How often does your restaurant come under customer service disasters?
Or some internal conflicts leading to unsatisfactory results?
Do you see a lack of motivation among your staff?
If you have already checked all the boxes mentioned above, there might a possibility that your restaurant is undermanaged.
What is Undermanagement?
Undermanagement can be defined as the inability of managers, directors, supervisors or team leaders to provide their employees with an up-to-the-mark structure, guidance, support, directions or training at any stage.
This can be easily seen in organizations that lack the human element in their management strategies. Meaning that the managers are failing to provide a one-on-one experience to staff members and lack individual recognition/feedback the employees need to nurture and strive the organization towards success.
In simpler words, when managers fail to deliver structured leadership to individual employees and collectively, it aids to that very factor which makes management a tricky business in the first place.
And most managers today, are stuck in the vicious cycle called undermanagement, without even realizing it!
The Root Cause: Lack of Optimized Time Management
Why is that most managers are seemingly spending the majority of their time managing and dedicated but fail to deliver any improvement whatsoever and still far behind their desired results?
And there is no questioning of loyalty towards their job either. Then what’s holding them down?
Researches on this particular area show that all of the communication going on between and among the leadership and the staff (which is a lot, every basis if I am not wrong), is not good enough!
Those typical and some stale methods of communication are no longer effective. The communication style of these managers can be very hit or miss and hold very little to no value for it to be implemented all across the teams.
Ineffective communication style is like a product running on autopilot – all of their management is touching base and none of it is highly structured or gets t the roots where problems are rising from.
When managers rely on team meetings or employees to reach out to them every single time, issues remain unaddressed and unidentified as a result.
Here are the 8 Major Signs of Undermanagement
It might seem difficult to identify undermanagement since your restaurant may look like it’s doing fine because a lot of communication is going around every day, but these are the 8 signs that you should watch out for!
1. You find a new (unnecessary) problem every day!
When there is a lack of solid management regularity, these absolutely avoidable problems may seem to occur every now and then out of nowhere.
2. Small problems turning into major disasters
You step into your restaurant and find a little mishap from one of your staff members, you ask them to quickly fix the problem and forget about it, believing its gone. But pretty soon after, you find out that the small trouble has turned out to be a gigantic mess. And you are unable to comprehend how to it has gotten to this point after all when it had already been taken care of?
3. Your resources are being squandered
Most of your restaurant’s resources (human and otherwise) are being recklessly wasted on tasks that are of least priority. Or on things that do not require as much as it is being spent.
4. Again, low priority tasks are being catered first
The worst any organization can do to itself is lack prioritization. If you see low priority tasks taking up days and weeks and even months of your employees without our acknowledgment, that’s a sign right there!
5. Low performers – collecting paychecks
This one is commonly seen in most hospitality services where low performers just hide out and collect their paychecks every month and continue to do so. Since they are least bothered about individual and organizational growth.
6. Average performs – thinking highly of themselves
Since the others are performing below the bar, the ones barely touching it seems to have the attitude of high performers which disrupts the whole scale you had put up in the first place.
7. High performs – Dissatisfied and/or Leaving
The saddest thing you get to hear as a manager is that the gem of an employee is not happy with his/her job. Most of the times undermanagement drive these valuable and dedicated resources so crazy or frustrated that they are left with no option but to find better management to work under.
8. You find yourself doing things assigned to someone else
This I have seen a lot in restaurants – when a customer asks a very simple question or makes an impossible request that the staff could have easily handled but due to lack of information or clear instruction they keep on dragging the manager as if it is absolutely necessary.
And this is only a customer perspective I am talking about, there must be many other tasks that you as a manager must have been doing yourself behind the scenes, that you shouldn’t be doing!
So, How Do I Fix These?
You need not just learn but practice effective and modern leadership strategies. Schedule regular and high structured one-on-one meetings with team leads/managers and with individual employees as well.
Alternatively, you can opt for professional help for a specific area of management you believe needs to be outsourced. For instance, connecting with an it consulting firm to take care of your technology infrastructure and support can free up your time, allowing you to focus your efforts on other areas of the business to ensure a smoothly run operation.
8 Quick Fixes to Your Restaurant’s Undermanagement
- Talk more like a coach than a boss – it is powerful enough to improve performance.
- Manage every day. Not just on scheduled meetings.
- In order to set some examples, you need to make accountability a process. Telling them is not good enough, showing them will be much more impactful
- Give individual attention to your employees. It will not only help you fix things deeply but give them the feeling of being heard.
- Don’t, I repeat don’t jump into doing things that you have assigned to them. Unless it is absolutely necessary to
- Monitor their performances on each step – this will help you avoid pending approvals and tracking will be much easier
- Now for low, mediocre and high performers, you need to set parameters of how much each one deserves based on his/her performance.
- And lastly, solve smaller issues then and there. Give a solution once and set some ground rules on never leave them lingering to avoid them turning into bigger ones.