In 1994 the husband and wife team of Dewey Johnson and Wanda Oland purchased a rough and tumble saloon in Apple Valley, Minnesota, that had metal doors so that glass wouldn't break if anyone got forcefully tossed out into the parking lot. Over the past fifteen years-- through hard work, determination, and a passion for the business-- Wanda and Dewey have transformed that former rowdy watering hole into Rascal's, one of Apple Valley's most popular family restaurants.
Not only have Wanda and Dewey adapted and demonstrated flexibility in building their business over the last-decade-and-a-half, they have shown particular savvy in navigating through the current recession. Wanda and Dewey have a strategy for success that can be summed up as follows: know your business, know your employees, know your customers.
Wanda and Dewey know their business. Wanda has spent her entire professional career in restaurants. Dewey's background is as a general contractor, but much of what he learned in that discipline translates to the restaurant industry.
When business started to slide with the economy, Wanda and Dewey applied the principle, "If you want to find out what's happening with your business, work the back room." Dewey spent months in the kitchen working hard, talking with employees, and discovering potential efficiencies.
For example, Dewey built a laundry room and Rascal's now washes its own linens at significant savings. The couple decided to shop different vendors for such things as paper, chemicals, groceries and credit card processing, and realized additional savings. Wanda says, "We took a good hard look at everything."
Wanda and Dewey have gone through three significant remodels, and Dewey has in effect acted as the general contractor. Dewey hand-built every table in Rascal's. He custom built the bar with thick maple planks formerly used as bowling lanes. Yes, bowling lanes. He has raised and lowered flooring and installed windows. He put in auto-paper towel dispensers because they are more efficient. He has done it all with the physical facility.
The couple went to a part-time bookkeeper and because margins are small, Wanda pays extremely close attention to every penny that comes in and goes out. She says, "Everything we touch matters." All a part of knowing your business.
Wanda and Dewey know their employees too. A number of their people, including kitchen help, servers, and at least one bartender, have been with them from the beginning. How do they achieve such loyalty? They talk with and listen to their folks, and they treat them right.
With the recession, like countless other businesses, Rascal's watches labor hours closely. But instead of releasing people or reducing hourly pay, Wanda and Dewey developed a flexible schedule that allows employees to swap hours and take time off when they need it. They have not backfilled some positions. Wanda does her best to manage labor efficiently based on the flow of customer traffic and to spread out available hours fairly among the staff.
From a morale standpoint, Rascals' employees see the owners there virtually every day, dressed in blue jeans and ready to work. Wanda says, "Don't ever ask an employee to do something that you're not willing to do yourself."
Finally and perhaps most importantly, Wanda and Dewey know their customers (Wanda calls them their "guests"). They understand their guests expect high quality food and excellent service, and in these two areas nothing has changed. Many menu items are home-made. They make their own dressings and sauces. They fillet their own walleye, always fresh, never frozen. They whip up their own batter. They boil and mash their own potatoes. Portion sizes have not changed.
During the down economy, Wanda and Dewey figured their guests would appreciate an opportunity to still go out to eat, but save money. They devised a daily calendar-- featuring enticements like inexpensive burgers, free video games and musical entertainment, or a kids-eat-free from 10 to 2 deal on Sundays-- that encourages people to come out and enjoy themselves any day of the week without spending too much.
They have also tinkered with the menu, focusing on foods that remind people of good old-fashioned home cooking. Guests can now eat meatloaf, turkey, or pot roast at Rascal's.
Rascal's offers catering, serving corporate groups, weddings, local schools, and others. Rascal's hosts fundraisers, most recently an event in support of the Courage Center. In short, Rascal's does whatever is necessary to market their product and reward-- and hopefully build upon-- a loyal guest base.
Survival in the current economy is a struggle even for the healthiest of businesses. But those organizations that understand the business they are in, treat their employees with respect, and focus continually on the needs of their customers will do best. Wanda Oland says it well: "We touch a lot of lives. We'll make it through and we'll be stronger for it."
Two final but important notes: The metal doors are gone, thanks to Dewey Johnson. And I can personally testify that Rascal's homemade meatloaf is to die for. What could be better during a recession than comfort food?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Share Knowledge and Information in All Directions
I spoke with an executive recently who told me about the corporate culture in his company. Secrecy, withholding critical information, and inconsistent communication were common practice. My friend was frustrated to no end. Organizations that fail to share important knowledge and information up, down and across struggle in the long run.
No organization achieves perfection with regard to information sharing, because human judgment is involved. Obviously, some data is not appropriate for wide distribution. Sometimes, confidentiality is a necessity. To communicate well requires time, focus and effort, which are often in short supply.
