Running a successful restaurant business takes precision, planning and effective leadership. Without clear guidelines and actionable goals, getting your restaurant off the ground can be a challenge, let alone turning it into a successful business. Here are three tips for effective leadership that will help your restaurant stay on the track to success.
#1.Take Daily Action Toward Restaurant Targets
One of the most important leadership qualities is the ability to take effective action. One facet of effective action is knowing how to prioritize your actions so that your efforts are streamlined toward your goals. For example, before you do anything else in your day, you should put energy into those actions that are the most important in terms of your key result or performance areas. A daily review of current performance in comparison with goals you’ve set for growing your restaurant business will help you stay on track.
#2.Break Big Restaurant Goals into Small, Manageable Chunks
Breaking bigger goals into smaller chunks is a leadership skill that has a number of advantages as well. A large task can feel less overwhelming when taken piece by piece, and you often end up getting more done than if you tried to tackle it as a whole.
The goals you set can feel more easily within reach when you look at them from the perspective of what it takes to get there on a day to day level as well. For example, let’s say you want to increase your sales by $30,000 in the next quarter. That means you’ll have to pull in $10,000 a month. Now, if you have two shifts per day, or 56 shifts per month, that means each shift will have to pull in an extra $178. Take the math one step further—if you have, say, five people on any given shift, that means they’ll need to pull in an extra $20 an hour, or $4 per person per hour, in order to reach your restaurant’s sales goal increase. Four dollars per person per hour could be achieved as simply as having employees up-sell a drink or slice of pie, and feels much more manageable and attainable than “$30,000 by next quarter,”doesn’t it?
#3 Communicate Clear Actionable Goals to Your Restaurant Staff
One critical aspect of effective leadership is the ability to clearly communicate goals and expectations with staff. All those great ideas for how you can grow your business are useless if you can’t communicate them clearly to the people who will be bringing your dream into reality. It’s important to make task knowledge explicit and to routinely catalogue and share demonstrated best practices with your team. Make quarterly assessments of training and talent gaps and ensure that your team has the tools that they need to succeed. Share your restaurant goals with your staff and be sure that they each know what they need to do in order to help you get there.
Recognize that effective leadership has much to do with being clear—clear with the people you’re working with and clear about where you’re trying to go. Be disciplined and accountable as you move your business toward your goals. Study your reports and continuously assess how you can improve. Take the time to do at least one thing to improve your business every week. Last, let yourself get excited with the work of growing your restaurant—the momentum of inspiration does much to carry us forward!
Jim Balis' Blog 