How To Best Design Culture In Restaurants & Bars With David Friedman (Ep 141)

Great episode on tap here featuring David Friedman, the CEO of CultureWise and author of Culture By Design and Fundamentally Different. Perhaps your restaurant has been remiss in not taking the time to talk about culture in your business. 

Well, this session is guaranteed to load you up with talking points and strategies for success as we hit on: 

• Defining the behaviors/fundamentals that drive success in an organization
• Creating and deploying rituals to teach and practice behaviors with consistency
• Engaging the workforce for maximum impact
• How to roll out culture training to a restaurant
• The impacts of the current hiring crisis
• Keys to avoiding bad hires, and more.

 You don't want to miss this. Check it out! 

Find out more at https://www.culturewise.com.

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How To Best Design Culture In Restaurants & Bars With David Friedman

Coming up on this episode of the show, I interview David Friedman, CEO of CultureWise and author of the book Culture by Design. One hundred percent spot-on insights here about the importance of culture as a driver of your restaurant or organization’s success. You do not want to miss this. Check it out.

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Welcome to the show where we bring you the tips, tools, and techniques you need to make your restaurant more profitable and successful. We’ve got a great episode featuring David Friedman, CEO of CultureWise and author of Culture by Design as well as the book Fundamentally Different.

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David, I am looking forward to this because, believe it or not, all these years, we’ve never done a session on culture. Is that something that you’ve seen restaurants and organizations forget to specifically talk about? What do you think?

 

Importance Of Culture

That has changed. That was true a couple of years ago, but in the last few years, people have woken up about culture. Probably one of the best indicators of that is I do a tremendous number of talks around the country, typically to CEO groups, not just in restaurants but in all different industries. What I find is that years ago, when I would do these talks, I would begin by spending some time explaining and reviewing with people why culture was so important.

These days, when I start a talk, the way I usually start is by asking the audience members, “Let’s cut through the crap. Let’s be really honest with each other. Is this culture stuff a bunch of fluff, or does it matter? Why should we even bother talking about it?” You should see how animated and passionate most CEOs get. All of a sudden, they’re saying, “It’s the most important thing in my company. You better believe it. It’s our strategic advantage.” They get animated talking about how important culture is. That wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago. Now, it’s a hot topic for people.

I have a question for you. We still have a COVID mindset here. We’re in June 2021. Hopefully, we are getting to the end of that. Let’s touch on that since it’s top of mind for everybody, restaurant-related or otherwise. Did anything change in COVID that related to thinking more about culture or getting through daily life? What have you seen?

 

Impact Of COVID-19 On Culture

What I’ve seen is that there has been an increased focus on culture, and that’s caused by two different things. I’m going to describe a growth pattern that companies go through and then how COVID relates to that. When a company is small, whether it’s a restaurant or any other kind of company, it could get away with not being so intentional about culture because there are only 5, 10, or 15 people. They see the owner every day and pick up the vibe or the example that the owner sets. That’s mostly good enough to get the job done. As a company grows and it goes from 5, 10, or 15 people to maybe 50, 100, or 200 or has multiple locations, all of a sudden, those people aren’t all seeing the leader, the manager, or the owner anymore, so his or her example isn’t enough to carry the day.

COVID forced that dynamic on everybody. Whether you’re small, medium, or large, we couldn’t rely anymore on mere physical presence being enough to carry the day. If we don’t have some more systematic way to create, drive, and embed the culture that we want, all of a sudden, with everybody working from home, it gets lost by people.

 

If we don’t have a more systematic way to create, drive, and embed the culture we want, it can easily be lost among people, especially with everyone working from home.

 

In one way, the pandemic has forced an increased level of intensity or interest in culture because our people are no longer together. The worry or the fear of leaders is, “I used to be proud of my culture. Now, I’m worried that with our people not together, it might get lost or diluted. How do I protect that?” That’s one piece.

The second piece that’s interesting that the pandemic highlighted about culture, which is less so in the restaurant industry but more so in others, is that most employers are competing to attract talent from across the country and even the world. When people were physically together in a local marketplace, it was like, “I was competing to get employees from my local community.”

It’s hard in the restaurant industry to work from home, but for many others, it is like, “Since we’re all working from home, I could live anywhere around the world. If I’m competing for talent with employers everywhere across the globe, I better be sure that I’ve got a culture that can drive success in my company.” It has highlighted that. In a restaurant, I need to physically be there. Remote workers in the restaurant industry, I’m assuming, don't fly very well, but for many others, it becomes a big deal.

