Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Leadership and management sound similar. There is overlap, but ultimately they are very, very different things. We've talked about this before on the show. It certainly comes up a lot in the interviews that I do. But today I want to hit it head on. I want to talk about what makes a great leader and the qualities that are required to be a great leader in our industry. And then I want to talk about management. And I want to talk about what it takes to be a great manager. And I want to talk about how we cultivate and motivate great managers. Leadership and management. That's what today's episode is all about. Don't go anywhere.
[00:00:34] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:05] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated solely to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. Each week I leverage my 25 years in the industry to help you build that more profitable and more sustainable business. I also work directly with owners and operators from all over the world in my P3 mastermind. So this is a group coaching format where I gather dozens of owners and operators, independent operators, on a call two hours every single week to pound through the unique problems we face that keep us from hitting consistent, predictable 20% profits. So to date, we've got four different groups, nearly 200 people in the program, spread across those four different groups. If this sounds like you, right, you got a busy place, you make a bunch of hungry people happy, but you struggle with profitability. Specifically, you struggle to generate consistent, predictable 20% returns. Then I want to chat with you. And here's the thing. You are a listener of this Restaurant strategy podcast means you are part of the community. You get on a call, set up a call by visiting restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule and you get a special offer. We give all listeners of the podcast a special opportunity to get 30% off the cost of this program. That's literally 30 thousands of dollars you're going to save that goes directly back into your pocket. So if you feel like this might be for you, but but it might be out of your reach, I'm here to tell you we can work with you. There's all kinds of ways that you can work with us and we are happy to work with you on the costs. It's an investment you make for sure. An investment of time, an investment of money. But I promise you, if you show up, if you do the work, if you do what we show you to do, it's an investment will that will show you a 10, 20, 30x ROI on the investment that you make and you can save 30% off. What you're going to do is you're going to go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule, grab some time on the calendar, make sure you click the button that says you heard about us on the podcast and mention this when you chat with one of my coaches. So there are three different people who work for me. You're either going to chat with me or one of those coaches. They're all incredibly qualified, very capable of explaining what it is we do in the program. Mention that you heard this on the podcast and they will set you up the talk to you all about the discount that we offer all of the listeners of the podcast. So again, go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule and yes, that link is in the show notes.
[00:03:37] Now I've got a friend. His name is Rev Ciancio. You guys have probably heard him on this podcast. He also co hosted the P3 Marketing Summit in January, just this past January in South Carolina. He is probably the smartest restaurant marketer I know. I love to hear him speak. I love to work with him. He works with hundreds of restaurants all over the country and he's an operator himself. Himself. He has a place called Handcraft Burgers and Brew in Bryant park, right in the heart of Manhattan. And every time he works with a new restaurant as a consultant, he insists they use marquee. Now I also recommend marquee to my clients for their SEO and reputation management needs, but what they do is second to none with our with Marquis, you can manage and respond to all your reviews on Google, Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Grubhub, UberEats, and Easy cater just from one central place. They help you improve your star ratings with consistent review responses and will even respond for you if you feel like you don't have time. Marquee also makes sure that all your hours, menus and online information is accurate across the entire Internet, placing you higher in near me searches, which ultimately helps you get more butts in seats. Are you curious? To learn more, visit marquee.com that's M A R Q I I.com as always, that link is in the show Notes.
[00:04:58] Now today we're going to have two conversations. That's really part of one Big conversation. I want to talk about leaders and I want to talk about managers. I want to talk about how we cultivate leadership in ourselves and how we cultivate management skills in the people who work for us and the people that we trust to run our restaurants. Now, most of the listeners of this show are independent restaurant owners, but there are also high level independent operators, meaning the people who own the places and the people who help run the places. And I want to talk about what makes a good leader, because maybe you're listening and you're a restaurant manager, maybe you've been doing this for a while. So how do you get over that next hurdle and cultivate the skills needed to be a great leader to maybe own your own place one day, right? And then also for the leaders listening to this or for the restaurant managers, how do you be met? How do you be a better manager and how do you cultivate that? How do you teach the skills required to be a better manager? Right? That's what we're going to talk about on today's episode. What really, though, we have to start by understanding the differences between these two. This was articulated a long, long time ago, and forgive me, I forget who said it, but it is stuck with me all these years later. And it says here, leaders are responsible for the what and the why.
[00:06:11] Managers are responsible for the how.
