Wood Shed Plans

Most of the best thinking and writing on business focuses either on large corporations or start-up entrepreneurship exclusively.  The importance of  Building Strong Teams is one of those rare universal ideas.  Whether you’re running a technology giant like Google, an industrial giant like General Electric, or a hamburger franchise; you need to build a strong team to maximize your company’s potential.

My most important lesson in team building came when I was promoted to director of operations with a national Italian restaurant chains.  After unprecedented success as a general manager with the company, I was given responsibility for eight restaurants spread across two Southern California counties.  The restaurants averaged about $3 million  in sales each.  Five of the units were operating above average and three were dramatically under-performing.

Being new to multi-unit management, I instinctively focused on problems at the struggling units.  After a month of micromanaging these three units from opening to closing it finally hit me.  Although the units were improving, they would never be successful with the existing general managers.

The contrast between managers in my best restaurants and those in the weaker units was striking.  I coached my best managers on sales building activities, cost control techniques, and nuances of great customer service.  The poor performing managers had to be constantly directed on basic ordering, scheduling, and employee relations practices.

The worst thing about the unsuccessful operators was the fact that they seemed perfectly comfortable with being told what to do constantly.  If allowed, this relationship would have continued indefinitely and caused me to neglect my important responsibility of  growing the whole region.

Fortunately, with input from the human resource department and more seasoned directors, I replaced all three managers over a 90 day period.  The results were amazing.  Within a year, I was overseeing the best performing region in the western division.  Sales, profits, employee morale, operating standards, and manager bonuses were at an all time high.

The entire transformation and long-term success of the region taught me three important principles about team building that have been reinforced throughout my career:

What this all amounts to is leaders being able to remain focused on the big picture and being free to dig deep into the details as needed, which is much better than drowning in low impact details.