Let’s talk about the competition for staff because that is a gigantic issue for restaurants. You talked about attracting people in restaurants. It’s the number one thing you’re seeing across every media platform. Restaurants and retail workers are really struggling to find workers. We talked about this a little bit in a session and how you can attract, retain, and things like that. How do you think about a business using culture to attract people to them rather than always having to desperately place a help wanted ad when you need a warm body because you don’t want a warm body that you have to get rid of? What do you think about culture as part of recruiting?

 

Culture As A Recruitment Tool

There’s no question that it’s one of the most important things. It’s not a minor thing. It’s one of the most important things in recruiting. Any research study you look at that examines the top factors that cause somebody to want to go to work for a company and also to stay in that company, because we not only need to recruit people but we need to keep them, shows that one of the most important factors is how they feel about the culture. Do they feel like they’re part of something? Do they feel connected to that culture? The more they feel that, the more likely they are to come to this company as opposed to somebody else.

We have to pay them appropriately, but every single study says money is not the number one thing that drives people to go to work somewhere. This has always been true, but when you look at the younger workforce, those entering the workforce of the younger generation, it’s more true for them than it’s ever been for previous generations. They will go to work and stay at work at a company when they feel aligned with what that culture is about. That’s more important to them than money. Huge issue.

I want to come back to that piece of it. The staff is such an important piece, but we’re going to hit a lot of things about culture that make it important. Let’s take two steps back. David presents all over the place with keynote speakers. He talks about this stuff all the time. If we were to back up, and you probably have a slide somewhere that says, “What is culture?” what do you think about it? What should people be thinking about that is top of mind?

It’s a great question you’re asking, and it’s important because we have a lot of different ideas of what that means. Some people, when they hear the word culture, envision the company that has free drinks and pizza on Fridays, a ping pong table, and a reception area. That’s not culture. To me, culture is the set of behaviors that become the norms for how people operate in that organization.

I’m very behavior-oriented in everything that I talk about. Culture isn’t necessarily pixie dust that we sprinkle over people and say, “Look at this magic environment.” Culture is the behaviors that people do. If I walk into an organization, whether it’s a restaurant, a hotel, or any other kind of company, I walk into that organization and observe the way people relate to each other, the way they behave with customers, and the way they behave with vendors and suppliers. Those behaviors tell me what the culture is. Culture is all about behavior.

 

The Fundamentals That Drive Success

I have a question for you. I was on your site. David’s got a great site. We will get to it. It’s CultureWise.com. You talk about behaviors as those fundamentals that drive success in an organization. Build on that. What are the fundamentals? Where do they come from? How do you piece them together? What’s the thought process there? 

To give context to all this for your audience, culture is the behaviors that exist in a company. The culture of the organization has an enormous influence over every single thing that happens in that company. If you’re a restaurant owner or owner of any kind of business and you think about, “I want to constantly improve,” the single biggest lever that you have available to you, the lever that you can pull that’s going to touch on more parts of your organization than any other single thing, is the culture.

If you get that culture right, it’ll drive your ability to attract and retain people. It’ll drive how people treat your customers. It’ll drive how people work together as teammates. It’ll drive how hard they work and whether they show up. It drives every part of your company. Nothing could be more important to your success than getting your culture right.

 

Nothing could be more important to your success than getting your culture right.

 

When we talk about that, my point of view is understanding what a driver of performance it is. If I’m the owner or manager of a restaurant or any other business, I should be as intentional and systematic as I can possibly be about creating the culture that I want instead of hoping it’s going to work out. This is an interesting point. If you’re a leader and you own a restaurant and you’re not purposely creating your culture, guess what? The culture is going to happen anyway. It’s not like it’s not going to happen.

There’s going to be a culture, and it’s mostly going to be driven by those people in your restaurant who happen to have the strongest personalities. Those people aren’t necessarily your supervisors and managers. They’re people with strong personalities. If those people happen to be wonderful people, you’re lucky. If some of those strong personalities in your restaurant happen to be jerks with cynical attitudes, they’re going to influence the people around them to be jerks with cynical attitudes. You’re going to end up not having the kind of culture you want. My point of view is you should be really intentional about that.

