Page 40 - Foodservice Magazine October 2018
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MANAGEMENT
TONY ELDRED
FOOD SERVICE
Why do some businesses manage to stay contemporary and fresh, while others seem to become locked in the past?
I’ve been concerned with the problem of how to teach business owners and managers to stay ahead of the market for some time. A spate of distressing phone calls from troubled business owners have prompted me to write about this issue.
For a business to remain healthy, it must be in a state of constant evolution. If you freeze your system, your business will stagnate and eventually die. Imagine if you had the best hospitality business in the universe and you said: “This is it – perfection. Don’t change anything.” What do you think would happen? Your competition would still be innovating and they would catch up and pass you, eventually making your business a ‘dinosaur’.
There are three ‘states of change’ a business can be in. They are: no change, sometimes called stagnation; unplanned
or uncoordinated change, or chaos, which is just as bad as stagnation because it leads to extremely inconsistent quality and service; and planned and coordinated change which we call ‘progress’. It is part of the proper responsibility of an owner or manager to ensure that their
business is progressing – by constantly evolving and moving with the times.
Human nature often works against the need for change. We have an unfortunate tendency to cling tenaciously to behavioural patterns that have been successful for us in the past, even though they are no longer appropriate.
I saw plenty of this behaviour in 1991–92 when the global recession hit hard here. A disturbing number of the old, established hospitality operators in my area failed to recognise that the market had rapidly changed and sat on their hands waiting for the good old days to return. They assumed that what had worked for them
in the past was still valid. A lot of them went bankrupt.
We’ve also found that there is a direct relationship between a persons’ intelligence and their comfort creating and working with change. Bright people can assimilate new things quickly and welcome changes as a challenge. People who are not so bright have to work hard to learn new things and regard change as a threatening burden – to the point where they will resist or sabotage changes and subconsciously fight to keep things as they are. This has led me to set a minimum, measured intelligence level for all our
management recruitment in environments where innovation is particularly important.
A further problem is that our ability to innovate seems to slow
as we get older. I believe that most innovation is the province of the young. I tell my management students: “Your job is not necessarily to innovate yourself; it is to make sure innovation occurs. Most of the valuable ideas that
will advance your business will come from your staff and your customers.” A constant trickle of young, new blood into a business
is a distinct advantage – provided you listen to the new people and are prepared to patiently sift the practical from the impractical ideas.
A few years ago I had a discussion with a well-known chef and restaurateur, who had asserted that he was the only one in his business who had the skills to create the menu that his restaurant was famous for. I told him I believed that his staff could relieve him of the burden of creativity if he went about it the right way. If you visit either of his restaurants today you will find that his cooks and chefs are required to submit dishes for assessment at regular intervals. The owner still maintains strict creative control, but he delegates most of the menu development to his subordinates. Some of the
Tony Eldred operates Eldred Hospitality Pty Ltd, ‘The Hospitality Specialists’.
Contact him on (03) 9813 3311 or at eldtrain.com.au.
AVOIDING EXTINCTION
COMPLACENCY AND STAGNATION CAN TURN A THRIVING FOODSERVICE BUSINESS INTO A ‘DINOSAUR’, BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY. THE BEST TOOLS TO FIGHT EXTINCTION, WRITES TONY ELDRED, ARE INNOVATION AND MOVING WITH THE TIMES.
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