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Finally Friday, and given yesterday’s exacta ticket of St. Patrick’s Day and the beginning of the NCAA basketball tournament, I’m sure there are more than a few hangovers out there. I’ll try not to use many big words, OK?
Foodie Fridays now feature one of my favorite shows, Kitchen Nightmares. If you’ve never watched it, I think it’s worth checking out, especially since it’s really a business show. The premise is that Chef Gordon Ramsey steps in to save failing restaurants, and in most cases the sub-par food is only a fraction of the problem. Kind of like your office, right?
A great deal of the time, the real issue on the show is the owner. Sometimes they’re also the chef. Whether they are or not, they generally make some of the same mistakes that any lousy manager might make. First, they spend too little time actually managing, as if things will just happen on their own. On the show we see disgusting walk-in refrigerators, filled with old, moldy food (this show will make you want to stay at home for meals, trust me). That often happens because no one is managing it.
Next, they spend too little time communicating effectively. Sure, they yell a lot but they don’t help their crew really understand anything. They scream to put band-aids on things but don’t fix anything for the long-term. Mostly, we see a lot of people who were successful and are now failing. Sometimes they were good businesspeople in some other field who opened a restaurant without understanding the business. Sometimes they were star cooks who stepped up in class to owner. In either case, just like the great salesperson who can’t manage a sales staff, they can’t transition to running a team or understand that the skills they applied in former jobs need to be supplemented in other ways.
I’m always shocked how these people, who literally may lose millions of dollars if their business fails, fight Chef Ramsay to keep on doing what they were doing, and which obviously hasn’t worked. Eventually (hey it IS TV, after all!), they figure out that his way works and the business begins to turn around. Usually it’s because he teaches them to manage, to lead, and to communicate. Oh yeah – sometimes he teaches them to cook a little too!
Got any Kitchen Nightmares in your office? How can you fix them?
Consult Keith 