5 Ways to Spot a Bad Boss In An Interview

Stephanie Taylor Christensen, Contributor Forbes.com

A boss can literally, make or break your career. Here are five ways to spot the bad ones before they become yours.

A great boss can make you feel engaged and empowered at work, will keep you out of unnecessary office politics, and can identify and grow your strengths. But a bad boss can make the most impressive job on paper (and salary) quickly unbearable. Not only will a bad boss make you dislike at least 80% of your week, your relationships might suffer, too. A recent study conducted at Baylor University found that stress and tension caused by an abusive boss “affects the marital relationship and subsequently, the employee’s entire family.” Supervisor abuse isn’t always as blatant as a screaming temper tantrum; it can include taking personal anger out on you for no reason, dismissing your ideas in a meeting, or simply, being rude and critical of your work, while offering no constructive ways to improve it.  Whatever the exhibition of bad boss behavior, your work and personal life will suffer. Merideth Ferguson, PH.D., co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Baylor explains that “it may be that as supervisor abuse heightens tension in the relationship, the employee is less motivated or able to engage in positive interactions with the partner and other family members.”

There are many ways to try and combat the effects of a bad boss, including confronting him or her directly to work towards a productive solution, suggesting that you report to another supervisor, or soliciting the help of human resources.  But none of those tactics gurantee improvement, and quite often, they’ll lead to more stress. The best solution is to spot a bad boss—before they become yours! Here are five ways to tell whether your interviewer is a future bad boss.

1. Pronoun usage. Performance consultant John Brubaker says that the top verbal tell a boss can gives is in pronoun choice and the context it is used. If your interviewer uses the term “you” in communicating negative information ( such as, “you will deal with a lot of ambiguity”), don’t expect the boss to be a mentor.  If the boss chooses the word “I” to describe the department’s success—that’s a red flag.  If the interviewer says “we” in regards to a particular challenge the team or company faced, it may indicate that he or she deflects responsibility and places blame.

2. Concern with your hobbies. There is a fine line between genuine relationship building, and fishing for information, so use your discretion on this one. If you have an overall good impression of the potential boss it may be that he or she is truly interested in the fact that you are heavily involved in charity work, and is simply getting to know you. On the other hand, the interviewer may be trying to determine whether you have too many commitments outside of work. The interviewer can’t legally ask if you are married, or have kids, so digging into your personal life can be a clever way to understand just how available you are.

3. They’re distracted. The era of email, BlackBerrys and smartphones have made it “okay” for people to develop disrespectful communication habits in the name of work. Particularly in a frenzied workplace, reading email while a person is speaking, multi-tasking on conference calls and checking the message behind that blinking BlackBerry mid-conversation has become the norm of business communications. But, regardless of his or her role in the company, the interviewer should be striving to make a good impression—which includes shutting down tech tools to give you undivided attention. If your interviewer is glancing at emails while you’re speaking, taking phone calls, or late to the interview, don’t expect a boss who will make time for you.

4. They can’t give you a straight answer. Caren Goldberg, Ph.D. is an HR professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University. She says a key “tell” is vague answers to your questions. Listen for pauses, awkwardness, or overly-generic responses when you inquire what happened to the person who held the position you are interviewing for, and/or what has created the need to hire. (For example, if you are told the person was a “bad fit,” it may indicate that the workplace doesn’t spend much time on employee-development, and blames them when things don’t work out).

You should also question turnover rates, how long people stay in given roles, and what their career path has been. All of these answers can indicate not only if the boss is one people want to work for, but whether pay is competitive, and employees are given a career growth plan.

5. They’ve got a record. Ask the potential boss how long he or she has been at the company, in the role, and where he or she worked before coming to it to get a feel for his or management style, and whether it’s what you respond to.  For example, bosses making a switch from a large corporation to a small company may lead with formality. On the other hand, entrepreneurs tend to be passionately involved in business, which can be a help or a hindrance, depending on your workstyle.

Goldberg also recommends searching the site eBossWatch, where you read reviews that former employees have given to a boss. If you’re serious about the position, she also suggests reaching to the former employee whose spot you are interviewing for, and asking for their take on the workplace. (LinkedIn makes this task easy to do). The former employee’s recount may not necessarily reflect your potential experience, but it can help you to determine whether his or her description of the job and company “jibes” with what the potential boss said.

