Restaurant Coaching & Consulting

Full Speed Ahead!

I’ve not posted to the blog in a while because it’s been nuts around here and I needed to concentrate on several new clients and several new projects including the “Building Better Restaurants” book and the new website.

Well the projects are mostly behind us now and we can now devote more time to getting some more thoughts and ideas posted - and trust me I wish i had had more time and two more hands to write about some of the issues I’ve been experiencing and reading about elsewhere. So buckle up and get ready. I’m not wasting any more time

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The RCS MasterMind Group

“A” level talent wants to hang out with other “A” level talent. And so it goes with operators. Successful operators want to hang out with other successful operators. The success ideas, camaraderie, conversations that take place, etc are worth their weight in gold!

I have been asked for years now to create a mastermind group for successful operators and I have not done so because of the inherent problems with logistically giving it the attention it would demand from me. I have now been convinced that the time is right to create just such a group and so we have inaugurated the group today and here are the details. continue

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The Operator’s Monthly Conference Call

The RCS Monthly Operator’s Conference Call is scheduled for July 15th at 3:00 p.m. CST.

On this call we will discuss ways to improve your operation’s efficiency and marketability through answers to your submitted questions. continue

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The RCS T.E.A.M. Coaching Program

Are you…

• Looking for a solution to improve the satisfaction and engagement of the employees in your company so that they will work better, produce more and stay longer?

• Tired of paying for training that provides a lot of information but no specific tools and strategies you can implement right away?

• Hoping to find a cutting-edge Coaching model to replace your old ways of working with your staff that have failed to produce the results you need to increase productivity and performance?

• Searching for a program that will provide you and your employees with hands-on experience as well as follow-up strategies to maximize application of the content?

This package is for:

• Small independent, multi-unit chains (2 or more stores) who need Coaching for their GM’s or other managers - or the executive team as a whole. Or a…

• Single unit business where you - the owner - are “hands-off”, but need to supply your management team with real-world solutions, direction, follow-up and support.

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The Five Key Reasons Why Businesses Launch A Coaching Program… and Need My Coaching Skills!

On the surface, “Coaching” is an intangible business process, and its value can be hard to quantify. However, the seasoned veteran and the open minded employee alike value the results that a well-designed employee Coaching program yields. More than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies are already using Coaching – isn’t it time your business joined them?

Here are the top five reasons businesses hire Coaches (from a Manchester, Inc. study)

1. Sharpen leadership skills of high potential managers and operators (86%)

2. Correct management behavior problems (72%)

3. Ensure success/decrease failure of newly promoted managers (64%)

4. Correct employee relations problems (59%)

5. Provide required management and leadership skills necessary to improve performance and results (58%)

Do you want to begin building a competitive advantage now? Then add a business coaching system designed with your employees in mind which offers the following benefits:

• Increased Productivity – A Manchester, Inc. study in 2001 showed a 7-fold return on investment (ROI) on Coaching

• Improved Job/Employee Fit – Many employees need objective and ongoing feedback and Coaching is the perfect model for this. Employees who are part of a career development initiative, including Coaching, have a plan for progressing professionally – and you have built-in succession planning too!

• Increased Sales and Profits – The Gallup organization has documented that companies whose employees are “engaged” (well matched to their jobs and enjoying what they do) lead to increases in the most critical bottom-line metrics: sales and profits.

• Improved Morale – Employees who feel valued will perform better, stay longer and contribute more to the bottom line of the business.

• Sustained and Enhanced High Performance – Gone are the days when coaches were used only to address performance problems. Now Coaches are used to optimize the high performers by keeping them moving on to new challenges to contribute to the business.

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Want To Achieve Greater Results in Your Business Through the Leaders of Your Business?

Great leaders get great results; without dynamic leadership, businesses will not grow and succeed.

Give Your Leaders What They Need!

Today’s workforce responds to leadership that follows a Coaching model; gone is yesterday’s top-down managerial hierarchy. Today’s successful leaders work with their teams to provide vision and to set goals, as well as to encourage involvement and accountability.

With Restaurant Coaching Solutionsâ„¢ you have the opportunity to benchmark this world-class approach to leadership. I will Coach your team in the fundamental leadership philosophies behind some of the greatest and most successful restaurant brands in the world today and they will understand specifically, the principles that need to be at the core of your businesses strength.

We will show them how to…

• Interpret the business vision for your team and communicate that vision in a way that motivates action.

• Examine the culture of those they lead and structure them in a way that maximizes their involvement.

• Employ strategies that will enable your team to take a proactive approach toward change.