[00:06:13] And I think that very clearly describes, very clearly articulates what it is, the big differences between leaders and managers. Now, a manager is also a leader. They are in charge of a staff of people. They have to motivate and guide those people. But a leader, pure leader, is different, right? And what we need from our managers is somewhat different than what we need from our leaders. And there are leaders out there. There are restaurant owners who are just really good managers, right? And likewise, there are managers who are just really good leaders. But you have to understand the two different sets of skills that are required to do both of those jobs, right?
[00:06:50] So again, the best way I've ever heard it articulated is that leaders are responsible for the what and the why, and managers are responsible for the how.
[00:06:59] So let's start with leaders, because the what and the why really has to do with direction, right? It has to do with vision, meaning where are we going and why does it matter that we go there? So I've said this before, so I gave this talk with Sean Walsheff a couple years ago, talked about it in my book, the Restaurant Marketing Mindset.
[00:07:19] We talked about the two whys, right? So, Simon Sinek, really famous author, public speaker wrote a book called Start with why. And he talked about the what, the how, the why said that most companies understand what they do. They understand how they're supposed to do it or how they do it better or differently than anybody else out there. But most of them know the what and the how, but they so they never bother figuring out the why. And he makes the case. And in his book he says the best companies out there understand why they do what they do. And that informs the how and the what, right? And what we did is we took that one step further in a talk that we gave at the California Restaurant show about two years ago.
[00:07:54] And Sean and I basically said the one why isn't enough. You really need the two whys. Number one, right, why are we doing what we're doing? And number two, why should anyone else care?
[00:08:09] Because ultimately, that's what we are responsible for. That's what we have to explain. We have to explain to people is why they should care that we exist, that we serve the food that we serve, that we're trying to convince them to come in and eat. We have to tell them, we have to give them a reason, right, why we do what we do and why they should care.
[00:08:28] Ultimately, that's a leader's job. A leader's job is to figure that out. And just having good food and good service is no longer enough. That's a prerequisite, right, for entering the market. You gotta have good food, you gotta have good service, you gotta have a cool looking place, a comfortable dining room.
[00:08:46] The bigger thing is, right, why do we exist? So leaders really have three things, right? They're responsible for providing vision, guidance and oversight, right?
[00:08:58] Their job is to make sure everyone else understands their job.
[00:09:04] I want to say that again. The leader's job is to make sure that everyone else understands their own jobs, right? This is what we're doing. This is why it matters. This is what I need you to do.
[00:09:17] This is what will be required from you. And if you and you and you and you, all of you guys do what you're supposed to do, we can't help but be successful. I always use the football analogy, right? So when you're talking about football, 11 guys on the field, right? 11 on offense, 11 on defense, right? I promise you, not every player on offense knows what all other 10 players are doing.
[00:09:40] The head coach knows where everyone's going. The quarterback probably knows where everyone's going. And some of the really astute players, right, the real students of the game, they might know where everyone's Going, but I bet you not on every single play. That's why the role of quarterback is so hard, because you have to actually execute the play, but you have to have the breadth of knowledge that a coach has, right? So that you understand what's supposed to happen, what everyone is supposed to do do, right?
[00:10:10] Really great leader provides vision, guidance and oversight.
[00:10:15] And the role of the leader, the job of the leader is to make sure that everyone understands what they're supposed to be doing. Make sure those people understand why they're supposed to be doing it. Right? Now, how do we do that? How do we cultivate.
[00:10:30] How do we cultivate leadership?
[00:10:33] Ultimately, Right? Ultimately. And we get stuck in this, in our industry because we get stuck in this workman mentality, right? You know, and this is the. Goes back to that, you know, we spend all our time working in the business. We have no time to work on the business.
[00:10:47] A lot of what I do as a restaurant coach, working with the members of my P3 mastermind, a lot of what I do has to do with getting people to be absentee owners. It's my not so secret, secret goal in the work I do.
[00:11:02] I want to help them create a restaurant that doesn't need them in order to succeed. A restaurant I don't believe needs the owner to be there all the time in order to succeed. Now, if the owner wants to be there all the time, fine, but I want to get it to the place where the restaurant can run successfully without them being there, so that it's up to the owner. The owner gets to decide where they are. When I say owner, I really mean leader.
[00:11:27] That the leader gets to decide, right? They get to decide where their time is best spent.
[00:11:33] Because sometimes maybe there's time to, you know, if we can step outside the leader, the owner can assess other opportunities, right? They can figure out other businesses to open, ways to expand, ways to improve the business.
[00:11:48] So in order to do that, it's really important that everyone understands what we're all doing and why that matters, right? We talk a lot about mission, vision and core values, right? Mvv, mission, vision, values, mission says, right? This is what we're trying to achieve on a daily basis.
