Pitfalls of Poor Management

It's important to learn how to be a great manager not only for your own self confidence, personal and business growth but, also for the benefit of your entire company and the bottom line. The Pitfalls of Poor Management will be evident in your restaurant business (or any other business for that matter) when you start
to see some key behaviors from your staff, increased waste and decrease in sales. We'll share our best ideas for good management and the resources we suggest you use to improve your ownership and management skills. Let's examine some of these items so that you can avoid mistakes now and improve the relationships and bottom line for your business. You can blame the state of your business on a lot of things but, it's likely that you should take a look in the mirror and scrutinize your own management skills first.

     Improve your own Business Leadership Skills first.

My experience has shown me that there are a few things that can go wrong from having the wrong people in your management team. It usually starts at the top and works it's way down to every aspect of your business. So it's important to get a handle on it now before all the rest of your business takes a nosedive. We've made our own mistakes so share our best ideas to help you here.  If you're already in trouble from having bad management happening, there's no better time than right now to pay attention and make some serious changes to your business. If you continue to let it go on the way it has been, it won't be long before you'll be closing your doors and losing everything that you've invested financially and emotionally in becoming a successful restaurant.

First, let take a look at errors made from flawed management to determine if your business is showing any of these signs. Spend some time to really think about each item here, think about examples of each item in your own business so that we can later make some changes that we'll list below.

   Eighteen Pitfalls of Poor Management and How to Overcome Each One for a Profitable Business:

1. Improper communication across the board - you say one thing and it's interpreted entirely differently by the staff.
2. Poorly trained staff that aren't really sure how to do each task exactly how you want or how you first imaged it.
3. Lack of consistency from one employee to the next - they all kinda do what you want but, they each do it a different way.
4. No clear cut goals by your staff - they just don't get it.
5. Chain of command is not properly followed - this leads to lots of rumors or he said, she said happening when none of it is true.
6. Paying too much for supplies, food as vendors recognize your inexperience or lack of attention to the costs you are paying.
7. Over purchasing products due to simple disorganization of what you already have
8. Lose good staff that is looking for professional attitudes and growth in your company
9. Policies and procedures not followed
10. Customer service goes awry
11. Lack of concern for any customer complaints 
12. Staff gives away goods or services
13. Incorrect charging of goods and services
14. Increased waste of products
15. Increased late fees charged from not paying invoices or taxes on time
16. Disrespect of owners and managers
17. Lack of sales and income
18. Losing money week after week in your business.

     To get a handle on any of these problems with your management, let's tackle each of these so that you can start improving your business.

          1. Improper communication - it's time to have a meeting with your upper management and explain all the problems that you see and make suggestions to improve it all right now. Give concrete examples to them on what is wrong with what you see happening and tell them ways to fix it. You want firmness in your team without being dictatorial. Improve your own communication with this must read and then pass it on to your staff.
               - We hold a daily round-up of the staff to go over the day's events so everyone knows what to do, what to expect and what each person is accountable for.

          2. Poorly trained staff - if this is the problem, set up more training with your key employees to go over the areas that need improvement.
               - I like to have an official training persons or team that does everything right so that those individuals show the weaker staff how to improve. Offer a training bonus of some kind for the person doing the training. It's well worth a gift certificate from amazon so they can treat themselves to something they want.  You choose the amount you want to give and then it gets emailed to your trainer. A great incentive for them to do a great job in training. A truly small price to pay!

          3. Lack of consistency - this really goes back to number 2 and the training of your staff and why it's so very important to have that key employee be the official trainer. Give a great incentive to your key employee to not only keep them with your team but, motivate them to help others.

          4. No clear cut goals - if you haven't properly shared your goals and ideas for your business, you really can't expect your staff to understand what you imagine for your business. Check out How to Reach Your Goals and share it with your key employees. Grow your own library to stay inspired and always share the information you learn.

          5. Chain of Command - make sure your policy and procedure manual explains the chain of command so that the staff knows who to go to when there is a problem and be sure everyone is following it. The owner doesn't need to know about simple schedule issues for example when those issues are handled by a certain person or department.