• Identify the specific leadership values and behaviors that will contribute to their success as a leader.

• Implement your own action plan so that your vision, goals and leadership development complement one another.

• Use all of the above to drive the businesses success.

What’s In The Package

• This package is for 90 days of unlimited access to me, so all of your company’s managers and supervisors (as well as you) can feel free to contact me as often as they need to during business hours. An on-site option is available too.

• I will work one-on-one with your managers - IN YOUR STORE! - for one week. Then the remainder of the Coaching program will be conducted via conference call (or email) with you and/or your team - as a group or individually. Once a week the team gets together for the weekly meeting and then we schedule calls with each member individually throughout the week to set goals, follow-up on assignments and projects, check progress, work out action plans, etc..

• You will need to supply me with a list of eligible managers and supervisors and maintain it as well. Anyone who is not on your list will not receive access to the Coaching Program materials.

• The price for this package is $7,500 and runs for a 90 day interval. This is the option with no travel component. If your location requires me to travel to you the flat fee cost is an additional $1,500 per visit - less if we can schedule them in advance.
  (Pay for 6, 9 or 12 months in advance and receive a 10, 15 & 20% discount)
  [See the RCS Travel and Accommodation Policy here.]

• How much would you pay for a GM or a Director of Operations to be able to drive business to the next level? $40,000? $50,000? A year! One year of this program would cost only $30,000! and the ROI is much, much greater.

  And with a Guarantee!

• This is the most cost effective means of giving your team the Coaching support and real world answers they need to drive your business to the next level.

Call us to begin the process of Coaching you to achieve the kind of success you deserve. 877-535-2324

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15 Predictable Reasons Why Change Efforts Typically Fail

From Ken Blanchard’s Latest Book “Leading At A Higher Level” Available In My Bookstore!

1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it..
   

2. People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed.
   

3. Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change.
   

4. There is no urgent or compelling reason to change. The business case is not communicated.
   

5. A compelling vision that excites people about the future has not been developed and communicated..
   

6. The change leadership team doesn’t include early adopters, resisters, or informal leaders.
   

7. The change isn’t piloted, so the organization doesn’t learn what’s needed to support the change.
   

8. Organizational systems and other initiatives aren’t aligned with the change.
   

9. Leaders lose focus or fail to prioritize, causing “death by 1,000 initiatives.”
   

10. People are not enabled or encouraged to build new skills.
    

11. Those leading the change aren’t credible—they under-communicate, give mixed messages,
    and do not model the behaviors the change requires.
    

12. Progress is not measured, and no one recognizes the changes that people have worked hard to make.
    

13. People are not held accountable for implementing the change.
    

14. People leading the change fail to respect the power of the culture to kill the change.
    

15. Possibilities and options are not explored before a specific change is chosen..

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Coaching Your Staff

According to the Industry of Choice Report,™ employees consider that feeling like they do their jobs well is such an important issue that they would quit over it. “Feeling like everybody does their part,” “Feeling like the company is well managed,” and “Feeling like I do my job well” are also among the top issues that drive employee satisfaction and are directly influenced by training. Some thoughts:

• Allocate adequate resources for ongoing training programs. Training can be expensive, but so is employee turnover. According to a 1999 survey of 50 hospitality companies by The People Report™—a company that benchmarks human resource practices for the foodservice industry—the median cost for losing one hourly employee is $2,494. At the management level the median cost is more than $24,000..
  
• Training employees typically falls to managers. The Industry of Choice Report shows that there are often gaps in managers’ own education. Make sure that they have the skills they need to be successful, especially in areas of suggestive selling, marketing, and basic computer and language skills, which the report found to be lacking.
  
• Employee training begins the first day on the job and is often the most important of all. Along with training specific skills, orientation is also a chance to familiarize new hires with the history, values, and culture of your company.
  
• It is important to offer cross-training opportunities. This not only keeps the job interesting and increases productivity, but learning new skills gives employees confidence to take on added responsibilities. Recognition that employees have attained higher skills and competencies—with increased wages or bonuses or with titles—is key.
  
• Encouraging employees’ professional development is also a powerful tool for motivation, productivity, and retention. Provide opportunities for employee education through work exchanges, trade shows, off-site seminars, and college-level courses (management, culinary). Consider tuition reimbursement, scholarships, and other ways to be supportive of employees, including students and those getting their GEDs.
  