[00:12:07] The vision says, assuming we achieve our mission, what does that mean globally, Right? We can define globally in a bunch of different ways. Not necessarily, you know, all of planet Earth, but what does that mean for our broader community?
[00:12:21] And then core values are, what are the things we hold most dear? What are the things that are clutch to us actually achieving our mission and our vision that's really important to understand. So I'll give you an example. I work with a restaurant down in South Carolina, right. Down in Columbia. And they opened a restaurant a couple of years ago, and they said, our mission is to be the best restaurant in Colombia. I love that. I think that's great. And that dictates what we do and what they do, right? How they conduct themselves, the kind of food they bring in, the kind of service that they provide, kind of beverage program. They run, all of that, right? That was a very clear.
[00:12:57] That was very clearly defined, the way they defined best restaurant in Colombia. They said, our mission is to become the best restaurant in Colombia.
[00:13:05] Then the vision was, assuming we become the best restaurant in Colombia, we believe we'll be helping to put Colombia on the map as a dining destination in the way that Charleston has become, or Nashville has become, or San Francisco and New York and Chicago. Right?
[00:13:23] I love that. That made sense. We want to be the best restaurant in Colombia. And if we do that, we will attract other great restaurateurs, other great operators, chefs, other great people who will open other great restaurants because they see what we're doing, and they see it's possible.
[00:13:42] And that will put this town on the map, right? Rising tide lifts all ships.
[00:13:48] And then, so then the conversation became, so what are our values? What are the things we hold most dear? What are the things that we cannot do without? Right?
[00:13:58] And we came up with those, and that influenced how we put together the menu, how we priced the menu, how we played at that menu, the service style, the decor, the kind of cocktail program, the kind of managers we hired. All of that, right? All of that really had to do with vision.
[00:14:18] Right?
[00:14:19] Now, a great leader is really good at articulating where we're going, right? Meaning what we're doing and why we got to. Why we got to do it, where we're going, why we're going to go that way.
[00:14:31] Then the key then becomes guidance and oversight. The very best leaders are not experts in everything, right? The best example of this I can give is the presidency, right?
[00:14:41] The president is not the presidency. The presidency is all of the cabinet, all of the people that help run the country.
[00:14:49] So the president puts together, right? Labor Secretary, hud, Secretary, State, Secretary of State, Transportation, all of this people who will be or are experts in all of these fields, all right?
[00:15:03] And then he provides guidance and oversight to those people.
[00:15:07] So those people, those jobs are all big enough, right, that they're gonna power through every single day.
[00:15:14] The president just needs to give them direction and guidance and then eventually provide some oversight, be the one to set deadlines and all of that.
[00:15:26] Where are we going? Why are we gonna go there?
[00:15:29] Where are we going? When do we need to get there by? That's part of that deadline.
[00:15:33] That's that vision, guidance and oversight. And the very best leaders do that very, very well.
[00:15:40] That's the best way that I can articulate leadership. And after the break, we've got a word from another one of our sponsors. But I want to talk about management. Not only how we become really great managers, but how we cultivate great managers and help ultimately help people be the best managers they can be.
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[00:17:06] Okay, so when we're talking about the difference between leadership and management, then we have to talk about the other side of it, right? The other side of it is managing. And the managing again is the how. If leadership right is the what and the why, what we're going to do, why it matters that we do it, then management managers are required for the how. How do we actually execute it, right? So implementation, execution, motivation, and ultimately what I call metrics, right? Making sure we can measure it right. What, what do we say, right? One of the, one of the biggest, the biggest management phrases of all time, what gets measured gets managed. So we have to understand, right? Part of this, and I've talked about this before, people have been listening for a while, will know I'm crazy about this. But it all comes down to systems and goals really understanding. Where are we now? Where are we at right now? Is Point A and where we're going is point B, right? So where are we, where are we going? What do we need to do to get from point A to point B? Right. What we do to get from point A to point B is a system. A system is just a repeatable set of actions. And if it's repeatable, it's replicable. It's. If it's replicable, it is scalable, right? Meaning if I do this, this, this, this, to get this result, then I can teach someone else to do this, this, this, and to get this result ultimately, then I can teach 10 people to do it at 10 units, right? That's how we scale a business.
[00:18:33] Management is really about the systemization, right? So managers, the what and the what. I'm sorry, leaders, the what and the why, about goal setting, about vision, right?