A conversation with Zingerman’s Ari Weinzweig

By Mary Ellen Slayter on October 17, 2011

Ari Weinzweig co-founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen in 1982 with a $20,000 bank loan. Today, the company is an Ann Arbor institution, and Weinzweig has branched out into a number of other businesses. We approached him recently to learn more about his leadership philosophy and his approach to innovation.

Describe your leadership philosophy.

There are many elements to it, but above and beyond all else, it’s centered around Servant Leadership. It’s the philosophy we learned from reading the work of Robert Greenleaf. The approach is based on the belief that our responsibility as leaders, first and foremost, is to serve the organization, not the other way around. One key element of it here is that it means that we—the leaders—view the staff as our customers. We need to give them great service every day to the people who work in our organization. The service that the staff gives to our front line customers will never be better than the service we give to them.

When you’re looking to hire, how do you decide if someone is right for your team?

There’s a wealth of ways to explore an applicant’s potential in the organization. But the most important issue for us is really values alignment. Obviously people need to be able to do the specific work at hand—baking, making sandwiches, marketing, etc. But the most important thing is do they share our values? Are they eager to learn, to work collaboratively, to give amazing service to everyone they interact with, to bring positive energy to work every day, etc.?

What is the biggest challenge your business is facing this year?

I think they’re pretty much the same challenges as every other year really. To continue to improve in every area of our work—to make our food better, our service better, to improve the quality of our workplace, to continue to develop our financial health, to live our values effectively every day. It’s hard to do but that’s the work.

Describe your approach to innovation.

I don’t think we have one actually. It’s interesting because we have highly developed approaches in writing and woven into our training work for almost everything else—we have “recipes” for giving great service, handling complaints, doing visioning, setting up training, tasting food, order accuracy, great finance, etc. Because the way we work—our food, our approach to organizational life, etc—is so different than the way others work, over the last few years we’ve had a fair few requests through ZingTrain (our training and consulting business) for me to present on our approach to innovation.

At first I was a bit stumped, feeling badly because we didn’t have a formal system for innovation. But after reflecting on the subject for a bit, I realized that innovation for us is just what we do. It’s so much part of everyone’s work here every day that we don’t need any formal “program” or policy on innovation and improvement is implicit in every “recipe” we have, in every process, and in everyone’s day to day activity. Everyone here is learning to lead, to run a sustainable business, to improve the quality of what we do.

For us, I think innovation is basically like showing up for work—you just get here and, in essence, it’s just part of what you do all day, just like smiling and greeting customers, checking quality, going the extra mile for coworkers, etc. In fact, I almost can’t imagine working without it. My belief is that most people are innovative and creative. I just think that they’re put into organizational settings in which they’re trained to turn their creativity off and do what they’re told to do. It’s a big loss for the country.

Outside of your own industry, whose work do you admire most?

I’ve already mentioned Robert Greenleaf. Peter Drucker and Edgar Schein also wrote some extremely helpful and insightful books about leadership. Brenda Ueland’s book on writing from 1938—“If You Want to Write”—was hugely inspiring. I’m also learning a lot from a number of the 19th and early 20th century anarchists. Emma Goldman had some pretty powerful things to say. Honestly I admire pretty much everyone who goes into whatever they do—parenting, business, sports, bussing tables, shining shoes, music, art—trying to do great things every day, and do it in a way that’s caring, kind and contributing positively to those around them.

If a recent college grad came to you and said he wanted to start his own business, what advice would you give him?

Without question I’d tell him—or her—to start by writing a vision of greatness. Visioning is a huge piece of what we do here at Zingerman’s. The vision is a picture of what success will look when you get to where you’re going at a particular point in the future. It’s got a good bit of detail—it’s a rich picture of what that future looks like, with plenty of detail about how big your business is, what you’re known for, what the people who work in it think about their jobs, how the community views you. It’s hugely helpful to do a personal piece as well—getting clear about how you feel about your work, what sort of work you do, how much money you make, how much you work, etc. is really valuable to know before you start.

