A startup hospitality company in the Restaurant industry has engaged you as a co

Question

A startup hospitality company in the Restaurant industry has engaged you as a consultant to assist them with the build out of their organizational capability. The company is building 5 new restaurants in 5 different markets. These are all “fast casual” dining concepts. You are one of several consultants who are working on this project – each of you is working on different areas.

You have been tasked with building the following:

Determining a personality profile tool the company will use in the hiring process. You may choose to use the DISC, MBTI, or other third party assessment currently existing. At this point the company does not want to build their own. Whichever existing third party tool you choose, you must defend your choice.

Create a Competency Analysis for the company. The company wants you to research those competencies which are “critical to success” in the restaurant industry generally, and in the fast casual dining space specifically. Using that factual grounding, you need to recommend the 10 competencies necessary for a restaurant Unit Manager to possess. The company will uses this to identify high potential hourly associates for promotion, for external hiring, and for training.

The company founders believe very strongly in a Servant Leadership model, and in a collaborative work environment, where each employee’s contribution and suggestions are important. It is also very focused on avoiding unionization in any of their units. But, they recognize that even highly collaborative work teams need a leader with focused power. You are to research the various aspects of power, and design a power profile in which both the formal and informal power are focused on the Unit Manager – but which is done in a way that fosters strong collaboration.   In this, you need to address the following:

What decisions require collaboration?

What decisions may be made unilaterally by the Unit Manager

What is the process by which employee input may be "escalated" above the unit manager - say to a regional manager?

For issues which may be "escalated" above the unit, what is the process by which these issues are resolved.

What power may the Unit Manager delegate - and what accountability is delegated with those?

What are the standards of behavior/conduct with respect to the Unit Manager as it pertains to social and informal relationships with employees?

Explanation / Answer

The DISC profile is a non-judgmental tool used for discussion of people's behavioral, mainly differences. If you participate in a DISC program, you'll be asked to complete a series of questionnaires that produce a detailed report about your personality and behavior. You'll also receive tips related to working with people of other styles.

DISC can be also known as a behavior assessment tool based on the DISC theory of psychologist William Moulton Marston which centers on four different behavioral traits, namely dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance.

Now, MBTI (Myers–Briggs Type Indicator) is an introspective self-report questionnaire with the purpose of indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world around them and make decisions.

The purpose MBTI personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological 'types' described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people's lives. The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in the behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment.

I would preferably choose MBTI, because the questionnaire and the prompt decision to take post-questionnaire round is easy to understand from both, consultant and the employees point of view. For instance, following is a small test regarding MBTI, which will show how the latter is much understandingly easy to procure:

Competency Analysis can be termed as a procedure to identify the knowledge, skills and process abilities required to perform an organization's business activities so that they may be developed and used as a basis for workforce practices.

Competency analysis firstly begins with identification of the workforce competencies required to perform the organizational business activities.

Once the competencies are identified, a mapping between the targeted versus actual value of competencies is required to measure, analyze and predict the future capability of competencies and take necessary corrective or preventive action, either to enhance or to maintain the current capability.

Identifying the tasks, skills, knowledge and attitude required to perform various organizational roles can be used in formulating job description, assessing employees’ current level of competency, and activities like planning career development and coordinating competency development.

So, following can be the competencies which ‘critical to success’

A unit manager needs to have the following 10 competencies:

Now, there are many such tasks which require collaboration. For instance, the fulfilment of the feedback procedure, i.e. taking feedbacks from the customers regarding the food, its taste, ambience, service, etc., cannot be done solely by the employees. The maximum approach they can do is to ask or note the feedbacks, then it’s the Unit manager’s role to collect such responses from them and to enact on them. Thus, feedback procedure, from noting to enacting, required collaboration of both the entities.

Other tasks which might require collaborations could be regarding cleanliness, management, compliances, delivery (if it exists), safety, etc.

Now, unlike these tasks, there are many other tasks which can and should be done solely by the Unit managers.

Final decisions regarding which feedback to enact and which doesn’t require to be enacted on. Ordering the lower level staff regarding daily stuffs. Boss around for cleanliness, orders and dispatches of deliveries. Be at the counter. Taking the responsibility if something goes wrong around the unit, etc.

To escalate any employee’s efficiency and productivity is not an easy job. It requires both aggressiveness and tenderness. An employee’s input might be escalated if he is allowed to share and express his viewpoint. If there is collaborative effort involved, it can be achieved. In a Servant leadership model, which exists in this startup, this type of escalation might be possible.

To solve any issues, major preferences should be given to hear everybody’s voice related to the restaurant or the issue itself. Everyone has seen something different from each other, and everybody might have something new and different from each other. Who knows is one voice out of all might be an answer to the issue.

Issues, once occurred, need to be rectified in such a way that they cannot happen the second time. NO secondary options should be used temporary. The issue should be fixed then and there itself, forever.

Compliances should be taken care of.

Delegation of Authority is a necessary as well as a boon, too. A unit manager can delegate work like being welcoming to the consumers, or arrangement of some ambience changes, rectifying errors etc, and depending whom he is allocating the work, that person should be accountable for that work.

There are many standards of behavior/conduct with respect to the Unit Manager as it pertains to social and informal relationships with employees:

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse A
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.