Nevertheless some companies, such as Pixar Animation Studios, excel as learning organizations that openly and honestly share knowledge. Pixar is one of the most successful film production companies of all time. The "fraternity of geeks" who work at Pixar succeeded in transforming hand-drawn cel animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics. The string of movies thus created, starting with Toy Story in 1995, have been hugely popular and critically acclaimed.
Through it all, a corporate culture that highly values information-sharing at every level within the organization has enabled Pixar to continue to produce one hit after another.
The September 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review cited several reasons for Pixar's sustained creative success. Among other things, the company espouses a philosophy that "we are smarter than me." The company believes that everyone needs to be involved in the creative process and, to that end, communication throughout all levels is imperative.
Next, Pixar works to hire good people, to support them, and to foster an environment where trust and respect are a given. More specifically, those good people are encouraged to take risks, knowing that they will inevitably make mistakes. Talented people will learn from failures and use their hard-earned discoveries to move forward more effectively on subsequent projects.
Finally, Pixar's culture is flat, collegial and extremely peer-oriented. Hierarchies are out, everyone is treated with respect, and both honest feedback and careful listening are encouraged and rewarded.
One very specific and practical example of the way information-sharing plays itself out is Pixar University. Every employee is encouraged to spend as many as four hours a week furthering his/her education. Pixar University offers more than a hundred courses, from filmmaking and writing to sculpture, painting and drawing.
Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University, says, "We offer the equivalent of an undergraduate education in fine arts and the art of filmmaking." And this is not just fun time or a way to avoid work, but rather a critical job expectation. Nelson says, "This is part of everyone's work. We're all filmmakers here. We all have access to the same curriculum. In class, people from every level sit right next to our directors and the president of the company."
Pixar University epitomizes the concept of broad knowledge-sharing. Nelson asserts, "The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization. Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant."
At Pixar University, employees are also encouraged to try new things, take risks, and learn from mistakes. The University crest says in Latin: "Alienus Non Diutius," which translates to "alone no longer." Says Nelson, "It's the heart of our model, giving people opportunities to fail together and to recover from mistakes together."
In addition to excellent financial results, Pixar has earned countless industry accolades for its work, including 22 Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, and three Grammys. Every Pixar film produced since 2001 was nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar and four of those movies, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E, came home with the little golden statuette.
Pixar Animation Studios provides an incredibly compelling example of an organization that sees the critical value in gathering information from a diverse variety of sources and then sharing it openly up, down and across the company. Those individuals who hold information closely would not survive in such a culture. Pixar's reputation as a place where creative genius thrives is indeed well-earned.
Companies like Pixar that set themselves up as learning organizations and follow through on that commitment tend to be successful. Other organizations-- where secrecy, lack of clarity, and generally poor communication all around are the rule-- suffer in the end.
Where does your organization or team sit on the communication spectrum? Do you openly share important knowledge and information in all directions? Does your culture foster honest feedback and careful listening? What do you personally contribute from a communication standpoint?
A human or animal organism needs circulation of blood and nutrients to all parts of the body in order to have full physical health. Similarly, freely flowing knowledge and information are the "lifeblood" of any organization that hopes to achieve robust business outcomes.
No organization achieves perfection with regard to information sharing, because human judgment is involved. Obviously, some data is not appropriate for wide distribution. Sometimes, confidentiality is a necessity. To communicate well requires time, focus and effort, which are often in short supply.
Nevertheless some companies, such as Pixar Animation Studios, excel as learning organizations that openly and honestly share knowledge. Pixar is one of the most successful film production companies of all time. The "fraternity of geeks" who work at Pixar succeeded in transforming hand-drawn cel animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics. The string of movies thus created, starting with Toy Story in 1995, have been hugely popular and critically acclaimed.
Through it all, a corporate culture that highly values information-sharing at every level within the organization has enabled Pixar to continue to produce one hit after another.
The September 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review cited several reasons for Pixar's sustained creative success. Among other things, the company espouses a philosophy that "we are smarter than me." The company believes that everyone needs to be involved in the creative process and, to that end, communication throughout all levels is imperative.
Next, Pixar works to hire good people, to support them, and to foster an environment where trust and respect are a given. More specifically, those good people are encouraged to take risks, knowing that they will inevitably make mistakes. Talented people will learn from failures and use their hard-earned discoveries to move forward more effectively on subsequent projects.
Finally, Pixar's culture is flat, collegial and extremely peer-oriented. Hierarchies are out, everyone is treated with respect, and both honest feedback and careful listening are encouraged and rewarded.