There are no “right” or “wrong” visions—but if you’re not clear on where you’re going it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to get to where you want be. A vision is not the same as a strategic plan. We do those too. But the vision is where you’re going; the strategic plan is how you’re going to get there.

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

Companies are moving beyond the suggestion box.

In an effort to cut costs and create new products and services, firms are seeking ideas from their own employees on everything from money-saving strategies to product design. To encourage participation, some are holding contests, voting and setting up “ideas kiosks.”

It’s often the employees—rather than outside consultants—who know a company’s products and processes best. According to management experts, many of the most innovative companies tend to solicit ideas from staff throughout the organization, not just the executive ranks.

But it’s often hard for rank and file workers to be heard: Research has found that the average U.S. employee’s ideas, big or small, are implemented only once every six years, says Alan G. Robinson, a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Now though, more companies are realizing the value of their workers’ input. Spurring the process are so-called innovation-management programs such as BrainBank Inc., InnoCentive Inc. and Spigit Inc., which help companies set up online idea-submissions systems in which employees can enter, comment and vote on ideas.

Accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers launched an idea-management website called iPlace two years ago as a way to gather employee ideas that could help cut costs, improve customer service and increase revenues, says Mitra Best, the firm’s U.S. innovation leader.

Employees post ideas, sometimes in response to company-wide “ideas challenges,” and vote and comment on their colleagues’ submissions. The firm promises that a team of senior managers will review an idea within 30 days of its submission and notify the employee of its status.

About 60% of the firm’s 32,000 U.S. employees have either submitted, commented or voted on ideas, says Ms. Best. Of the more than 3,300 new ideas submitted—which range from mobile apps for expense reports to changing printer defaults to print double-sided—140 have been implemented.

Ms. Best says the firm doesn’t directly measure cost-savings from the ideas program, but that some suggestions, such as one that changed the way the firm collects employee expense receipts, have saved “hundreds of thousands” of dollars.

IdeasAmerica, an association for “suggestion administrators,” who manage suggestion submissions, surveyed 31 of its 125 members last year. The study found that submitted ideas saved respondents more than $110 million dollars in time, materials, labor or energy, an average of $1,256 per suggestion.

At Bruce Power LP, a nuclear energy company in Ontario, Canada, employees can submit ideas through 10 special-purpose kiosks throughout the plant dedicated to collecting employee ideas.

They look like ATMs, says Chief Executive Duncan Hawthorne. The company implemented the kiosks several years ago so that the plant’s workers, many of whom aren’t deskbound, could have an accessible way to submit proposals.

Employees vote on submissions. “It’s like the American Idol of ideas,” says Mr. Hawthorne.

Ideas submitted have ranged widely from improving efficiency by increasing stocks of tools to creating a dedicated facility for forklift maintenance.

Some 11,000 ideas have been submitted in three years among the firm’s roughly 7,500 employees and contractors, generating “millions” of dollars in cost-savings, says Mr. Hawthorne.

Some companies pay financial rewards for ideas (typically as a percentage of cost savings, which can be tough to measure) but Dr. Robinson says that isn’t usually an effective tactic for drawing submissions on a continuing basis. What drives most people to submit ideas is a real desire to make their work easier and cut through hassles, rather than monetary rewards, he says.

At Troyer Foods Inc., a Goshen, Ind., wholesale food distributor with about 280 employees, workers who submit ideas to an online system launched last spring receive points they can redeem for merchandise and other perks, such as designated parking spaces.

Becky Ball-Miller, Troyer’s CEO, says the company wants submitting ideas to be so ingrained that it becomes “part of the job expectation and part of the performance review.”

Ideas that have been implemented include adding another refrigerator to the break room and designating a section of the parking lot as “cars only” so large pickup trucks don’t block spaces; there have also been cost-saving suggestions encouraging the company to reexamine some pricey vendor contracts.

Great ideas can also come from unexpected places. When insurer Allstate Corp. held an online idea challenge to design a mobile app for its insurance products, one winning idea came from one of the firm’s Buffalo-based trial attorneys.

“I can guarantee you his boss didn’t ask him, ‘got any mobile ideas?’ ” says Matt Manzella, Allstate’s director of technology innovation.

The entrepreneur backing Umami Burger and Katsuya speaks about risks and opportunities

August 25, 2011 | By Lisa Jennings

Sam Nazarian, founder, chairman and chief executive of SBE.