If we talk to answer your question more directly, how do you do that? I organize the steps that it takes to be really systematic around a culture that I call the eight-step framework. It’s eight different things. If you do these eight things, this is how you purposely create the culture that you want. While all of the eight steps are important, for your audience’s sake, I’m going to simplify this to two things. If you do these two things, this is going to make all the difference in your restaurant.

The first thing is how you go about defining, “What is the culture that we want to have in this restaurant?” If you can’t define what you’re trying to create, you’re not going to be able to create it very effectively. To do that, this is a place where I’m going to depart from most of the things that your audience has heard, read, or seen before.

When we talk about defining a culture, I mentioned before that in terms of behavior, I make a big deal about the difference between what I call values and what I call behaviors because they’re very different. A value is an abstract concept. Values are things like quality, integrity, service, or respect. These are ideas. A behavior, in contrast, is an action. It’s something that I can see people doing. Some of the behaviors that I teach in my own company are things like honoring commitments, which is something I do, practicing blameless problem-solving, getting clear on expectations, and listening generously. These are things people do.

A value is an abstract idea, whereas a behavior is an action. The reason that distinction is so important is that everybody loves to talk about their core values, but those values tend to be so abstract that they mean too many different things to different people. They become very difficult for an owner or manager to operationalize. To any of your audience, if you’ve ever tried to coach people about their values, that’s hard to do. We all have different ideas of what they mean. A behavior, though, because it’s action-oriented, is a lot easier to teach, coach, guide, and give people feedback about. 

The first thing we have to do is to define the culture that we want in this restaurant by defining the behaviors that you as a leader say, “If I could get all of my people doing these things consistently, watch out. We’re going to be amazing.” I give those behaviors a name. It’s my own nomenclature. I call them fundamentals because they’re fundamental to success. That’s where we come up with these fundamentals. What are the behaviors that you say drive success? That’s the first thing that has to be done.

The second thing that has to be done, and this is really simple, is a concept that I call creating rituals. A ritual is a routine. It’s a habit. People come into the restaurant, and there are certain things you do and certain ways that you do things. The reason that rituals are so important is that in the absence of a ritual, we get bored and distracted, and things don’t last.

Most human beings stink at sticking with things. We come up with all kinds of diet and exercise programs or new initiatives at work that we’re determined to do, and then we get busy. It falls by the wayside and becomes the flavor of the month. When something becomes part of our routine, it’s the way we do things. It’s no longer difficult to do. It’s part of our routine.

The way to use that concept in your restaurant or culture is to create this set of fundamentals, these behaviors I was describing. You focus on one of them every single week through a series of rituals. In week number one, everybody in the restaurant all week long is hyper-focused on this one particular behavior or fundamental, as I call it. The week after that, everybody in the restaurant is focused on fundamental number two. The week after that is 3, 4, 5, and so on. You cycle through them. 

Let me give you a simple example in a restaurant of how you might do this. I imagine that many of your restaurants probably have some kind of daily huddle or shift meeting at the beginning of a shift where members of the team get together and talk about, “What do we have going on today? Who’s doing what?” You could take that daily shift meeting, and every day this week, spend three minutes talking about our fundamental of the week.

If this week we’re on a particular fundamental, and in every shift meeting, we spend three minutes talking about it and exploring, “What does it mean? How could we do it better? What could we do to practice it more? Did it come up with one of our guests yesterday?” and talk about it for a few minutes and do that every single day this week, you have a lot of chances to get that sinking into people. If you do that same thing with fundamental two next week and number three the next week and you keep cycling through them over and over again, sooner or later, these fundamentals, as I call them, become internalized in your workers and they start to become second nature.

The really simple idea here is if you can define in really clear terms those behaviors that drive success in your restaurant and those things that you say, “If we could get our workers to do these things consistently, we’d be taking no prisoners.” If you can articulate those clearly and then create a structured way to teach and focus on one at a time every single week and do that over and over again, those behaviors are going to start to become second nature and become your culture. Is that simple?

It sounds simple. It could be simple to implement, and yet, folks don’t do it. I want to highlight a story that I saw that echoes that. You started talking about it. It was where I was starting to write notes, but you got there yourself. It’s that restaurants do pre-shift. There’s a gentleman who I’m hopefully going to interview. I was on the website of his restaurant up in Northern Florida.

