Don’t Allow Today’s Management Shortage to Hold Your Restaurants Back

How do you do that?

Simple.

Make sure all your managers get better every year.

If you want to run great restaurants in the current labor market, you have no other choice.

“We all strive to be better every day, and that includes me.” 

When I start working with successful owners of multi-unit independent restaurant companies – and they talk to me about their misgivings about past shortcomings – that’s what I say to them.

Apply this same rule to each and every manager. 

How to Deal with the Management Shortage

Everyone in the industry knows the reality of the management shortage.

You are familiar with uncomfortable feelings.

You hesitate hiring people who, 10 years ago, would not even have been qualified.

You experience a spike in management cost inflation and are aggravated that you must pay them more than you ever imagined.

When you recruit, enroll, onboard, educate, and train, there is a little voice in the back of your mind that something is not quite right.

All you can do is accept this current reality – and take action to upgrade the talent level in your company. 

Pop Quiz

1. Open a new spreadsheet.
2. In the left-hand column, make a list of all the managers in your company.
3. In the column to the right of each name, list everything they can do now that they could not do a year ago.

Is your spreadsheet full, running out of space in the second column and going to the next row?

Or do you stare at cells full of nothing – a pristine, clean white screen with lines?

The latter is a warning sign that ought to propel you into action.

Do your career managers work one year 20 times with no progress in their abilities? 

Or do they actually experience a new year every year?

If you want to feel proud of results that beat industry averages and build your net worth, use the system my best clients use to make every manager better every year.

Make your brand stronger, your guests happier, your employees more loyal, and your P&L prettier. 

Matthew’s Five Essential Steps to Making Managers Better

1. Outline what you expect each manager to learn in the next year.
2. Task a multi-unit manager or peer to educate each person to make sure that happens.
3. Check in periodically to make sure results occur.  
4. Identify and celebrate success.
5. And then do it all over again. And again.

When you do this repeatedly you will create an organizational immunity to all the woes of the labor market.

You will not only boost your success, but reduce your moments of frustration, anxiety, and repeated eye-rolling.

Over to you. What will you do to make sure each manager in your organization becomes better?