As it approaches its 10-year anniversary next year, Los Angeles-based SBE is emerging as a deep-pocketed and diverse multi-concept operator of restaurants, hotels and nightclubs across the country.

Founder, chairman and chief executive Sam Nazarian has assembled a mushrooming collection of concepts, from José Andrés’ restaurant The Bazaar in Beverly Hills, Calif., to the first West Coast franchise operation of New York hot dog icon Papaya King.

Currently, SBE is taking its five-unit, upscale-casual Asian restaurant Katsuya national, with up to 20 locations planned for the next five years. And earlier this year, the company became an equal partner in Adam Fleischman’s five-unit Umami Burger.

Nazarian spoke with Nation’s Restaurant News about re-invention and the perils of sitting stagnant in the restaurant business.

What does your partnership with Adam Fleischman [pictured left] and Umami Burger bring to SBE?

It will be a separate entity, a separate company. But we have committed the equity and are very excited about Adam as a brand and Umami as a brand.

The difficulty in our business is that lightning in a bottle is very hard to catch. And what Adam has been able to do with Umami is to create a brand that resonates in a space that’s very crowded, and also to create scalability. With our partnership, we can help guide a guy like Adam to go from five to 50 stores.

What is the goal for Umami Burger’s growth?

Our goal is to get to 60 [restaurants]. That’s a function of time, finding the right locations and the right markets. We have a healthy pipeline already. The response is tremendous.

It’s an emotional brand … It’s not necessarily white tablecloth, or how many Michelin stars you have. It’s the connectivity of the product with the end user.

Culinary awareness is at an all-time high. Shows like Top Chef have made it that much more a part of the culture today. You see people really wanting to know about their food, their wine, the eco-friendly buildings they’re in. They want to know about the designer, the inspiration. I did not see that when I was growing up.

What are your plans for Katsuya?

I think it could exist in any major urban center. We have four versions of it now that we think touch all different kinds of consumers. We could hit 15 to 20 units within the next four or five years, just domestically. We’re looking at international opportunities too, but it’s still too fresh of a brand to go international right now.

Is The Bazaar restaurant in the SLS Hotel and your partnership with José Andrés growing?

Yes. SLS Miami opens in the first quarter next year and José is culinary director of the SLS brand.

One of the things we can be good at as a company is to be a really good platform for these amazing rock stars to flourish, whether it be an Adam, or a José or a Katsuya or Danny Elmaleh.

The restaurant space to me is a paradigm right now. Anybody today who says they know what will happen 10 years from now doesn’t know what they’re saying. This is an ever-changing business. You have to take risks. You can’t cookie-cutter anymore.

I think the institutional companies are at a big disadvantage to the companies willing to take risks. At a time of economic uncertainty, this is the best time to take risks. You’re taking risks when most people aren’t, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.

Tell me about your new concept, Mercato di Vetro.

At Mercato, for the first time that I’ve seen within a 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot restaurant, we’re putting the kitchen in the middle of the restaurant, where everything from the entrecote, to the mozzarella and salamis, to the pasta is being made.

Everybody comes in and you sit around and watch these “performers,” or chefs, and you see what you want to order. If you like it, you take it home. It’s a very simple philosophy.

What are your plans as the first franchisee of Papaya King in Los Angeles?

It’s a brand with unbelievable history and connectivity to a lot of people. A lot of people have tried to replicate it in New York. It has so much brand equity. It’s a specific experience of a juice and a hot dog cooked in a specific way with specific integrity. From Babe Ruth, to Julia Child to Martha Stewart, you name it, everyone’s eaten there.

We’ve talked about doing six or seven a year for the next three or four years.

What’s next for SBE?

It’s not something new, but it’s an evolution. I’m obsessed with communicating with clientele in the way they want to be communicated with. That, to me, is a game changer. The shotgun approach of advertising and blast emails and how to put butts in seats is so archaic.

The people that are doing it right are smaller operators with 20,000 followers on Twitter. The new aspect of SBE is culturally changing the process internally of embracing technology and at the same time maintaining originality. It’s working with social media and our marketing department, asking them to forget everything they’ve learned and to listen to the customer.

