Monthly Archives: October 2019

October 18, 2019 · 2:45 pm

The Sides

This Foodie Friday, I want to discuss what is a sometimes-overlooked ingredient in a successful meal – the sides. I’ve got a friend who shows up for dinner every so often and the question is never “what are you making?” but “what are the sides?” That got me to thinking.

You probably haven’t given much thought to the role that side dishes play. First of all, they can help balance out the nutrition of your meal. I’ll plead guilty to being very “main” focused (you can read that as “protein”). Making a smart choice about serving a seasonal veggie or a salad or a roasted root puree of some sort can support the main dish in a way that actually improves it. Think mashed potatoes and meatloaf, for example. Many really good sides require very little work and can be prepped and assembled while the main is cooking.

There is actually research that bears out the importance of side dishes to restaurant diners. A research company published a report in 2013 called…

The Starters, Small Plates & Sides Consumer Trend Report, which details the importance of side dishes in the consumer’s choice of entree. 36% of consumers stated they selected an entree based upon the accompanying sides, and 46% stated they were less likely to order an entree if it came with an accompanying side they disliked. In addition, about 45% of consumers prefer familiar sides over unfamiliar sides. Sides can make or break an entree.

So there you go. Of course, the same is very true in business. Every team has its “mains” but every team also needs its sides. I have rarely found any star manager in business who also didn’t surround him- or herself with a phenomenal bunch of people that might not have been stars themselves but served to make the entire team better. These folks – analysts, accountants, and others – are the ones who usually aren’t front and center but who make the business successful, just as the sides make the main shine and the meal a success.

Our job as managers, much like that of a skilled chef, is to figure out the accompanying sides. I’ve sat with many clients who point out after some business development star has come to pitch them that the “star” isn’t going to work on their business day to day. It will be the “sides”. The smart clients always asked about that, often wanting to meet the people who would be on the account day to day. I know I usually asked about that as well when I got pitched by an outside firm. If the sides weren’t very good, I’d usually pass on the rest of the “meal.”

Don’t ignore your team’s sides. You’re only as good as they are!

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October 16, 2019 · 11:04 am

The Right Questions

I was watching the Dems’ debate last night. I’m pretty much a political junkie and this has been an interesting few months as the Democratic candidates sort themselves out en route to a nominee.

As I was watching, I was reminded that the next year is really a very long job interview for a very big job. Watching the debate in that context made me realize that the moderators weren’t approaching it that way at all. They were asking the wrong kind of questions, at least right up until the last one about “someone we’d be surprised you’re friends with.” Let me explain because if you manage a business, hiring is one of the most important tasks you have.

If you’re still asking lame questions such as “tell me about yourself” or “where will you be in five years,” you really should leave the interviewing to someone else. The purpose of an interview is to find out things that aren’t on a resume but which have a huge impact on a candidate’s ultimate success or failure. In my mind, “smart” is the main thing I’m looking for along with intellectual curiosity. I spend my time trying to get answers that demonstrate a candidate’s possession of those qualities or lack thereof. To you, some other things might be important. You need to hone your questions to shine a light on the areas that are critical to you.

Don’t ask “yes/no” questions. Do ask hypothetical questions that reflect the reality of what will be the candidate’s day to day job. I used to test the candidate’s knowledge of my company to see if they really wanted to work there or if they were just looking for a job. “What did you find in your research about us that surprised you?” “As you were finding out about us, what questions came up that I might be able to help answer for you?” If the answers are vague or focused on things like salary or benefits, this is a person who wants a job and not a career. That’s fine, but it’s not what I want.

Asking the right questions can make all the difference in assembling a team for the long-term or constantly having to replace people who either leave for a better gig or who aren’t really qualified in the first place. The right questions get you the right people. You with me?

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October 11, 2019 · 4:43 pm

The Dead Of Dining

I came up with today’s Foodie Friday topic this past week as I was dining out. Which of course leads to The Grateful Dead. If any of you are Deadheads, one thing you know is that when the band was on and in full flight they were magnificent. They could take you with them as they soared musically. Unfortunately, the odds of that happening on any given night were not close to 100%.

It’s the thing that frustrates most of us who listened to The Dead. You could go to a show never knowing if you were going to walk away uplifted or disappointed. The experience was inconsistent. They were the musical personification of the old Mother Goose nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
When she was good, she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.

OK, back to food. I took a little mini-vacation this week to an island just off the North Carolina coast. It was lovely but because it is a relatively small island, there are limited dining options. One of these options was a place that serves Mexican food. The first time I dined there I had a lovely skirt steak but what struck me was how good the accompanying rice and black beans were. The beans were perfectly textured with a little smokiness coming from a piece of smoked pork tossed in the pot. The rice was billowy. I made it a point to return on another night.

The second night I dined there, the beans were bland and tough, as was the rice. In fact, the rice had a crunch to it, not like the lovely socarrat that forms in paella but from being undercooked and raw. Everything from the drinks to the entrees seems to have been tossed together with a minimum of care and thought.

It reminded me that one thing we need in business is consistency. Whether we’re serving food or figures, customers need to know that they can count on our product meeting a high standard each and every time. Employees and our team need to know that everyone is treated fairly and using the same standards. Unlike The Dead or this restaurant, we can’t miss the mark as often as we hit it. The only times we miss the standards we set should be those occasions when we move those standards up a notch. Make sense?

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