Take Care of Your Managers
and
They’ll Take Care of Your Business

Provide your young and developing managers with the right tools

By Ron Yudd
July 2003

Turnover, complacency, lack of customer focus and not working with a sense of urgency are just a few of the issues that you as owners and senior managers encounter each and every day in your business. You work hard at selecting the right person to promote into a manager or supervisor role. You try to equip them for success — but just when you think that you may have found the right person and things are going well — they’re gone. They’ve moved on to something else or gone down the street for a few more cents per hour.

How do you as an owner, area director or senior manager get to the heart of the issue and begin to develop these young managers first into employees who want to stay with you and second into those who can be future leaders within your organization? Of course, the solution is not an easy one, it never is, but a genuine solution is within reach with a little investment of time and some solid step-by-step planning.

Developing young managers is all about giving them the tools for their individual success. When they are successful as individuals the business reaps the benefit. The operation will have a person who is confident, sticks around, cares about what he or she is doing and feels proud of the product and service being delivered. Look for a moment at why we have so much turnover in these positions — young managers often feel they are disposable; they don’t really know what is expected of them and a lot of the time they don’t see anyone who really cares about them and their individual success. The company or shop is often driven by the operations manual — the product looks like this, the food cost should be this, the delivery time must be less than this and service to the guest sounds like this — and on it goes. Keeping and growing young talent is not found in an operations manual — it’s found in the tools we give them to effectively use and follow our policies and procedures. It’s all about providing the tools these young managers need.

What are these tools? What are the things we need to equip them with for their success and our success? Here are five tools every young manager needs to be successful:

Tool Number One: Clear Expectations — Always First and Foremost

Think what a “day in the life” of a successful manager looks like. Map it out. What do they do, what do you expect? Be specific and then let them know in very clear terms exactly what success looks like. After this, you as the leader should be letting them know if they are meeting your expectations.

Tool Number Two: A Mentoring Relationship —The Three P’s

Owners and senior managers should act as mentors for the developing manager — guiding, nurturing and helping the young manager be successful. Effective mentors provide the three P’s to those they mentor. They show them a “picture” of success, the “path” to take to get there and the “possibilities” that the future holds.

Tool Number Three: Respect for Their Authority as the Manager — Their Decisions Really Count

Owners and senior managers must back their young managers up. They must show respect for their decision-making ability even when the decision hasn’t been a good one. Gently take them aside and show them the right way, but always respect their authority to make the decision. You gave them that responsibility when you made them a manager.

Tool Number Four: Accountability Coupled with Real Rewards

Let them know that along with being accountable for all your expectations, and there are a lot of them—great service, food safety, product quality, security, cleanliness and all the others —there is some reward for all this responsibility. You have to decide exactly what that is — flexibility of schedule, bonus, promotion, stock ownership, training opportunities. Like everyone else, all young managers have to be able to see the “what’s in it for me” factor. 

Tool Number Five: Their Place in the Big Picture

Young managers must have a genuine feeling that they are contributing to the big picture in their particular unit and in the organization as a whole. They must feel connected to not only their own future but also to the future of the company. There are no secrets in a successful business. Share information and make sure you let them know their place in your vision for the company.

Three Quick Steps to Get Started:

Step One: Define what success really looks like for young managers. They need to see it. Show them others who have scaled the ladder to become directors or own their own shops or have gone on to start their own businesses. They have to know what success really looks like before they can strive for it.

Step Two: Be specific in describing your expectations and why they are accountable for meeting these expectations. Cover all the key areas — food quality, food safety, guest service, company standards, etc. Also, as an owner or area director, be reminded that your young managers are observing you. You are the model for them to follow. List the behaviors that you feel are important for you and your area directors to model for the young managers. Talk about them at your meetings and build them in to your standards.

Step Three: Build a real reward and recognition system. Take a look at what you are offering now and what you could be doing to bring more focus to what you want to accomplish. All levels of managers want something to work towards. Create a system of accountability that is linked to a system of real rewards and recognition.

Action Step: Sit down at your next meeting with the key members of your team and commit to build the list of tools you think your young managers need right away and then do a little planning on how you will take these first three steps within your organization. Always keep in mind that effective leaders are those who provide the tools for others to be successful. Give your young managers the tools for their own success and they will reward you with how successfully they run your business!

Article Published in Canadian Pizza Magazine-July 2003
www.canadianpizzamag.com