Time … is your friend, not your enemy!

By Kevin Kalstad, CPC  | Gecko Hospitality

In the past 4 weeks I have seen not one, but two great candidates walk away from two great job offers / opportunities. True Story!

Both situations were with different candidates and clients, but in essence it all boiled down to time. In my opinion, the candidate’s lack of patience for the client’s needs cost them these jobs. We tell our candidates that these searches take time! If the job you are interviewing has a larger title and area of responsibility, it will take even more time.

How long might these searches take? From the time we get your resume, to when you might get an offer, these are generally how long these searches might take.

Assistant Manager and or Sous Chef: Six to Eight weeks

Chef and or General Manager: Eight to Twelve weeks.

District or Area Manager: Twelve to Thirty Six weeks.

Bottom –Line?

We would urge you to be patient with the process. We want to place the right candidate, with the right client. More than ever, great companies are truly counting the total cost of each and every new hire they make. Hang in there with us, and we will get you a great job with and excellent company!

Send us your resume today to start the process. We never charge a fee to you, our candidates.

Another reason to ignore social media in the hiring process

Most of us have social networking profiles these days, and though survey results differ on the exact percentage, a whole lot of hiring managers and recruiters can’t resist taking a peek at them. And of course, the temptation to check out a candidate’s Facebook page is even stronger with a remote team, where you may have limited or no face-to-face contact with the person you’re considering hiring.

But do people get an accurate picture of others’ personalities from their social networking profiles? Is the practice of trawling through online profiles particularly subject to our biases and prejudices? Two psychologists from Auburn University have published a paper looking into the issue.

The study by Victoria Brown and E. Daly Vaughn in Journal of Business and Psychologywas written up recently on the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog and suggests that while a quick look at a candidate’s profile may feel harmless, there are actually pitfalls to the practice.

Previous research has found, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, that when it comes to our level of extroversion and openness, social networking profiles actually give visitors a fairly accurate portrait of our personalities (though we hide our neuroticism). But that accuracy depends on seeing a fairly long slice of our activity history, and Vaughn and Brown warn that with quick looks “we can also fall prey to drawing conclusions on the bases of a small sample of ‘recent activity’.”

Even more troubling is the likelihood that getting a look at the person you’re considering hiring may bring out your unconscious biases, according to the BPS blog.The authors also worry that SNS [social networking site] screening may be very prone to biases, given that SNS data gives ready indication of race, age, disability and other factors that shouldn’t be considerations in screening decisions.

The final conclusion? Though it might be tempting to take a look at a potential hire online, the authors argue that you should probably resist, recommending companies forbid “opportunistic online reviewing of some candidates but not others, and listing appropriate criteria,” such as viewing work samples on a graphic designer’s profile. They conclude “it may be better for organizations to ban the practice entirely.”

Is sneaking a peek at a candidate’s social networking profile helpful, or invasive and prone to bias?

By Jessica Stillman

Frontline Leaders Help Our Firms Go and Grow

Fred Hassan’s article, The Frontline Advantage, in the May 2011 Harvard Business Review (subscription required), turns the spotlight on the too-easily ignored and truly critical frontline leaders who make our organizations go and grow.  Frontline leaders are of course the managers and supervisors directly responsible for those doing the work.

“Typically, they make up 50% to 60% of a company’s management ranks and directly supervise as much as 80% of the workforce.”

Underscoring the importance of this group of leaders, Hassan offers:

“It is the frontline managers who must motivate and bolster the morale of the people who do the work-those who design, make and sell the products or services to the customers.  These managers are central to a company’s business strategy because they oversee its execution.”

While there’s much I don’t like about this article, including my interpretation of Hassan’s royal CEO and sometime turn-around miracle worker taking a pampered and well-facilitated walk amongst the common folk tone, his core theme: frontline leaders are really important is spot on. (In Hassan’s defense, he clearly highlights that his advice is for other CEOs.)

Great Front-line Leaders Create “Hustle and Flow”

Regular readers know I’ve got a problem with stores and businesses where customers seem to serve as inconveniences to sourpuss cashiers, unhelpful shelf-stockers and clusters of employees gabbing about something other than improving customer service.While those workers are just plain wrong, the responsibility for their performance falls squarely on the frontline leaders.

