All About Your People

Talking Is In Again!

Posted on Jun 5, 2007 in All About Your People, Culture, How We See It Blog by Jeffrey Summers 0 Comments

An article in the April 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review discusses one of the biggest challenges in managing and growing a 21st century business — namely getting business stakeholders (employees, clients, partners, and vendors) — to actually do/deliver upon what they promise. The article has a number of incredibly salient points for the modern restaurant owner/operator, including:

‘There is a prejudice amongst “action-oriented” managers/entrepreneurs for “doing” versus “talking.” While a laudable mindset, the reality of a knowledge economy is that much of the doing IS actually talking. Meetings, both formal and informal, in-person and on the telephone, are much of the work of the modern manager. Critically, the quality of a modern organization can be measured by the degree to which these meetings translate into action items, or promises, that are actually delivered upon. Great organizations create internal dynamics whereby promises are made in meetings and then delivered/executed upon in the field. Poor and mediocre organizations, in context, are weak in both defining the mission-critical promises and in their actual fulfillment.

“Talking” is the action we take when we Coach Staff to deliver a better guest experience, maintain standards or just simply execute the brand on an every guest, every table, every day basis. This is also the action we take when we work to develop better relationships with staff, guests, vendors and other stakeholders in our businesses.

So the question becomes, how well and how often are you talking to the people who are most important to your success?