One very specific and practical example of the way information-sharing plays itself out is Pixar University. Every employee is encouraged to spend as many as four hours a week furthering his/her education. Pixar University offers more than a hundred courses, from filmmaking and writing to sculpture, painting and drawing.
Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University, says, "We offer the equivalent of an undergraduate education in fine arts and the art of filmmaking." And this is not just fun time or a way to avoid work, but rather a critical job expectation. Nelson says, "This is part of everyone's work. We're all filmmakers here. We all have access to the same curriculum. In class, people from every level sit right next to our directors and the president of the company."
Pixar University epitomizes the concept of broad knowledge-sharing. Nelson asserts, "The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization. Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant."
At Pixar University, employees are also encouraged to try new things, take risks, and learn from mistakes. The University crest says in Latin: "Alienus Non Diutius," which translates to "alone no longer." Says Nelson, "It's the heart of our model, giving people opportunities to fail together and to recover from mistakes together."
In addition to excellent financial results, Pixar has earned countless industry accolades for its work, including 22 Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, and three Grammys. Every Pixar film produced since 2001 was nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar and four of those movies, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E, came home with the little golden statuette.
Pixar Animation Studios provides an incredibly compelling example of an organization that sees the critical value in gathering information from a diverse variety of sources and then sharing it openly up, down and across the company. Those individuals who hold information closely would not survive in such a culture. Pixar's reputation as a place where creative genius thrives is indeed well-earned.
Companies like Pixar that set themselves up as learning organizations and follow through on that commitment tend to be successful. Other organizations-- where secrecy, lack of clarity, and generally poor communication all around are the rule-- suffer in the end.
Where does your organization or team sit on the communication spectrum? Do you openly share important knowledge and information in all directions? Does your culture foster honest feedback and careful listening? What do you personally contribute from a communication standpoint?
A human or animal organism needs circulation of blood and nutrients to all parts of the body in order to have full physical health. Similarly, freely flowing knowledge and information are the "lifeblood" of any organization that hopes to achieve robust business outcomes.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Great Teams Never Give Up
Great teams never give up. In business, as in sports or any other human endeavor, the very best teams simply refuse to be defeated.
I was reminded of this fact several years ago when I had the honor to coach my daughter Lucia and her 3rd and 4th grade peers in basketball. Basketball, like business, is a fast-paced, rough and tumble game that involves lots of strategy and, in order to win, requires great skill and determination from its participants. At least at the highest levels of the sport, this is true.
But for Luci and her pals practices consisted mostly of social time, laughing, doing each other's hair, taking bathroom breaks together en masse, and some basketball. I tried to teach basic fundamentals, with a focus on teamwork. They took a vote and decided to call themselves the "Hot Peppers." I was not crazy about this team name, but went along. Did I mention the laughter?
This was a middling team, at best. During the regular season we might have won a couple more games than we lost. No one predicted greatness for this team.
But in the annual year-end tournament that determines the overall league champion, something came over the Peppers. They pulled together as a unit and demonstrated, almost heroically, that great teams never give up.
There was a team that had dominated the schedule all year long. This team had several girls who were big, strong and skilled. This team had gone undefeated in the regular season. Somehow the Peppers got through the preliminary rounds to face this team in the championship game.
I knew we were up against it, but wasn't sure if the girls knew. I did not want to invoke the Holy Bible and cite David and Goliath but, trust me, my thoughts went there. Instead, I recalled the recent Super Bowl, where a lowly underdog had defeated the mighty favorite.
"Did you girls see the Super Bowl?" "Yes." "Who won?" "The team that wasn't supposed to." "Right."
The Peppers went out and fought hard. They were behind most of the game. But suddenly, the other team started to play not to lose. They sat back on their heels. They made mistakes. They even panicked a bit near the end. The Peppers came back.
Pretty soon, with no time left, one of our little gals stepped up to the free throw line, score tied 15-15, with a chance to win the game. First shot missed. Second shot hit the back rim, bounced straight up, and came down through the hoop. Pandemonium erupted. The Peppers had triumphed. Dairy Queen beckoned.
What are the ingredients that go into creating a team with this kind of capability? First, leadership. And not just leadership of the obvious kind, as important as that is, from the head coach or the team leader in business. Leadership can come from any person, at any time. Our final couple of baskets came from one of our best athletes, who had played a quiet game up to that point. Isn't it amazing how your top performers always seem to come through, demonstrating leadership in the clutch?
The second ingredient is skill. Several girls on the Peppers, silliness aside, could put the rock in the hole when they felt like it. This is where hard work, repetition, and practice together as a unit come in. These are essential fundamentals in business, just as they are in sports.
