Ken Pendery finds the greatest challenge in business is knowing what to do when times get tough. Yet, the president and CEO of
First Watch Restaurants Inc. says staying consistent, producing a quality product and developing quality people will push you
through any challenge. Pendery says it’s easy to panic in tough times and try to be all things to all people, but that’s not the
approach he takes at First Watch, which, systemwide, employs about 2,000 full- and part-time workers at more than 76 restaurants
in 11 states and posted 2006 revenue of more than $70 million. You have to be flexible, he says, but you also have to make sure
you either stick to your guns the best you can or determine that your business model is broken and retool it. Smart Business
spoke with Pendery about how to develop a trusting work environment and why making no decision is worse than making the
wrong decision.
Practice what you preach. It is going to take
some actions over time to be convincing.
You do your best to present a consistent
message, and I tell my people, ‘What you
see is what you get.’
I have no hidden agenda. You can ask a
question any time, and I am as forthright
and clear as I possibly can be. If I’m not
clear enough and you have questions,
ask. I’m telling you all that I know.
I ask others to do the same. Lay it on
the line, and don’t have any hidden agendas, but there’s no question that kind of
thing is developed over time.
It’s something that a successful company has to have as part of its culture.
Either it is a trusting environment or it is
not. People throughout an organization
see it and feel it over time. Just because
one says it is, doesn’t mean it is so. They
need to see it practiced and see it in
actions.
It is part of the trust factor and letting
people know proper or effective priorities. I do it. I have two kids in college. I
try to set the example of following them
to their baseball games or following
them in their graduation or in some of
their events. I set the pace and set the
example, and you expect others to do
the same thing.
On the same token, you’d like to think
if you are the first one in the office or the
last one out of the office or the first one
in to work, then you set the example of
what you wear, what you say and how
you say it.
Stay involved in the community. You get your
management that is involved in runs for
the cancer society or multiple sclerosis;
if you have a management person who is
a runner him- or herself, and they are
doing that sort of thing, the company
gets behind it.
We usually don’t just pick one randomly. We do it frequently behind our
employee or management base that happens to be involved at the same time. If they come to us or want us involved, we
go after it from that standpoint.
You get a lot of requests about someone having a beach run for someone
you’ve never heard of. Someone is sending out, ‘Dear business owner, please
send us $5 or $500 to support this.’ We
don’t respond to those very often, if at
all, because it is not employee-based or
something that we know anything about.
You get a lot of larger requests, and it
crosses your mind sometimes. You feel
like you aren’t being as kind or generous
as you’d like to be because sometimes
it’s not even a financial thing, it’s just you
don’t know anything about it.
Don’t have meetings for the sake of meeting. We
meet probably monthly, and the smaller
executive team meets every week or
every other week. I put out an agenda for
us that people know when the meeting is
in advance and, if they have a topic, they
get it on the agenda. It is open input. We
get the feedback, communicate, and
that’s how we get on the same page.
Sometimes, you can get to the point
where you feel like you are meeting just
to have a meeting because it is regularly
scheduled. A lot of times, if we get a few
days before the meeting and we don’t
feel that we have enough of an agenda,
we will cancel the meeting. We’ll have
lunch and cover a couple of quick topics
so we don’t waste each other’s time.
Act quickly to fix mistakes. We all make
wrong decisions. Making no decision is
the worse thing.
Recognizing that the idea, plan or decision didn’t work and going back and correcting it is more important than getting
hung up on right and wrong decisions. I
try to get back quickly to recognizing the
success of our decision-making and, if
we blew it, then fix it.
Don’t fall in love with written communication.
There is room for miscommunication or
just the message not being in the right
tone or tenor. I will always go for oral
and try not to have it be via e-mail,
memo or letter. If you have to, that’s the
last resort. I will always go for picking
up the phone or face to face as the No. 1
priority. The more intense topic, it’s
almost a demand that we do it face to
face.
Operate under a team approach. I happen to
operate — and I test this simply by asking the management team if my assumption is correct — under a team approach.
We frequently have meetings or discussions. I travel to restaurants and solicit
input as much as possible. Infrequently,
people look at me and say, ‘What is the
final decision?’ Usually, the decision is
made because all the quality input or by
consensus. Every great now and then,
it’s viewed as, ‘We are waiting for Ken’s
stamp.’
HOW TO REACH: First Watch Restaurants Inc., (941) 907-9800
or www.firstwatch.com