only run five shifts. But in most businesses, there are 14 shifts across the week, so a manager could only be running a third of them. The other two-thirds are run by assistant managers and team leaders – people who are just as critical to the day-to-day running of the operation and in the service levels, the team engagement, and the efficiency of the business.
The more admin-heavy a business is, the more the proportion of the business a manager sees reduces. The more the business uses fixed tasks rather than slack tasks, the more this reduces. So increasingly, the face of the business, and the shift leadership, is down to team leaders and assistants – the management team, rather than the manager. These are the people who interact with guests, make decisions in real time, and shape the experience on the ground.
Of course, the manager appoints these people and drives them to perform just as well when they’re not there. But therein lies the challenge. It’s one thing to lead when you’re present – it’s another to lead through others when you’re not.
I was in my own business last Sunday when the manager was about to leave at the end of a busy day for him. His challenge, as he left, was to motivate and energise a tired team to keep up service levels through the Sunday evening, get all the slack tasks done, get the team out efficiently at the end of the night, and leave the business set for success the next day. That’s a tall order, especially when energy is low and the finish line is in sight.
We all know how often this fails to happen. Sunday has traditionally been the graveyard shift of the industry. If we did trade visits, we should really do them on a Sunday night – that would tell us what our businesses are really like. It’s easy to look polished on a Friday night when everyone’s switched on. Sunday night is where the cracks show.
My point is that every shift leader is a vital part of the guest experience. We should think less about the manager and more about the management team – including every person in the business who leads a shift and is the leader in their business at that time. In our sites, that’s about eight different people: several who open the business, several who close, and the key team of senior managers in the middle who run the bulk of the busy shifts. Each of them plays a distinct role in shaping the guest experience and the operational success of the business.
But to create great performance as a business, each of those people must care as much about the customer as the next manager. They must know how to do slack tasks while delivering to the guest. They must be really efficient and have great restaurant eyes. I think that’s a pretty hard task to do.
When did you last train your team to do this? When did you last observe the “walking and chewing gum” challenge of opening and serving or, even harder, closing and serving?
I’ve recently been frustrated with how our teams leave the business, and I’ve asked a manager to do the close with the team to make sure we do this really well. The underlying message being that we both agree it hasn’t been done as well as we’d hoped. Some people are brilliant when they’re being managed, but less good when they’re trying to motivate themselves. I think too often we let these people open and close. Of course, some are brilliant in those circumstances. But do we think about this as we decide who should open or close?
My thesis here is that we should talk less about manager performance and more about management performance – bringing up the weakest area of the business and making it better.
And maybe I need to go and see my own sites more on a Sunday evening, just as I’m winding down. Are you going to be comfortable or correct, as a previous boss of mine used to say.
