I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about business when I was supposed to be enjoying a meal out with my wife and daughter. We headed down to the closest location of a national italian restaurant chain. Based on previous experiences, it wasn’t my first choice.

I should have trusted my gut. The men’s washroom was littered with paper towel, the service was slow and the staff were frazzled. This wasn’t an isolated incident; previous visits had exposed similar poor performance.

Another location in the same chain had a totally different feel. Staff were happy, service was fast and as customers we were happy. While I didn’t have actual data, one outlet certainly looked busier than the other.

How can it be that two locations of the same chain in different cities could have such a different customer experience? Sites are selected using strict criteria and there are standard operating procedures. So what would explain the difference? Leadership.

In our experience a weak manager or supervisor will cause differences in profitability, sales, costs, cleanliness, morale and turnover. This variation doesn’t just show up in restaurants. It applies to retail stores, factories, production lines and engineering groups.

What leadership behaviors lead to these variations in performance?

1. Expectations: A weak manager doesn’t make his or her expectations known clearly to all staff. Without clear standards, performance tends to drop to the bare minimum.
2. Hiring: A manager will contribute to his or her own demise be being less selective in hiring decisions, poor interviewing skills and deviating from standard procedures and guidelines.
3. Training: Weak managers will either omit training or delegate training to staff members who are not qualified to teach the company system.
4. Monitoring: Managers need to personally observe performance and make sure staff are doing what is expected, correct unacceptable performance and provide encouragement.
5. Communication: Weak managers spend less time speaking with staff one on one and in team meetings.

A new business season is upon us and with it comes some old challenges and some new ones. Here are three action steps to achieve a strong finish in 2009 and set your organization up for a great year in 2010.

1. Get a Recovery and Growth Mindset

Now is the time for you and your team to shift thinking from defense to offense. As the recession begins to fade there are tremendous opportunities to grow your business. The challenge is to recognize the opportunities and then take action to exploit the potential.

2. Upgrade Your Mental Software

When was the last time you invested in growing the knowledge, skills and capabilities of yourself and the team around you? Is your team trying to achieve success in 2010 with a 2004 mindset? If your organization isn’t changing as rapidly as the environment around it then you might want to upgrade capabilities with training, coaching or consulting aimed at the areas of greatest need.

3. Lead

The root cause of both success and failure is leadership. If your team isn’t up to the challenge it may be them or it may be the leader. Develop a clear idea in your mind on what you want to achieve and then ask the team how they can make it happen. Challenge is a top motivator so get your team reenergized by focusing on a big goal that they can sink their teeth into.

If we can help your organization reenergize and refocus, please connect with us for a complimentary consultation.

With business demands and the amount of information increasing, it is tempting for managers to hunker down and spend most of their attention on tasks – dealing with customer/supplier issues, operational issues, answering email, endless meetings and the never ending to-do list.

By spending so much time on tasks, the leader tends to spend less time on the people side of their job. The people side includes explaining expectations, delegating, communicating face to face, providing coaching, training staff, giving performance feedback, and challenging, correcting and recognizing employees.

In the short term, focusing on tasks gets things done. Think of how much you get done on the day before leaving for vacation. In the medium to long term, the task-focused manager creates even more work for themselves because they allow the team to wither and become demotivated. This causes a drop in productivity and results begin to wane. It becomes a death spiral when the manager puts even more emphasis on tasks, hoping to turn things around.

Tips to Get a Better Balance Between Tasks and People

1. Monitor Where You Spend Your Time

For one week, take an inventory of your time usage. As you complete a task, deal with an issue or attend a meeting, ask yourself if someone else on your team could do that task if you were to delegate and coach them. Ask yourself if the task requires your personal attention or could be completed by someone else at a lower cost allowing you to focus on higher value tasks. Ask yourself if your time is being absorbed by activities caused because you did not spend enough time communicating expectations, training staff or addressing a problem sooner.

2. Grow the Capability and Capacity of Your Team

Take the tasks and opportunities you identified in step one and determine how to get your team to take ownership of that task. It may be a simple matter of asking an individual to take on the task, or it may require some clarification of expectations and coaching. View this time as an investment that will pay dividends when you no longer have to take valuable time to do it yourself.

3. Redirect Your Efforts

Without as many tasks competing for your attention, use your new found time to plan, set goals and develop people for the medium and long term. Be known as a developer of people and you will quickly rise to higher levels of leadership responsibility.

Spending more time on the people side of the leadership equation will raise business performance and get more accomplished with less stress and aggravation.