• Language is a critical issue to the restaurant industry. According to the Industry of Choice Report one out of every six foodservice workers speaks a language at home other than English. Of these, one in three has poor or nonexistent English skills. Restaurants that offer some degree of a bilingual environment are more attractive to many employees and are better able to train and promote those workers. Fostering better understanding—through verbal and written communications in languages other than English, encouraging managers to learn a second language, and/or making English as a Second Language classes available—helps employees work better with each other and with customers.

Call us to begin the process of Coaching you to achieve the kind of success you envisioned when you first started your business. It costs you nothing to consult about the kind of success you want and what we can do to help get you there!

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The H.O.T. Management Coaching Model

“You don’t think yourself into a different way of acting, you act your way into a different way of thinking.”

H.O.T. Management

Managers in every workplace today are engaged in a tug of war. On one side, employers are demanding more work and better work out of people–often out of fewer people, with fewer resources. On the other, employees are feeling pressured, overworked, and in need of some relief in the form of flexible working conditions, or at least some incentives for all their hard work. Stuck in the middle–trying to negotiate these competing needs–is every single person with supervisory authority. How can managers reconcile these opposite forces? How can they possibly win the game? What can they do every day to get more work and better work out of each person and at the same time give people more of the flexibility they need?

This term describes the highly engaged management style of supervisors leading high performance teams in today’s demanding workplace. HOT stands for “Hands-On” and “Transactional.”

HOT Managers are “hands-on.”
That means they spend time regularly with the people they are managing to help them think through assignments up front, anticipate resource needs, avoid potential problems, and create realistic timetables for results. They also provide regular constructive feedback and Coaching
to get people on track and keep them there..

HOT Managers are also “transactional.”
They drive performance through negotiation, rather than just relying on “being the boss.” They find and leverage the “needles in a haystack” that are each employee’s unique needs and wants–whether it is a choice section assignment, Thursdays off, free movie passes, or the additional training to garner a promotion. They know they can’t give everything to everybody. But they try to do as much as they can for every employee, making a custom deal for every person to give him or her more of what he or she needs or wants. In exchange, HOT Managers hold each employee accountable for meeting ambitious goals and deadlines.

HOT Managers engage in an ongoing dialogue with each person they manage.
That dialogue basically sounds like this: “What do you want from me? Good. Here’s what I need from you.” And conversely, “Here’s what I need from you. What do you want from me in return?”

HOT Management is not a 100% solution (there are no 100% solutions). But this approach will help you move your team toward higher productivity, higher morale and higher retention of high performers. What exactly is it that HOT Managers do?

(#1) HOT Managers do the hard work of managing people. They commit to rolling up their sleeves, getting in there and doing the hard work of managing people every day. They Coach their people to do their best work, pushing them beyond what they think they can produce, and rewarding them appropriately in return.

(#2) HOT Managers don’t hide behind rules and red tape. They get the resources they need to give each person more of what she wants in order to gain that special leverage necessary to drive performance. They build allies anywhere they need allies. They jump through hoops, dot “I”s, cross “T”s, go to bat and navigate through the bureaucracy.

(#3) HOT Managers consult with their employees about the work—all the time. They spend time consulting with employees openly and directly about their work, engaging them in tackling ambitious goals and providing them with the resources they need to pull them off. They help employees think through their work up front, so that they can anticipate resource needs, avoid potential problems, and create realistic timetables for improved results.

(#4) HOT Managers send the message that high performance is the only option on their team. They know that no one likes to work with low performers. So they set high standards for performance and hold their people accountable for achieving those standards. And they remove low performers from the team immediately.

(#5) HOT Managers find the “needle in the haystack” that motivates each team player. One person at a time, one day at a time, HOT Managers create unique value propositions for every person.

(#6) HOT Managers negotiate CUSTOM deals in exchange for high performance. They engage in an ongoing dialogue: “What do you want from me? Good. Here’s what I need from you.” Then they spell out all the conditions of the custom deal, and keep that deal on the table all the time.

(#7) HOT Managers engage in difficult conversations. They hold people accountable for high performance every step of the way. They address performance problems immediately. They quickly move to the “deal breaker” conversation with recalcitrant low performers and remove them from the team.

HOT SKILLS.

What HOT Skills do we teach managers? It’s back to the basics, but fine-tuned and adjusted to get more work and better work out of fewer people… and give people the work-life balance they need.

HOT Skill #1: Negotiating custom deals in exchange for high performance.
The HOT Manager must find each team member’s “needles in a haystack” (his/her unique needs and wants). The only way to find those needles in a haystack is in one-on-one discussions with every person. Of course, once you find those needles in a haystack, you still can’t do everything for everybody. So the HOT Manager has to figure out which needs and wants can be met and which ones are impossible. Then the HOT Manager offers to provide a needle in a haystack to every team member in exchange for steadily accomplishing ambitious goals and deadlines.

