Accentuate the positives
While knowing your strengths is vital to developing a vision, youneed to know how to leverage them to win in the marketplace.
“I may know I have a height advantage over you, if you and I areplaying basketball,” Silva says. “But, my ability to use my height onthe court is critical to winning. You and I have seen it a milliontimes: A guy may be taller, but he gets his butt whooped in basketball because he’s not using his height advantage. Just havingthat advantage is nothing. It’s understanding how to use it. Peopleassume because you have it, you use it and you win with it. Quitehonestly, it’s scary how many businesses you look at that may havean advantage but aren’t using it appropriately.”
While it may sound as simple as just doing more of what you aregood at, Silva says that is not the case.
“Although that sounds intellectually logical from a reasoning perspective, organizations don’t work that way,” he says. “You’re notconnected by a metal chain. It’s just not that simple. The activitythat is happening in one of our 830 restaurants across the countryis being done by people who are humans and the people turn over,so it’s not always the same person doing it.
“A great deal of the success — of creating, making the activity successful — goes into how you train, how you hire, how you communicate, what the environment is like, what systems you have in placeand what reward programs do you have in place.”
In order to leverage your advantages, you need to make sure youcommunicate what those are and engage the whole organizationby explaining why you are successful.
For example, an engaged and motivated employee might have thebest intentions when trying to improve the company. But, if theemployee’s efforts go against what the data show, you have toexplain to that employee why you don’t do it his or her way.
“Our policy is to put a half an ounce of ketchup on a burger,” hesays. “So, when you are training your employees, it’s a half anounce of ketchup. It sounds pretty simple, right? But an employeeloves ketchup and loves more ketchup on their burgers, and theyreally care about guest experience, they are going to pour on theketchup, right? I want you to give them ‘plus one’ service. I wantyou to give the service that you want to give your family member.He’s thinking, &#x
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18;Man, this is cool. I’m going to give them a full ounceof ketchup because it’s going to make that burger taste better.’
“Simple example, but the reality is, if you explain to that employee, ‘Guess what, we’ve done tests, and we’ve tested it, and we realize that half an ounce of ketchup is optimal because it doesn’t overpower the onions, it doesn’t overpower the pickles and it … complements the taste on the beef.’ (You) go through that with them andsay, ‘This is why it is so important that you get exactly half an ounce,not more, not less.’
“That employee will be focused on saying, ‘Well, hold on a second. If I want to give this customer the best service ever, it’s gettingexactly half an ounce.’”
While you may not be dealing in ketchup and burgers at your company, an employee could be well intentioned but uninformed, whichmeans you need to communicate why something is done a certainway to effectively leverage the data you have collected.
“Once you explain that to people, they understand why they’redoing it and how it connects’” he says. “You don’t have to continueto remind them about half an ounce. It’s amazing how much moreemployees will give you when you explain things to them.”