If I hadn’t been in operations for five years, between being marketing director of Pizza Hut and marketing director of Beefeater, I don’t think I would appreciate how critical “ops” are to the delivery of a brand. It sounds naïve to write that but, honestly, when you have a huge marketing budget it’s easy to think you are the team that drives covers. You are the cog in the wheel.
Of course great marketing might encourage a customer to visit for the first time but it’s the operator that will be responsible for generating the second, third or 50th visit. The brand isn’t about a TV ad (unless you’re in QSR) or a loyalty scheme or a 25% discount. The brand is Phoebe who welcomes you, Chris who serves you at the bar or Katie who brings your food to the table. If they don’t believe in what they are doing and why, even the sexiest of brands will fail.
That’s why it was brilliant to run the Operations Directors’ Conference on Wednesday (25 September) with Propel. It was awesome to have such an outstanding line-up of speakers all willing to share their experience and best practice with others. It seemed to go very well.
I started to write about the things I learned but there were so many I thought it would be easier to list some sound bites from the presentations.
- 95% performance from the ops team isn’t enough, you wouldn’t accept this from the rest of your business
- If you’re an operator, never walk past anything that isn’t perfect
- No excuses. Be accountable. Be personally responsible
- When things aren’t going right, call it out quickly
- Have honest conversations, really honest
- A great operator manages people, product, process, place, performance and profit
- You won’t improve your profit by looking at your PNL
- The PNL isn’t what you do, it’s the result of what you do
- Your PNL is just a scoreboard
- Lose the ego and chill out
- Decide what only you can do, give what you “should” do to someone else
- Just get on with it, by the time it’s brilliant enough the moment will have passed
- Get out of your own way
- Allow yourself to be vulnerable, you don’t have all the answers
- Many of the best things I’ve implemented have come from the team, not me
- Innovation drives growth
- It’s not the big fish that eats the small fish but the fast fish that eats the slow fish
- Find your thing and bring everyone with you
- Be persistent. Be relentless. Be congruent. Listen
- Tailor your conversation to your audience
- There will be a fight for talent
- Make it easy for talent to find you
- A high-performing team isn’t just a group of people who work well together, it’s a group of people who trust each other
- General managers are the most important employees in the business
- Develop careers, not jobs
- Your team is your internal customer
- Focus on your team and let your team focus on the guest
- Celebrate individuality
- Focus on recruitment, incredible inductions, pay, and having great leaders
- Help your team be the best version it can be
- Encourage mastery. Constantly improve and learn
- The circle of success is team experience, guest experience, great business processes
- Give autonomy, it helps retention
- Great operations are about simplicity
- Check the cellar, it’s a real indication of attention to detail. Toilets are the customer-facing cellar
- Start with “why?”
- What’s your common purpose?
- Create a compelling offer to help you recruit
- Develop an organisation with a purpose beyond just making money
- We are not a pub business that develops people, we are a people business that develops pubs”
- Build a culture of consistency
- Ask the questions people don’t want to be asked
- How soon is now? Speed of service is a baseline
- Your brand is only as good as the guest’s last visit
- We sell time. Time with friends and family is the most precious thing of all
- Anyone can copy your product but sales and service superiority can’t be copied
- Have food that makes people stop talking when it’s put on the table
- Make it easy for guests to spend money with you when they want to by sorting out the barriers
- Get into your restaurants and your competitors. Watch how others are served, not you
The conference was a great day. Thank you so much to everyone who came and everyone who spoke and contributed.