So here’s the scene. It’s eleven-thirty a.m. on a work day. I’m meeting with Andrew, the president of a local company to talk about organizational changes anticipated for the coming year and how to raise the leadership contributions of senior management in harder times for the construction industry. We are the first patrons of the day. We approach the hostess, who appears distracted. Since the place is empty, it’s not immediately clear what might be commanding her attention. She walks away saying something unintelligible. We look around for a moment. A waiter, whom I’ve seen many times as a local patron, comes up to us and smiles. “Good morning gentlemen! What can we do for you?” “Do you mind if we sit over here?” I say, pointing to a four-seat table by the wall. “Go right ahead!” he replies. We needed the extra room to spread out some documents.
A few minutes later, the hostess comes over, looking a little distressed. “Um…I’m afraid you can’t sit here” she says. We look around at the completely empty dining room and ask innocently, “Why not?”
“This table is for three or more” she responds.
Momentarily stunned, we completely pass over the obvious error in her math (the table can seat three or four, but not three or more), and decide to acquiesce to the request. We realized that any further attempts at logic or persuasion would be painful for her, and fruitless for us. She was not in a mind state to understand that the choice of tables in an empty restaurant which will assuredly not fill to capacity in the time we will be there is unaffected by rules of seating handed down from above. The principles involved in providing customer service, which can offer guidance in such situations, have not been acquired by this hostess. But she has acquired the rules given her. And at one point, she was undoubtedly yelled at for seating two people at a four-person table. It was probably at a time when the restaurant was very busy, and people were waiting outside. Our hostess remembered the flogging she received and learned nothing about how to make seating decisions.
How many times during a leader’s work day does one have the opportunity to educate employees about principles, but instead hands them rules? How often do we as leaders end up turning off our employees’ brains rather than engaging them as more conscious, capable and autonomous decision-makers? The lunchtime experience was central to the very subject that Andrew and I were addressing.
Andrew’s senior management group is transitioning from leading during good times, to leading in harder circumstances. As a mentor of mine once said, “Stan, in good times, everyone looks like a brilliant general…and often acts like it. You find out who the real leaders are when the s**t hits the fan.” In many segments of the construction industry right now, and for some time to come, the fan is blowing anything but fresh air. Andrew’s leaders will be challenged greatly to stabilize the company’s performance, let alone grow, in the coming years. So they have to learn how to do more with less resources, in a tightly competitive market. That goal will not be accomplished by removing consciousness from employees’ minds, i.e., handing them rules to live by, rather than principles to guide their decision-making.
This is a simple concept, not so easily enacted. Using our hostess and the seating example, she was following a rule that said, simply, “No four-person table can be given to less than three people.” She was following the rule. By doing so, she nearly caused two paying customers to select another of the roughly fifteen restaurants that were opening at the same time within three blocks of her location, during a period when restaurants are not filling to capacity during lunch hours. And the resolve with which she stated that rule to us was assuredly directly related to the vehemence with which it was handed to her. If, instead of that rule, she was given a principle of customer service, she might have made a different decision. The principle could be stated as, “Find the balance between satisfying customer requests, filling all chairs and minimizing the time anyone has to wait to be seated.” It takes longer to teach the principle, and to provide enough experiences so that the hostess has the decision-making competence to handle most situations. But once that principle is built into the fabric of the hostess, she will never need another rule about seating patrons. She will be able to operate autonomously and confidently, without supervision and with a higher degree of satisfaction about the results of her contributions. She will feel personal ownership of her role, because it will be she who makes the day-to-day rules, adjusting for changes in customer flow, customer requests, the weather, etc.
Master leaders are those who know how to identify the principles involved in a situation, teach those principles to others, guide them through examples until they have the experience and confidence to decide on their own, and then let them loose.