Saturday night we were watching Restaurant Impossible as we ate dinner. Regular readers of my newsletters know that I write a lot about how business owners need to reduce dependencies, usually the business’s dependency on the owner. In this case it was on the key employee. Her many hats included:
- Back of the house manager
- Baker
- Cook
- Bookkeeper
- Bartender
- Server
- Front of house manager
How can one person do all of the above (and do it well)? They can’t, that’s why this failing restaurant was on the show.
Compare this to a non-restaurant business and you’ll see that it’s impossible to be successful if one person (owner or employee) is in charge of:
- Operations
- Making the product
- Sales
- Finance
- Delivery
- Office manager
The above looks like a startup and it has to grow to the point where a team is in place to handle all the functions. If it doesn’t, the owner has a job, and not a very good job at that.
On Restaurant Impossible the recommendation was to make the key employee the general manager, making sure everything is done right, by others.
The same goes for every other business. Get good people, let them do their thing and monitor, coach and provide encouragement.