Finally, there is the most important ingredient. This one is the most difficult to describe. Call it team chemistry, call it trust and confidence, call it swagger, call it what you will. A truly great team believes in itself in a way that is palpable. You can see it in the way such a team carries itself, interacts together and ultimately performs.
We are in difficult times right now, but teams that possess that magical something will survive the trial. They will emerge stronger than they were before.
What will your team do in this economy? Will you play not to lose? Will you let events dictate what happens to you? Will you sit back? Will panic set in? Or will you look each other confidently in the eye, take control, count on your leaders, work hard together, trust each other, and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? This decision cannot be postponed.
In 1941 during the throes of World War Two, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed the students at Harrow School, his alma mater, outside London. He said, "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never- in nothing great or small, large or petty- never give in…" That was good advice for young people during dark days, but isn't it interesting how young people can sometimes teach us too?
Occasionally, when I face a moment of truth in today's tumultuous world I think back, smile, and whisper to myself, "Remember the Peppers. Never give up."
I was reminded of this fact several years ago when I had the honor to coach my daughter Lucia and her 3rd and 4th grade peers in basketball. Basketball, like business, is a fast-paced, rough and tumble game that involves lots of strategy and, in order to win, requires great skill and determination from its participants. At least at the highest levels of the sport, this is true.
But for Luci and her pals practices consisted mostly of social time, laughing, doing each other's hair, taking bathroom breaks together en masse, and some basketball. I tried to teach basic fundamentals, with a focus on teamwork. They took a vote and decided to call themselves the "Hot Peppers." I was not crazy about this team name, but went along. Did I mention the laughter?
This was a middling team, at best. During the regular season we might have won a couple more games than we lost. No one predicted greatness for this team.
But in the annual year-end tournament that determines the overall league champion, something came over the Peppers. They pulled together as a unit and demonstrated, almost heroically, that great teams never give up.
There was a team that had dominated the schedule all year long. This team had several girls who were big, strong and skilled. This team had gone undefeated in the regular season. Somehow the Peppers got through the preliminary rounds to face this team in the championship game.
I knew we were up against it, but wasn't sure if the girls knew. I did not want to invoke the Holy Bible and cite David and Goliath but, trust me, my thoughts went there. Instead, I recalled the recent Super Bowl, where a lowly underdog had defeated the mighty favorite.
"Did you girls see the Super Bowl?" "Yes." "Who won?" "The team that wasn't supposed to." "Right."
The Peppers went out and fought hard. They were behind most of the game. But suddenly, the other team started to play not to lose. They sat back on their heels. They made mistakes. They even panicked a bit near the end. The Peppers came back.
Pretty soon, with no time left, one of our little gals stepped up to the free throw line, score tied 15-15, with a chance to win the game. First shot missed. Second shot hit the back rim, bounced straight up, and came down through the hoop. Pandemonium erupted. The Peppers had triumphed. Dairy Queen beckoned.
What are the ingredients that go into creating a team with this kind of capability? First, leadership. And not just leadership of the obvious kind, as important as that is, from the head coach or the team leader in business. Leadership can come from any person, at any time. Our final couple of baskets came from one of our best athletes, who had played a quiet game up to that point. Isn't it amazing how your top performers always seem to come through, demonstrating leadership in the clutch?
The second ingredient is skill. Several girls on the Peppers, silliness aside, could put the rock in the hole when they felt like it. This is where hard work, repetition, and practice together as a unit come in. These are essential fundamentals in business, just as they are in sports.
Finally, there is the most important ingredient. This one is the most difficult to describe. Call it team chemistry, call it trust and confidence, call it swagger, call it what you will. A truly great team believes in itself in a way that is palpable. You can see it in the way such a team carries itself, interacts together and ultimately performs.
We are in difficult times right now, but teams that possess that magical something will survive the trial. They will emerge stronger than they were before.
What will your team do in this economy? Will you play not to lose? Will you let events dictate what happens to you? Will you sit back? Will panic set in? Or will you look each other confidently in the eye, take control, count on your leaders, work hard together, trust each other, and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? This decision cannot be postponed.
In 1941 during the throes of World War Two, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed the students at Harrow School, his alma mater, outside London. He said, "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never- in nothing great or small, large or petty- never give in…" That was good advice for young people during dark days, but isn't it interesting how young people can sometimes teach us too?
Occasionally, when I face a moment of truth in today's tumultuous world I think back, smile, and whisper to myself, "Remember the Peppers. Never give up."
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