ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - August 20, 2004

Aloha from Waimea, Hawaii. I am a bit later than usual with the EHC today ... but perhaps I am just running on island time. I am here for another few days doing some concept development work for a client. It's a project to answer the question of "what does this restaurant want to be when it grows up?" I think we are coming up with something that will really excite the market ... and the investors! Stay tuned.

Who's Running Your Business?
Last week I shared a Q&A that I had with a restaurant worker. The essence of my response was that he should stop being a victim and take responsibility for his own peace of mind in the face of an insensitive and demanding owner. I do not to excuse the owner's behavior -- he was definitely being a jerk -- but the only person you can change is yourself, so making the owner the bad guy does not solve anything.

We can see victim behavior in others long before we recognize it in ourselves, which got me thinking about the way that many restaurateurs play the victim to outside conditions. "It's not my fault that sales are down, the local factory closed." "Three new chain restaurants just opened within a half mile." Blah, blah, blah.

Who's running your business? OK, so the factory closed. How do you need to adjust your approach to keep sales up and remain profitable? More competition? So what? How are you going to make it work in the new marketplace? It can be convenient to have excuses for lack of performance, but in the end, all you have is lack of performance.

Your fortunes will improve for the better as soon as you stop giving yourself excuses to be victimized by outside circumstances and start taking charge of your own success.

While I Am At It ...
Another quality you would do well to develop is a fierce intolerance of incompetence. You will never become a legend if you condone performance below your standards. Your obligation is to set the bar and coach like crazy to help everyone get over it. Many will ... and some just won't be able to make it. Those are the ones you must draw the line with.

This is not to suggest that the solution to incompetence should necessarily be termination, but if someone has proven themselves incapable of performing adequately in a particular job, you need to find them a position where they CAN excel ... or free up their future for something more rewarding. Tolerating incompetence is unfair to your business, your guests, your staff who care and the workers who are not making the grade.

Note: if you have standards but occasionally compromise them ... you don't have standards.

Leadership Development
If the common sense simplicity of this approach appeals to you, you are going to love what we have planned for the next few months. Robert and I will be facilitating the Leadership Development Project starting this fall (see EHC 340 for more information). Robert and I will also be exploring the process for "Creating the Effortless Organization" at the Super Summit next March in New Orleans.

Speaking of the Super Summit, the audios and videos from Super Summit 2004 are finally ready. The focus of the event was "Re-Inventing Your Business" and contains the wisdom of Molly Hancock, Harry Bond, Rory Fatt, Phyllis Ann Marshall and yours truly. Look for a special notice shortly on how you can get this amazing information for your professional library.

Planning Calendar
Joel Cohen and I have decided to offer just one Year of the Guest Sales-Building Workshop this year. It will be in Las Vegas on Monday, November 15 and will feature our latest thinking on how to jump-start your sales and WOW your guests. YOTG subscribers get a tuition break, so if you are not already signed up for this program, click on the link below to find out about what has to be the best deal in our industry.

On November 16-17, Big Dave Ostrander, Kamron Karington and I will host the Pizza Insight Operations Conference, a two-day marketing conference for the pizza industry, also in Las Vegas. Pizza Insight subscribers will get a healthy discount.

My Super Summit will be held in New Orleans on March 6-8, 2005. The focus will be on "Creating the Effortless Organization" and will feature human relations guru Robert Kausen along with myself. I will have early registration information on that event out to my paid subscribers in early September.

Click here to find information on The Year of the Guest.

The Perpetual Question
What did you learn from your staff today?

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