[00:18:45] And then you say to the managers, great, now go ahead and put a system in place, right? Figure out how we are going to get these results and figure out how we determine success, how we measure it, how we make sure that we do it, and look at the stuff that worked, figure out how we can do more of it, figure out the stuff that didn't work, and figure out then what we should be doing instead.
[00:19:08] Both of these are crucial. In a successful business, right? And especially a successful restaurant, we need strong leadership, someone to guide us, to tell us where we're going, why we're going in that way, right? To provide vision. And ultimately, what I said was guidance and oversight, right? That I don't want a leader down in the trenches doing it and doing it and doing it. But I want them to know what's being done, and I want them to have a say in what's being done and why it's done a certain way. And I want them to provide oversight. Oversight is deadlines. Oversight is, you know, is providing some sort of tracking for the people whose job it is to actually execute it. Right? Again, implementation, execution, motivation, and those metrics are all the responsibility of the manager. A manager's job in the restaurants, right? A manager's job in any business is to manage for profitability, right? We don't talk about that enough, but it's managing for the profitability of the business.
[00:20:09] And too often in the restaurant industry, we think of a restaurant manager as showing up and locking the doors, turning on the lights, doing the bank drop, doing the side we're checking in the staff, dealing with customer complaints, closing up at the end of the night. I'm sorry, but those are all things that need to be Done. That is an aspect of the job of a restaurant manager, but it is not nearly the most important part. The most important part is managing for profit, making sure that the business is sound. Profit is not a dirty word. Profit means stability, security. It means the business is sound. If it's profitable, right? We can repeat it, we can, we can replicate it, we can scale it, right? So we can come up with multiple units of this concept.
[00:20:54] Ultimately, both are, Both are really crucial. The other thing I want to say about managers is that it's a manager's job to get the most out of the line level employees, right? The servers, the bussers, the bartenders, the runners, the hosts, the cooks, all of them. It's. That's their job. So a big part of that is motivation. How do we motivate them? I think that's where we look to our leaders and we say, well, the leader's job is to set vision, the what and the why.
[00:21:22] The manager's job then is to understand that what and that why and translate that to the line level employees to make sure they understand how their job, their individual job, helps fulfill the why. And that cannot be overstated. That is very rarely done.
[00:21:44] Why do the onions have to be peeled? Why does the garlic have to be chopped? Why does it have to be chopped in this way?
[00:21:51] That goes back to the vision that was set by the leader.
[00:21:54] Both of those are important roles. Now here, let me just say this. Plenty of you out there that are owner operators, right? You own the place and you actually run the place every single day.
[00:22:05] Well, you got to figure out when you're wearing which hat because we need both.
[00:22:09] If you don't have time for either one of those, you have to make the time for the other one that you're, that you're ignoring.
[00:22:17] So again, leadership is the what and the why. Management is about the how. It all comes down to systems and goals. The leaders set the goal and the managers put a system into place to help us achieve that goal. We're going to do the following things to achieve the following things, right?
[00:22:39] So much of what strong leadership and strong management comes down to, right? Comes down to education and empowerment.
[00:22:47] That a leader educates, tells them the what and the why, gives them the tools to succeed, and ultimately empowers the managers to do what they know to do to achieve what has been stated.
[00:23:05] I need to make sure we do $165,000 in revenue this month, and I need to make at least 18% profit.
[00:23:12] And I trust you.
[00:23:14] The managers who are overseeing this property. I trust you to do what needs to be done to make sure we do that. To set daily revenue targets, to set budgets, to hold people accountable to staying under budget. That's how a restaurant operates successfully.
[00:23:31] I hope you found this helpful. For any of you out there that are struggling with this or profitability, you know where to find me. You can email me chip@chip close.com c h I p k l o s e.com I would love to chat about your restaurant. Love to hear what's going on. And again, another reminder, if you're curious about the P3 mastermind, if I haven't said it before, I will say it now. Every listener of this program gets access to a specific discount that, that will get 30% off the price. If you want that. If you think you can't afford it, I'm probably, I'm telling you, you probably can. I think you'd be surprised. We try to offer this program at a very fair price. And if you're, if you're curious this is something you struggle with, then I'd love to chat with you. The way to get started with that conversation is go to our website, restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule, grab time on the calendar. Make sure you click that you heard about it here on the podcast. Tell your. Tell the coach when, when you get on the phone with them. Either me, if it's me or one of my other coaches again, there are a bunch of people that work with me on this and we will get you set up. I appreciate you guys being here each and every week. Thank you very much and I will see you next time. Sa.