          6. Paying too much for supplies - this is a key element of your success and you might be the one that needs to handle dealing with vendors, or you need an experienced Chef to do it. There's an art to knowing the current prices, sales, seasonal items, preparing your menus and you can definitely over pay. Meet with your vendors and Chefs and find out how they can work with you to help your bottom line. Read The Vendor Management Office: Strategic Sourcing if you need help in this area.

          7. Over purchasing products due to disorganization - this is simply you taking a look at your current inventory, making sure you have inventory processes in place and that the staff is assigned to keep track of that inventory. If you need to get it started for them, do it. Then share how you did it and make sure they understand the importance of using what you have before reordering items. Otherwise, you're throwing money down the drain. Check out Food Storage Secrets if you need help in this area.

          8. Lose good staff that wants professionalism - this item can be avoided when you are working on the rest of the items in this list. Never take money from your staff or try to rip them off - pay them fair wages - actually pay them better than your average competition and they'll stay with you. Good employees deserves good pay and recognition for their services. When they know that you are working toward overall improvements in your business, they'll stick around!

          9. Policies and procedures are not followed - make sure you start with your own policy and procedure manual, have each staff member read and sign that they've read it and stick to your own rules.

          10. Customer service goes awry. Deal with this issue at your daily round-up style of meeting and share the importance of proper customer service. Anyone that doesn't fully understand the importance of making customers happy may not be a good fit for your company and you'll need to make some huge decisions if your staff can learn and apply it or if they aren't a good fit in your company.

          11. Lack of concern for customer complaints. Knowing your own policy on dealing with customer complaints is key and your staff needs to know the rules. Do you offer a free replacement meal, discount on drinks if they wait too long, give a gift certificate for a bad experience? Whatever you do, make sure the staff knows the proper channels to take and they do it the same for each customer.

          12. Staff gives away food or goods. If your policy is to give a free drink or dessert to an unhappy customer, that's great and everyone should know it and do it. But, if your staff is giving free drinks to their friends that come in, beware - they are giving away your profit! Watch your staff, watch your management team, find out what's going on and deal with it now.

          13. Incorrect charging of goods and services. Oftentimes, this is a big problem in your bar area. You need a POS system that tracks sales and bartenders that are honest. Watch and hang out in your bar. Make sure the bartender takes an order, makes the drink properly and then immediately charges it in the system. If they want to add it to the tab later, they could forget and end up giving away free drinks. Not good!

          14. Increased waste in the restaurant. You need a trustworthy staff, knowledge yourself of what is getting bought, used, rotated in the coolers and items that are used for specials if needed before they go to waste. Look at all areas such as the bar, server stations, dry storage, coolers, freezers, office and all cabinetry. Stop paying for things you don't need or use to save money.

          15. Increased late fees from vendors or taxes. Who's in charge of paying your bills? Meet with them or if it's you, get on top of the bills and pay on time. This is another area that will take care of itself when the other items on this list get more work on since you'll have more money available when it's not wasted or given away for free and the customers are happy so they'll return - and bring friends!

          16. Disrespect of owners and managers. Respect is earned and not a given and when your staff knows that you have everyone's best interest at heart, they can respect you more. Do whatever you can to be a respected business owner or manager. Not doing so is just one of the pitfalls of poor management that will be felt across the board from employees to customers and even in the community.

          17. Lack of sales.When all of the above items are not working correctly, you'll notice a drop in customers and that equals lack of sales. Focus on all the aspects of your business, utilize your social networks ie. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, FourSquare, Pinterest, Yelp, your own blog and anything else you can think of. Get your message out there and remind the public of your menu, upcoming events, specials, deals, etc. Meet with your team to brainstorm what else you can do - each business is unique in that only you can figure out if your customers are moving out of town or just eating out elsewhere.

          18. Losing Money week after week. It's imperative that you focus on your numbers daily and weekly to gauge the overall direction that your business is heading. Don't wait for each quarter to do it. That's way too long to find out that you have poor management in charge of your business.

   Stay with us as we continue to provide you tips for running a successful restaurant - there's much to do and learn but, worth it when you have a happy, fun and profitable business. Ask any other questions below, we're happy to do our best to help you.
   Cheers!