Why You Should View Your Employees The Way That Hooters Does
If you own, run, or just started a service business — you’ve probably spent a considerable amount of time and money on your business processes, capital goods, inventory, and infrastructure. You probably also tend to think of all of this (the effort, expense, and results so far) as your ‘business’. Oh… and you’ve also likely had to hire some people to do some of the work that needs to be done in and around ‘your business’. This is the wrong attitude. You need to view your employees the way that Hooters does!
Most people know that Hooters has seating, lots of TVs, and serves food and beverages. Plenty of other businesses offer the same basic stuff at similar or even better prices. Still, people (mostly men) choose to go to Hooter’s because of the people (mostly women) that work there. Now I don’t claim to have any unique access to the minds of Hooters’ founders, but it would be a stretch to imagine that they started their business with the following empowering and respectful premise —Hooters employees are what distinguishes an otherwise completely adequate business from their abundant competition — they probably didn’t. But the fact that they are still in business tells me that they probably came around to the idea eventually.
What I can claim from my background in mathematics and problem solving is that, like Hooters, extreme examples (does it work with zero? how about infinity?) help to prove the rule. And that rule is this: If you have customers — and your customers are people — then the unique attributes, abilities and work experience of your employees are what distinguishes your completely adequate business from your competition and ultimately, after everything else is up to snuff, determines its success or failure. It’s time to understand that the people that work for you ‘are’ your business — all the other stuff you think of as ‘your business’ simply supports what they do in order to make money for you. Sure they can be replaced, but if they’re good at what you hired them to do, you’re going to moan having to do it. Sure, some of your processes can be replaced by automation, but that just gives those that remain more required responsibilities, more power to affect your business, and ultimately more fundamental importance.
“The goal of management is to remove obstacles.” — Paul Orfalea, Founder: Kinko’s (document copy and business services)
Paul Orfalea grew a simple service business into an empire bought in 2004 by FedEx for $2.4 Billion dollars. From his utterances concerning employees over the years , it is clear to me that he prioritized employees. Having employee priority inverted is probably why so many companies’ HR departments have ‘issues’. In these companies, HR is run under the direction of Management as simply another department — with Management’s interests forming the basis of those directives — and are seen as mere bureaucratic functionaries administering compensation, overseeing benefits, implementing ‘top-down’ training initiatives; dealing with workplace compliance issues and above all making any and all employee problems ‘go-away’ as expeditiously as possible. The irony is that the people in the same company’s IT department probably have more understanding, respect and concern for the needs and capabilities of their software, servers and routers than their HR typically does for their company’s people. Searching the web, I gather that this is probably true even at Hooters — or at least was at some point.
The management process, on a basic level is about control. When interpreted as ‘getting people to do what you want’ the people being managed will bristle and tend to resist any perceived manipulation. I don’t have specific answers regarding a more collaborative leadership style but others do. The U.S. Military — sticklers for strict ‘chains of command’ and ‘following orders’ — has developed their own unique philosophy that they call ‘Mission Command’. “ It represents a culture where mutual trust and the concomitant willingness to accept prudent risk govern. It comes with an expectation that commanders respect their subordinates’ judgment and issue orders that focus on intent rather than tasks. Mission command relies on a shared understanding (of the environment and expectations) that enables every member of the team to exercise disciplined initiative. When done well, mission command is the result of effective leadership.”* The U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual also outlines a process of “Be, Know, Do” which you can order from Amazon or read online from the link below.
At least now you’ve gained some insight into a fundamental truth about businesses from a ‘visit’ to Hooters — one that should have been fairly apparent were it not for the distraction of their over the top and (what seems at first glance only crassly exploitative) implementation of that fundamental truth. I’ll leave you with one more from Paul and then some links below.
“The people in the front lines are my customers. I need to keep them happy. And, the best way to take care of your customers is to take care of your workers.” — Paul Orfalea
* “Mission Command #Leadership and the U.S. Army” — Thomas Williams
