Page 18 - MiniGame™ Toolkit

MINIGAMES™ MINIGAMES™

Hitting Big Goals Starts with Small Wins have to sell $210,000 in pancakes in order to offset just the lost spoons! Other teams focused on things
like bacon, sodas, and paper products, resulting in a revenue “offset” impact of over $1 million in
the first year.”
If you’re looking for this kind of impact, think of how everyday behavioral changes could create
cost savings or added revenue in your organization. Remember, hitting big goals starts with
small wins, and MiniGames can be a great tool to bring a laser focus to everyday progress that
SMALL WINS
ADD UP TO put us that much closer to the big win.
BIG WINS MiniGames are designed to affect a change, reinforce business training, build teamwork, and
START WITH develop a winning attitude—all of which lead to success for both your company and your
people.
SMALL WINS

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“Lasting, sustainable change occurs when you can change the behavior.
That is the MiniGame effect.”
You and your team have come up with your Critical Number™: the one metric that represents a
weakness or vulnerability that, if not addressed and corrected, will negatively impact the overall
performance and long-term security of the business. But now what? How do you successfully start
making things happen and impacting that number? With targeted day-to-day improvements that
add up to long-term success.
MiniGames are an engaging, short-term activity designed to pursue an opportunity or correct a
weakness within a company. They bring a laser focus to those everyday, small wins that put us
that much closer to the big win and help drive short-term performance metrics that contribute
to a year-end revenue goal or Critical Number.

Take this example from our book, Get in the Game. By focusing on something as simple as spoons,
the chain reaction resulted in a $1 million impact in revenue in just one year at Kerbey Lane Cafe:

“Kerbey Lane Café in Austin, Texas, is renowned for making awesome pancakes and killer queso.
Opening the books made a big impact on a young associate team leader named Matt, a millennial with
plenty of ink on his arms and metal in his ears. He discovered that the restaurant he worked at lost
some 150 spoons every week. He knew, because he counted them. Every. Single. Spoon.

He took ownership of line items like bread, dairy, and smallwares. He discovered that there was no
“par” or standard for things like plates and silverware. So he set standards, kept inventory, and
learned. What really stuck out to him were spoons. He learned that the spoons they were losing cost
only five dollars a dozen, so it wouldn’t seem like a big deal to the average employee. But not to Matt. He
understood that every dollar spent made an impact. He calculated that six hundred spoons a month is
fifty dozen a year, or about $3,000. But they had seven restaurants in Austin. That was an unnecessary
cost of $21,000 a year!

“So, he figured out a process he could teach the six other restaurants to save this waste. There was even
a theme of “No Spoon Left Behind.” He understood, as did the other stores, that seemingly small things
had an impact far beyond the savings. At a profitability of ten cents, the Kerbey Lane Café team would

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