Alternatively, the businesses where you are welcomed, greeted with a smile by every employee you encounter and where your problems are politely and promptly solved, and where the energy level seems to say, “let’s help, and let’s be prompt about it,” owe their success to great people selection and day-to-day leadership of good frontline leaders.

Great frontline leaders create great experiences for their employees. This flows immediately and directly to customers.  And then it flows to the top and bottom lines.

Wrinkly-Shirted Bridge Lizards Need Not Apply:

During an interview for Practical Lessons in Leadership, one of the managers at a company we visited, indicated that the frontline leaders who did the most damage were the  Wrinkly-Shirted managers, who preferred to spy on everyone from behind the one-way glass on the “bridge” above the retail floor, rather than interact with employees and customers.

The visual image of a green, scale-covered manager wearing a wrinkled corporate-issue button down shirt, standing on high with a tongue occasionally flickering out, and glowering at everyone through beady, black eyes, is a powerful and fitting image of the worst-kind of frontline leader.

Five Reasons why Great Front-Line Leaders are Priceless:

1. Frontline leaders are close to the customer. They know how the customers respond to every brilliant and not-so-brilliant idea that rolls out of corporate.  They know the tastes and habits and brand preferences and problems of their customers, and they know what’s going on with competition in detail, long before corporate types have analyzed the latest competitive press release. These individuals are treasure-troves of real-time, detailed customer and market information.

2. Hassan is right…frontline leaders are the ones who execute on strategy. Everyone else plans, talks, reports, critiques and thinks about strategy execution…front-line leaders live it.  Want to do a better job executing on plans where it counts…educate and support the frontline leaders and let them know how important they are in this process.

3. Frontline leaders directly determine how right or wrong the working environment (atmosphere) is for the employees serving the customers. A healthy, respectful working environment where employees are given quality feedback, supported for development and encouraged to cultivate new schools through training and job rotation, goes a long way to creating that “Hustle and Flow” referenced earlier.

4. Today’s quality frontline leaders are tomorrow’s effective general managers and executives. Learning the business from the front is infinitely more valuable than attempting to absorb it from on high. Give me someone who has worked in the trenches with the troops over the classroom educated chair sitter any day.

5. Great frontline leaders drive results. One of my favorite examples: the most valuable sales person in every organization may very well be the field sales manager who supports, coaches, motivates, and helps his/her salespeople move towards success.  The same holds true for great frontline leaders everywhere.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I’m always glad to see positive coverage of this critical group of organizational leaders. Hassan’s article serves to remind us how important it is to pay attention to and support our frontline leaders.  Based on my informal “smile test,” there are a fair number of frontline leaders who need to be doing something else.  Soon.  And for those who get it…here’s hoping you run your organization some day. Just don’t forget where you came from.

As a recruiter in the restaurant industry, I have the opportunity to come in contact with hundreds of people every day from all facets of the hospitality industry. Many of them are employed but looking for a better opportunity. Some seek career counseling and we have stimulating conversations on the pros and cons of staying where they are currently working. And then others are unemployed.
The unemployed fall into three categories. There are those who are dying to get back into a restaurant, hotel or Cafeteria as a manager as fast as possible. They hate being unemployed and miss the fast pace customer service oriented business. The second group is those that are unemployed but want to hold out for the right job. That job has the title they want with at least the salary they were making before. It also has to be in a desirable location and with a company that is “Not a Step Down” form the company that let them go. They will stay on unemployment as long as a check comes in the mail and hold out for the perfect job. The third group is people who just can’t find work. They live in a place where opportunities are few and they can’t afford to relocate. They would be more than willing to work at Subway during the day and McDonald’s at night just so they can pay the bills and strive to have a better life.
I believe that there is a large group of Americans who fall into the second category and frankly it drives me crazy! Over the past year I have seen more candidates turn down job interviews and job offers because the job wasn’t the ideal job they are looking for. Sometimes the salary was $1000 a year less then they were making before. Sometimes it was because they didn’t want to work weekends or late nights any more. Other times it’ because the restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol and they view it as step down. These people choose to stay on unemployment often because they have a spouse who is working and they just aren’t in a hurry to get back to work. Their spouse and our tax dollars are paying the bills. Now I know this isn’t everyone however I wonder, have we made it to easy for American’s to stay home and not go back to work?

