7/7/2013–If the interviewee can’t name what products he was responsible for selling, let alone details about those products, you’d better know with some certainty how much time and $ you can spend on him. I spent about $500 and 3 hours learning this lesson last week. Another thing I “learned” was the ineffectiveness of write-ups. Affect their $, if feedback doesn’t encourage them. Similarly to not making any policy, a write-up is a piece of paper–not a substitute for a manager! Manage using consistent, behavior-based communication. If their performance is the subject and that is kept track of, no more documentation is needed.
When you make it known that write ups are how “serious talks” are handled, it lessens the effectiveness of all feedback. If it’s an employee’s first offense, it’s not something to fire them for if you’re going to write them up. And say they keep doing it; unless you just keep doing write-ups, at some point you must let them know if it happens again, they’re fired, which means the write-ups weren’t effective. If the behavior changes, it will either be avoidance of future write-ups, which is ineffective, or because they understand how to do better in the future, which you don’t need write-ups to communicate. Avoidance of ineffective behavior is not the same as doing effective behavior. And write-ups are about the past, feedback is about future behavior–and the future is all that matters.
Conversely to write-ups, I learned the effectiveness of clear, consistent communication this week. Two servers I’ve been working with increased their beer/wine/liquor sales in a month where the store average fell. And they both have spoken to me during the shift about it when before they did not.
I’ve altered my view of my duty as a manager. I caught a trainee cheating on his test. My first thought was to fire him. After reflecting, I now feel I’m in a great position to develop unprofessional people into professionals. If I managed a bank, I’d fire a thief. By nature of my job, I get people who are less mature, often who seek a more professional job later on. I feel I have a chance to encourage professional behaviors and accelerate them toward their goals.
QOTW: “Sorry I threw the plate; trying to make a point.” -Coworker
?FNW: Does Gage accept? Yes
10/16/2017 review: this is one of those golden nuggets of management reality that many restaurant managers hopefully learn, but often miss. In my experience, the food service environment encourages an autocratic management style–the independent owner or unit managers run the show with a “my way or the highway” attitude. If they’re a chain, they rely on strict adherence to cookie-cutter policies, which generally discourage low-level managers from learning judgment about what’s right and wrong. If the policy says no unnatural hair colors, you simply send someone home if they breach it–no explanation or lesson about why it’s bad for the business to have purple hair. This forsakes a crucial opportunity to develop judgment in the manager and in the directs–rather, you just breed compliance and contempt. I was incredibly blessed to learn this so early in my career, and consider lessons like these a huge reason why restaurant management roles are uniquely valuable opportunities for young professionals.