“Just how much of my time is this going to take?” the successful owner of an independent multi-unit restaurant group asked me when we started working together.
This happens often when I am about to start work transforming a business.
I could see the fear on his face: wide eyes, tilted head—the fear of having to do two jobs: 1) running the company and 2) improving it.
Since they knew about my dedication to creating increased personal freedom for my clients, I also saw confusion.
My answer? “A lot less than you think. I work efficiently. I do not take up a lot of your time.”
Businesses Transform in Real Time
When transforming your business from what you have to what you want to have, your organization will go into a period of hyper-activity.
That’s a necessity, but you cannot grow your management team to increase revenue, profit, units, harmony, or freedom for yourself in a vacuum.
This is the restaurant business, not college—improvement can’t be taught in a classroom by a wise professor with a comprehensive and explanatory deck.
What is the best way to transform your company?
First, having management teams to take on new levels of responsibility, standards, and impact in real time.
Next, focusing them on practicing their new found power by applying it to specific activities with fantastic outcomes.
Here are some of the things we have done while improving restaurants:
- Focusing on the perfection of a core menu item—raising its quality rating from 50% to 95%.
- Driving PPA, eventually by $1, resulting in a seven-figure annual revenue increase.
- Raising guest focus and replacing a production culture. Sales went up 5%.
Take the Shortcut to Success
If you hold back from making improvements because you think you don’t have enough time to focus, you have it backwards.
Lack of action is the real time-suck.
That ought to make you really shake your head—or face-plant on your desk.
Lack of action yields more of what you don’t want: more stagnation, more inefficiency.
Instead, use the time for learning how to operate better while upgrading your organization.
It is the greatest return on investment of anything you do.
Over to you…what important improvements have you been delaying because they would take too much of your time?
Now that you know there is a shortcut, when do you start to take it?