HOT Skill #2: Holding people accountable for ambitious goals and deadlines.
The HOT Manager meets with every team member every day (at least once a week) to provide Coaching and support. The HOT Manager sets ambitious goals and deadlines, plans for resource needs, and troubleshoots. Most important: The HOT Manager holds every team member accountable for high performance—one person at a time, one day at a time—and rewards the high performers.

HOT Skill #3: Dealing with low performers immediately.
The HOT Manager has the guts and skill to engage low performers, insist they improve, help them improve, and hold them accountable for improvement—one person at a time, one day at a time. Using a performance improvement model focusing on the three elements of performance—ability, skill and will—HOT Managers Coach
low performers back on track to an upward spiral of improvement.

HOT Skill #4: Conducting deal-breaker conversations.
The HOT Manager does not tolerate recalcitrant low performers. When the HOT Manager has exhausted all reasonable efforts to help a low performer get back on track, it is time for the “deal-breaker” conversation. This is where the HOT Manager gives the low performer one last chance: “improve or be removed.”

HOT Skill #5: Cutting through the red tape.
The HOT Manager builds allies throughout the organization to help dot the “I”s, cross the “T”s, follow necessary procedures and cut through the red tape.

HOT Skill #6: Maintaining the intensity of HOT Teams.
The HOT Manager keeps the team in balance and maintains enthusiasm, buzz and intensity.

Call us to begin the process of Coaching you to achieve the kind of success you deserve. 877-535-2324 or email me to fine out more about how our H.O.T. Coaching Seminar can help you get the results you need to drive success!

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13 MOST COMMON MISTAKES BY MANAGERS

Before we can start managing ourselves and others we must stop doing what doesn’t work!

1. Refusing to accept personal accountability.

2. Failure to develop people.

3. Trying to control results instead of influencing thinking.

4. Joining the wrong crowd.

5. Managing everyone the same way.

6. Forgetting the importance of profits.

7. Concentrating on problems rather than objectives.

8. Being a buddy instead of a boss.

9. Failing to set standards. *****

10. Failing to train your people. *****

11. Condoning incompetence. *****

12. Recognizing only top performers.

13. Trying to manipulate people.
(If it isn’t sincere, it’s manipulation!)

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3 Coaching Models For You That Work

F.A.S.T. Feedback

Frequent

-Seize the feedback opportunities. One size does not fit all.

-Tune in to each person’s “frequency”.

-Select the best feedback model.

-When in doubt give feedback, observe the results, and adjust.

Accurate

- Use DESC

- Balance positive comments with suggestions for improvement.

- Choose your words carefully.

- Start by asking questions.

What happened?

What was the effect?

How did it make you feel?

Specific

- Offer straightforward observations.

- Focus on behavior

- Explain consequences of behavior

- Include specific behavioral events

Timely

- Provide as close as possible to event

- Coach people while they’re performing

- Build a dialogue

What do you need from me? Here’s what I want from you.

- Yesterday’s shift isn’t a good time.

D.E.S.C.

DESC is a simple model for having feedback conversations.

1. Describe the behavior

2. Express how you feel about it and how it impacts the situation
(not the person! This isn’t about personalities, it’s about behaviors!).

3. Specify what you would like to have happen differently.

4. Consequences-the positive and negative outcomes
of continued and changed behavior.

G.R.O.W. MODEL

WHO

1. Topic. What would you like to consult about?

2. Goal. What specifically would you like to achieve as a result of this session?

3. Reality. What is happening in the current situation?

4. Options. What options do you have in this situation?

5. Wrap Up. What will you do, and by when?

Check against Goal.

The art of the question.

What was their response to_____?

Did you refocus their excuses or behaviors?

What rewards did you offer them for correct performance?

Have you explored all options for their success at this task?

Does the situation need further definition?

Training issue? or Behavior issue?

Is stern behavior something that the employee would respond to?

Any other stimulus available?

Asked for input? Input provided?

Have you built in successes to create confidence?

Setting people up for success is huge!

Wrap up.

Contract for behavior

Agree on all terms, responsibility and rewards.

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Restaurant Operator’s Boot Camp April 21st & 22nd

Are you still missing that one piece to the puzzle that will help you finally achieve the success you deserve? Attend the RCS Restaurant Operator’s Boot Camp April 21st & 22nd and get the solutions you have been searching for, for way too long!

Popularity: 22% [?]

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