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Create A Culture of Consistency!

Guest post by: Rudy Miick

Article Overview: First published in Food & Drink Magazine in January 2010, this story focuses on 6 steps to create a choiceful business culture. Choice: High performance, engaged team members; nothing less.

Create A Culture of Consistency!



What’s motivated you to read this column? Something you’d like to learn, like to improve or take further with your team or in your company? Born or bred, the leadership thing is a life journey.

In early 2010 two of my clients have achieved a measure of notoriety. Each provides providing a glowing light that may serve you to find your path. If you’ve been reading my column for any length of time, you’ve read about Nick’s Pizza & Pub. Nick’s story just hit the February cover of Inc. Magazine; Dave Query’s Happy Noodle House in Boulder, Colorado was recently named one of Forbes Magazine’s top ten restaurants in the United States.

What’s interesting in both? Their service experience is their Brand. As their guest you feel their business culture at work.

Business culture happens, its just there. Just as true, its rare for high performance to show up by accident.

Is there a secret? After 30 years in my own deals or as a consultant creating this “high performance culture thing” consistently, my answer is no. But there are steps you must take, consciously or not. This was true for Nick and Dave, guaranteed: its true for you. My experience is there are six steps to take.

By the way, in case you’re not a restaurateur, but a supplier to, or some unrelated industry, no worries. The same six steps apply.

First, why: The restaurant industry offers speed of delivery like none other, with the expectation of each transaction being perfect. Ours is the only business I know that incorporates research and development, production, inventory management, purchasing/receiving, marketing, sales, accounting, human resources, sincere well being and service delivery, all under one roof and daily. In reality our production cycle is multiple times an hour, not per week or month; and the expectation is zero defects. When done well, a great restaurant creates an indelible experience for the guest, for the community, region, and sometimes the nation. Once established the expectation of the brand experience is constant. We meet our Brand expectation or not. There is no wiggle room.

Thus, all the work elements of a restaurant are the elements of every business, and as the experience economy has taken over from the service economy every business is in the service/experience business. Wake up dudes and dudettes this means you! When you sell anything, there is a brand experience involved for our team as much as there is for our customers.

Second and equally important, the six steps are a method, a recipe. After thirty years, each has become fine-tuned, data based and tested time and again.

These six steps are both consistent and will be unique to your business. What I/we also know is that each of these six steps will stand on it’s own and yet simultaneously support all the others. To achieve excellence, each is needed in some way, shape or form. The “method” or recipe includes the following six steps:



We Know Who We Are

To truly thrive, its critical to really understand why we’re in business beyond profit. Answer the question, “What is it we provide through our products?” The answer provides Sense of Purpose, deeper purpose of work. Working on Purpose each team member has the opportunity to experience pride from all they do. If you’ve read my column very often, you know, the root translation of “restaurant” is, “a place one goes to be restored;” restaurateur literally translates to, “restorer of soul.” Ours is potent work, if you allow it to be!

The equation is thus: I am hired as a barista… a rather dead-end job one might imagine. However, if my work is truly to restore one’s soul as I serve you a drive through beverage in less than a minute, how might I do that? This restoral of soul becomes the goal of our work. I look like a barista, but I am a restorer of soul… I look like a trainer or janitor, but my work is to have you feel different when you depart than when you arrived. This feeling is contagious and connected. It is soul at work.

Here’s your first challenge: do you believe your team can actually care? If you don’t give them the support to try, how will you ever know? Nick’s does. So do those at Dave’s. Are you willing to even play here, to even imagine that you could make a difference? Please do.

Values exist in all companies. Most are simply implicit and can often thus be inconsistent. By defining values and using Purpose AND values as active tools, we’ve found that actions become very clear, very data based and profoundly potent.

A team member performs or does not with a sense of Purpose and Values. The company either leads or does not with a sense of Purpose and values. Instead of being caught by surprise, make Purpose and Values explicit.



Anticipatory Fiscal Systems

Most companies wait for a financial statement to make decisions, “managing from an autopsy”. From this autopsy perspective you’re behind and its too late to make solid decisions.

Anticipatory systems are ones that let me know my cost of doing business today, and more so, based on today and our week to date, I know how we’ll do in the coming days, weeks and month. This applies to creating and running profitable, fiscally healthy companies, regardless of industry.

Communication that supports Safe SpaceÓ and performance excellence

The third step is to create safe space for tough conversations that come up in the world of business and life. Through our various communication tools team members learn to have data based, purpose and values driven conversations that support health emotionally and fiscally as well. There is little doubt that ongoing communication is the “primary how” of creating a dynamic business culture. I consistently get to experience the bonus of seeing and feeling our communication tools be applied at home and in community as life tools as well as the way we communicate at work.

Hiring That Works

The fourth step in this recipe is to change the way you hire. Let your applicants know in advance the performance expected of them, allow leaders doing the interview to clearly understand the excellence criterion they’re looking for. There are rarely surprises, leaders and applicants both step into the decision to join the Company or not, by choice rather than chance. By hiring right you get higher retention and a stronger team experience for all.

In an effective method of hiring, by being definitive about Purpose, Values, and levels of excellence in performance, approximately 20% of the applicants “self select out” before you ever spend a moment of your time with them.

Ongoing Training: performance, sales, or production…

With Company excellence defined, no matter the level of performance a new team member has, ongoing experiential training supports that team member to build on the skill sets they have already. This ensures a consistent BRAND experience by your guests, clients, customers and internal team members.

Let training become a budgeted line item on your financial statements. Experiential training is a foundation piece that separates my client companies from their competition.

Celebrate Ongoing Learning

The 6^th step is drive to improve. Keep moving into the next level of excellence. Let great ideas come from team members as often as titled leaders, from new team members as often as long time vets in the system.

The commitment to ongoing learning and applying is what takes passion and builds it into purpose, celebrates values and gets us to an ultimate Vision.

No doubt, what started out as steps to build and run a restaurant has evolved into a proven tool chest, a path that simply works regardless of your segment of the industry.

Follow the recipe; maybe you’ll get national press too!

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Article Tags: communication, company building, leadership, profit, success



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