Weaning off of the Micro Manager

Motivated, empowered employees need a loose rein, not a severed one

(PRWEB) January 22, 2004 --
   Empowering employees is a popular subject these days. How do we police their every action if we empower them to handle problems for us that we formally had to solve ourselves? What motivates employees? During the fog of a rush, who is making decisions and are good decisions being made?    

   We as managers cannot physically be all places at all times. Empowerment is a great and logical concept. Micro managing can be detrimental to the development of independent thoughts and actions. However, mistakes are sometimes made when staff is empowered. Training is necessary in the area of management decision making. Also, follow-up as well as frequent (or high coaching, high delegation quadrant managing) feedback is necessary in successfully teaching empowerment. Electronic tracking and time stamping every transaction enables managers to monitor theft or loss from lack of training. Lets face it; we cannot successfully operate a restaurant by ourselves. This business is definitely labor intensive thus the reason and need for motivated front line management.

   Let us establish the fact that decisions are being made all of the time, every second if you will, and all of them affect future events. Something as simple as taking a step forward is a decision. Deciding not to decide is a decision, too. During a hectic, in the weeds" type situation (the fog of a rush") individuals are making decisions affecting their patrons as well as managing the companys resources. The term managing can mean wasting, losing, stealing, or irresponsibly handling them in some other way. Controlling the companys resources and using them to grow the bottom-line is our responsibility.

   During the twenty percent of the time that we do eighty percent of our sales, having highly trained (meaning, employees who know their empowered boundaries) and highly motivated (to work carefully and efficiently, as well as with integrity) employees to grow the bottom-line, is the ideal way to succeed in this business. Many decisions can be tracked through the means mentioned earlier, but body language as well as suspicious questions can tell us a lot about an employees development and ability to decide on guests needs. For example, if an employee asks, would it be okay to give a glass of wine to that person at table #54 because the kitchen took too long to cook the food?" To which you as manager respond, as long as you charged them for it." Then following up with a glance at the sales report later to see if it was charged for or not. Expecting your employees to know the rules of empowerment is not good management, it is fantasy.

   Good management is, however, expecting employees to buy into and learn the lessons that you are trying to teach them. Your job is teaching, their job is learning. Each must do his/her part in order to make it all work out together. Staying motivated to keep teaching, especially in the wake of the wave of low personal responsibility attitudes, these days, is becoming increasingly difficult.

The thinking that everything should be fair and equal is prevalent today. Opportunity is fair and equal. The action of seizing the opportunity is where the decision process begins. One has to decide whether or not to seize the opportunity to grow with the company. The company is grown by having satisfied patrons returning again and again. If the employee has decided not to go the direction of growing the bottom line, then s/he must give up the empowered position s/he has. It is not fair to the employer if the employee is not unselfishly growing the bottom line of the company. After all, this is the source of income for all employed in this endeavor.

One good thing that is happening to help the situation is that patrons are demanding better quality service and food. They are willing to pay for the product they are expecting. They are expecting better quality more often because they are getting it more and more these days. People have opportunities to choose from a widening variety of cuisines and atmospheres. Competition is stiffening because choices are widening and it seems to show no signs of ending anytime soon. People are not only looking for different types of cuisine but different forms of environment. Eating out has become a functional as well as an entertaining time. Eat-a-tainment" is the function of eating out and enjoying yourself on a level that we dont always get to enjoy. Due to the lack of time we have to do things as a family, because of increasing demands of work and time to do things necessary for comfortable existence, we do not have time to make dinner at home, visit and socialize. Eating out is a way to accomplish all of these, and the restaurant cleans up the mess!

So, who gets to benefit from motivated managers who empower their employees? Everyone because the motivated manager motivates and empowers employees through teaching and follow-up to ensure proper service and atmosphere; then guests because they had proper correction of their problems, and are made to feel relieved, refreshed, and reenergized; and finally the corporate family of managers, shareholders, and beneficiaries because the bottom-line is grown.

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