Back to Learning

Wow, a whole year has passed since I wrote on this blog!  I am now the proud owner of a restaurant that serves roughly 8000 guests a month.  My marketing manager wrote a press release talking about our "100,000th" guest.  Amazing.

With all good stories, what lies below is all the stress, late nights, pressures that come with attempting to start a new business.  F&B is tough, but it is has a wonderful feedback mechanism, in that every day is a show, and every day you have to be ready.  The pressure to perform every day means that our staff get better quite fast.  However, to perform every day means that we are always scrambling and putting out fires.  This means that developing a proper structure is hard, because there is a lack of time to train the staff, unless you really dedicate the time and effort to it.  And hence without proper structure, the same frustrating mistakes get made over and over again.

A lot of the operating processes I thought we could use from the franchisor, but I think they were too weak and not specific enough for our outlet.  And, to be honest, we didn't value it enough, having caught the "if it's not invented here, we don't like it" disease.  It was good and bad.  Good in that I have a very good understanding of Front of House, bad in that we keep changing out SOPs, so we are not very good at enforcing them.  One thing I am focussing on now is the commitment to what we promise to ourselves.  One worrying issue is that I did not and still have not found a great passion for food in general.  Can I be the best leader when I am not passionate about our product?  I have no answer for that.

We continue to struggle with consistency, but I feel it gets better each day. Our team has stabilised across the last 6 months, and the best thing I can say about my team is that they all have heart.  I have neglected a lot of the people development component and will focus on that.  I was told of an analogy to people development, similar to watering a plant.  There is the daily misting of the leaves, and then there is the once a week watering of the roots.  Similarly, people need a balance of the light "hello, how are you" stuff as well as the heavy "here's your performance" contact in order to perform.

For the first time this week, I went on a educational course, specifically about how to grow as a leader. I realise I just need to look further into the future, to create a compelling vision that would make others want to follow.  This is my main struggle.  I have never been too future-focused, but I must be able to articulate a future, otherwise it is too easy to drift.  I don't quite know how to fix this, but I know I must do it.

I have changed over the course of the last year, as some of my friends can confirm.  A greater willingness to speak my thoughts, to disagree, to raise difficult questions.  Perhaps I am not as carefree as I used to be, I'm not sure.  I think it's a good development, perhaps it's a sign of maturity. At least I have more time to reflect, so it's back to learning every day!