We are constantly talking to restaurant leaders about procedures, checklists, food safety etc.. One of the issues that is commonly raised by these managers is that they are struggling to get their people to do what they are supposed to do. This happens more than you can believe and I literally can’t understand it. Restaurant companies cannot get their employees to follow their procedures.
Some of this can be attributed to how your systems are set-up. Paper is useless for holding people accountable.
From a sales perspective, this is great news for us, because our system drives accountability and visibility into daily operations. When people adopt our platform they can see, right from their phones, what is getting done and what isn’t.
If I’m completely honest with myself, I used to put the bulk of the blame on the employees for not following procedures. I just thought they were being lazy, some of that is true, but what I’ve come to realize is, this issue is a FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP!
Leaders control what they can control, they prioritize tasks, they implement systems, they follow-up in a timely manner, provide feedback, and ultimately they hold their manager’s accountable.
We were recently talking with one of our clients who has been on the platform several times, I will talk about that more below, and he can’t get his people to use it. He gets on the phone with us and he is frustrated. We are going through all the things we can do to get his people to use the platform more and then he says it. “They are just so busy, I don’t want to add more to their plates.”
It’s Him!!!!!!
He is the reason that his people don’t use the platform. He is the reason that his restaurants aren’t hitting their goals, or are as clean as they should be, delivering the customer experiences he wants.
It’s his failure of leadership, failure to hold his team accountable to following their procedures is why they aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing. All the issues that he purchased our platform for, are not getting addressed because he isn’t holding his team accountable to fixing them.
So now when I hear people telling me their restaurants are struggling because of xyz. It is a huge red flag for me, I stop listening to all the symptoms they are discussing and try to figure out which leader is the disease.
This leads me to the second thing I want to discuss in this blog. People leaving OpsAnalitica only to come back 6 months to a year later.
Recently people who started with OpsAnalitica who left have been coming back and some of those people have left again. It is the craziest thing. Here is what is happening.
- Management determines that they have operational issues that could be solved by putting a system and some checklists in place.
- They research the market and end up choosing OpsAnalitica to solve this issue.
- They get set-up and launch the platform but they can’t change their employees behavior to take advantage of the software.
- Basically after 5 to 6 months they get tired of being reminded every day that they have zero control over their employees actions, our system is very good at telling you what isn’t getting done, they decide to shut down the service.
- Wait 5 or 6 months and then go back to number 1. Management determines that they still haven’t solved their operational problems.
- Because our software runs really well, we provide great customer service, and our pricing is fair; the customer comes back on the platform.
As I’m writing this blog, a customer that was with us for years, who left about 12 months ago, just signed back up again.
The key success factor of implementing any system in your business is that you have to change you and your teams behavior to use the system. To drill in even deeper, you have to change your leader’s behaviors first.
For those of you who are out there and you aren’t satisfied with your teams performance. I’m going to ask you to look in the mirror and make sure that your attitudes and leadership are where they are supposed to be.
If you are going to implement new systems to fix your issues and modernize your operations. Make sure to commit from the top down, use the data, hold your teams accountable to using the platforms. If you don’t do that, you will not see any ROI.
If you are not capable of implementing change throughout your business then you will go out of business. The market, competition, customer tastes, and technology are changing at a faster pace then every before. Your company has to be able to adapt to change quickly and you have to build the organizational muscles to be able to implement solutions effectively and quickly.
If you are interested in learning more about how the OpsAnalitica Platform can transform your restaurant operations. Please check us out at OpsAnalitica.com