1/7/2013–A bunch of individuals is not a team.
The store I’m currently working with is the most frustrated I’ve met so far. They don’t have any form of unity, other than their unified disapproval with their partner’s style. Worse is that nobody seems to be stepping up into a leadership role. Their two keys are a host with a card and a bartender with limited professionalism. They are two of the most personal people in the restaurant, which I enjoy when working for this reason, they have a great chance to lead change in the store. They won’t get there until the partner realizes his effect on the staff. He has outbursts in front of staff. He yells and punches things. His staff chooses to not get their money over asking him for it in fear of his reaction. I’m trying my hardest not to let it show when I agree with the staff about “how bad things are”.
The promising things are the guests with whom I speak. They love the food–of course–and when a restaurant has good food, a lot of mistakes are forgiven. The servers are pleasant to speak with, for the most part. I think those two things keep this store afloat. The hosts’ interaction with guest is rude–smiles are scarce. Ticket times are 20+ on >75% of tables–not as much of a concern with the older-aged clientele. Kitchen staff makes jokes about how they’re going to 86 things b/c the CM didn’t make anything, and again all of these issues are compounded by their leader–and the FOH–not cultivating unity.
That’s why line ups are the 1st change I would make. I’m in no position to roll this plan out, but as a member of the region I do have a stake in how each store performs. Line ups every day are a ritual anyway–something any restaurant worth its salt does every day. People know how to describe things, contests help sell certain things, the mood is lightened, and best of all for this team it’s 5 minutes as a single unit.
QOTW: “My manager took days off my schedule, instead of talking to me–like, passive aggressive or something.” –Gabby
?FNW: Can we do 1 line-up? 2!
11/11/2017–The simplest way to say the lesson here is that managers must create the team, it can’t be relied on to form on its own. What’s interesting now is that I’ve found the converse helpful. That is, while a bunch of individuals don’t automatically make a team, a team is really just a group of individuals one must manage individually. The effective manager understands forming what would be perceived as a “team” required individual attention to the strengths and interests of each person he or she manages. Once effective, each individual fulfills a necessary but insufficient piece of that really non-existent concept called a “team”.