The Dirty Little Secret of Successful Companies

How many times have you heard the head of a company whether it be in the Restaurant Industry, Hospitality Industry or even with Gecko Hospitality Corporate, say it’s successful because of its great people? You hear it in speeches and you read it in interviews, books, and other company propaganda. And it sounds great — gracious and humble and nice. It may even be true, but it is not the whole story.

What these people don’t tell you in those interviews and books — and I’ve read quite a few — is that great companies may be great at a lot of things, but they do not always hire the right people. And that leaves them in the same place as the rest of us (but probably less often). It’s a dirty little secret that even great companies have to fire the people who don’t work out. You don’t read about it very often, because firing people doesn’t make for great public relations. It doesn’t seem gracious or nice. But that can leave a false impression.

Over the years my hiring mistakes often got me wondering what I was doing wrong. I thought I was the only one who was struggling with this. I was trying to build my business, and I was dealing with all of the repercussions of not understanding the best ways to hire, train, and manage employees. Here are some of the things I eventually learned.

If you want to run a great company — a company they gives great customer service and delivers a great product and has happy employees and a good bottom line, you occasionally have to fire people. Who? The people who after exhaustive training and coaching and counseling cannot do the job. The people who would probably be rated a six on a scale of one to 10. You’ve probably already parted company with the people who rate worse than a six – but it’s the sixes who can be tricky. They’re not that bad, but they’re just not good.

How can you spot the sixes? You know who they are. You might even like them. They can seem capable, but they can also be unreliable. They make too many mistakes, they aren’t good with people, they are sloppy, they have trouble separating their personal time from work time, they aren’t honest, they don’t accept responsibility, they waste time and they can be disrespectful of co-workers. Here’s the real test: What would your visceral response be if they quit? Relief? I think that says it all.

With all of these issues, it’s a matter of degree. Some people struggle with many of the issues, and some people are really bad with one or two. Based on my conversations with other business owners, I can tell you that most owners will admit to keeping some sixes (and even some fours and fives). They concede that they struggle with the idea of firing them. And that, of course, is their privilege. They can keep them if it makes them happy. The problem is, it usually doesn’t.

These owners are trying to get to “the next level,” to become profitable or maybe just to stay in business. The problem is that firing people is not fun, easy or pleasant. As a matter of fact, it might be the hardest part of being the boss. Many times, these people are nice and they’re trying hard, but they just aren’t suited for the job. The question is: What about the boss who keeps them? I’ve heard every rationalization in the book (as if there is a book about how to run a mediocre company). People are confused; I was confused. It is hard to reconcile trying to be a good boss with trying to be a good person.

I once gave a speech to a large group of insurance brokers. Before the speech, the organizer asked me to sit in on a round-table discussion of brokers talking about how to build their businesses. A woman commented that her company was struggling and that she had hired some new salespeople to find more business. I asked her what she does if after six months or so it becomes obvious that a salesperson is not bringing in business. Would she fire the person? Without hesitation, she blurted out, “I have to look myself in the mirror!” — as if firing someone who isn’t doing the job would make her a bad person.

I have a hard time looking myself in the mirror if I keep someone around who can’t do the job. It is not fair to the other employees, and it certainly isn’t fair to my customers. How would you feel about flying on a plane with a pilot who is a “six?” What about the nurse who cares for your mother in the hospital? The mechanic who fixes the brakes on your car? The person who works for your insurance broker and is in charge of making sure your policies are renewed?

Some sixes might become nines in a different job (maybe even at your company). If you truly want to run a great company, you have to have the right people in the right jobs. Some people will question whether you have the right to make these judgments – but if it’s your business, you not only have the right, you have the responsibility. And I can tell you from personal experience, with 102 employees, business is much easier when the right people are doing things right.

People frequently ask me how I have time to write this blog. It’s because of my great people!

Hiring and stock prices are up, reflecting a measure of economic improvement.
By Sharon Bernstein, Los Angeles Times

October 28, 2010

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Are we becoming a nation of hamburger flippers?

While it remains incredibly tough to find a job in almost any field, Restaurant Managers in the restaurant business has been adding workers at a considerable clip.

In September, restaurants and bars in the U.S. added 34,000 jobs. In that same month, the entire private sector added just 64,000 jobs.

“The economy has recovered a little bit and people want to eat out,” said Jack Russo, senior consumer analyst for Edward Jones Investments. That has spurred hiring and prompted enthusiasm on Wall Street, where investors are hungry for any morsel of good news.

Restaurant stocks are soaring.

Shares of McDonalds, for example, are up by a third from this time last year, and some chains are doing even better. The stock prices of the Calabasas Hills-based Cheesecake Factory and the Glendale-based Dinequity, which owns the Applebee’s and IHOP chains, have more than doubled.

For many young people entering the job market in the aftermath of the recession, jobs waiting tables and tending bar are among the few opportunities available.

Peter Osborne, who owns Pete’s Cafe and Pedro’s Cantina in San Francisco, recently hired 35 waiters, bartenders and other workers.

“At 25 years old, a lot of these kids have graduated college,” Osborne said. “They’re taking jobs that you and I might have had while we were in college.”

Restaurant executives say more people are looking upon the field as a career rather than a pit stop on the way to another vocation.

“We are seeing more applicants coming to us not only for the hourly jobs, but for the management programs that we have,” said Mike Mirkil, spokesman for Irvine-based Habit Restaurants Inc., which owns 31 Habit Burger locations. “There are more people now who are really looking at the restaurant industry as a means for a career path.”

Long Beach resident Kiri Meas, 50, didn’t hesitate last month before quitting her job of seven years as manager of a Santa Monica Cinnabon bakery.

“I did not at all worry about finding another job,” she said. “The food industry is all around.”

Within three weeks she’d been scooped up by the Panda Restaurant Group to be general manager of a Panda Express restaurant. She is now one of dozens of new recruits going through training at the firm’s Rosemead headquarters, learning skills as varied as cooking Chinese food and dealing with armed intruders.

Many of the new workers will stay for years, said Gigi Cheung, who heads hiring operations for the 18,000-employee chain.

The attraction of restaurant jobs may have increased in the aftermath of the recession, but it’s part of a long-developing trend. Over the last 20 years, the number of people working at restaurants and bars in the U.S. has increased by about 3 million, according to a Times analysis of data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such work accounts for 9% of all private-sector jobs in the U.S., up from 7% in 1990.

One factor fueling the trend is that restaurant work can’t, for the most part, be outsourced. “You can’t serve restaurant meals from Shanghai,” said Edward Leamer, economist and director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast.

But Leamer cautioned that restaurant jobs alone won’t go far toward revitalizing the economy.

“These jobs are good in the short run, but in the long run economic growth cannot be made from you and I trading one meal for another,” he said. Rather, manufacturing or intellectual products such as movies and technical innovation need to come back before the economy can truly heal and grow, Leamer said.

Many restaurant jobs are part time and offer lower pay and fewer benefits than positions in other fields, experts said.

Still, analysts view the most recent spate of hiring as an indication that the economy is beginning to improve. Even though sales at restaurants have essentially been flat this year, according to the NPD Research firm, that’s better than the declines they had suffered through. And the firm predicts that more customers will patronize bars and eateries during the fourth quarter.

Steve West, restaurant industry analyst for Stifel Nicolaus in St. Louis, said the increases in share prices for restaurant firms were driven by large hedge funds and other institutional investors that are betting that the industry will rebound strongly in the coming months.

Even a modest increase in sales can lead restaurants to hire more people, said Hudson Riehle, head of research for the National Restaurant Assn. Unlike other businesses, which might make do with smaller staffs even as the economy improves, restaurants need to hire more people to cook, serve, deliver and clean up when customers start coming back.

Robert Spivak, president of Grill Concepts, a Woodland Hills company that owns the Daily Grill restaurants, said that as customers started spending more in recent months, the firm provided more hours of work for its employees.

“As our sales go up, our scheduling goes up,” he said.

Giacomino Drago, who operates seven restaurants, including Il Pastaio in Beverly Hills, says he has hired between 30 and 40 people in the last year. He didn’t have any trouble finding them.

For some of the openings, he said, as many as 50 people applied.

“It was scary,” Drago said.

sharon.bernstein@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times