Right on their website, their Facebook, they talked about doing the pre-shift meeting. It’s that short meeting where you’re talking about the specials of the day and getting the whole team engaged and on board with what’s going on. Many do, but so many don’t take that opportunity to do it every day because they think it’s onerous or too much to do. You pointed to something that I want to go back to. I wrote it down. Three minutes. I don’t need an hour of speech. I’m nervous. I only have to come up with three minutes of content. That’s the tip you’re giving them. Don’t go crazy about it. Spend 3 to 5 minutes on it and you can get that rolling. Is that fair?

The shorter, the better. For a few minutes, we stop and talk about it. That’s easy to do. I’ll give you a great example of how I learned all this stuff. It comes from the hospitality industry. I learned this many years ago in an experience. I was running a previous company that I had built. We were all about customer service. That was all of our success. I have always wanted to push the envelope of how we could be better at customer service.

 

The Ritz-Carlton Service

We talked earlier. I’m in southern New Jersey, outside of Philadelphia. What I did was close my entire office down and charter a couple of buses. My whole staff jumped on these buses. We drove from my office over to Center City, Philadelphia, and spent the day at the Ritz-Carlton. What better place to talk about service than a Ritz-Carlton? We had lunch there, and then the plan was to spend the afternoon in a meeting room brainstorming about amazing service.

I didn’t know that much about Ritz-Carlton at the time. This goes back many years. I didn’t know that much about them other than that they had this reputation for amazing service. I didn’t know, but I was guessing it couldn’t have been by accident. It couldn’t have been that they just happened to hire some really nice people and everything worked out okay. There must be systems and processes behind the scenes that enable them to do this stuff so consistently. I called them and asked if, during lunch, they could have someone come and share with us some of these behind-the-scenes practices that make them so successful, and they did.

They had a woman from their HR department. She told us about two things in particular that they do, and these changed the course of the rest of my career and led to all of the stuff that I’m sharing with you and that I teach to so many others. The first thing is that Ritz-Carlton has something that’s known as their basics. These are twenty behaviors. They have them on a little laminated card, and they’re numbered 1 through 20. These are called their basics. These are very simple things that your restaurant owners would relate to.

One of their basics is if I were at a Ritz-Carlton and I asked, “Where’s the men’s room?” They would never say to me, “You go down the hall and turn right back there by the elevator.” They would escort me to the men’s room. That’s one of the things that they do. They have a basic that’s called Notice and Record Guest Preferences. If you went to a Ritz-Carlton and you happen to like your coffee black, somebody’s paying attention to that. They write that down and put it in their computer. The next time you’re at a Ritz-Carlton, everybody there knows, “Jaime’s here. He likes his coffee black.” They pay attention to this stuff.

These twenty different behaviors that are called their basics are numbered 1 through 20. Here’s the real beauty of this, and it’s what we were referring to. They have a ritual. Their ritual is called the Daily Lineup. It’s very similar to a pre-shift meeting. Every single day in every Ritz-Carlton property in the world, in every department, and in every shift, the team members get together at the beginning of the shift. Their pre-shift meeting is called the Daily Lineup. It’s about 10 or 12 minutes.

The first thing they do in their Daily Lineup each day is talk about the basic of the day. Remember, I said there are twenty of them. If I happen to be at a Ritz-Carlton and it’s day number one, all day long, in every department and every shift, team members are getting together and spending a couple of minutes at the beginning of their shift talking about basic number one. They’re like, “What does it mean? How do we practice it? What could we do better? Did it come up with a guest?” It’s a few minutes, and then they move on with whatever’s relevant in their department.

All across the property, every single one of them is in a shift meeting talking about basic number one. The next day, everybody’s in a shift meeting talking about number two. The day after that, numbers 3, 4, 5, and so on. They happen to have twenty. At the end of twenty days, they go back to the beginning and do it over and over again every day of their entire career.

Get this. If it happens to be day number seven, it’s day number seven in every Ritz-Carlton property in the world. They have roughly 40,000 employees in something like 35 countries and hundreds of properties. Every single one of their employees in every place around the world, all those 40,000 people, are all in a Daily Lineup talking about the same basic. That’s how you get consistent. 

 

Culture By Design

The over-and-over part is very interesting. Some people say, “We covered that once. You got it.” You forget. Especially in hospitality and restaurants, people are like, “Tina wasn’t in today. She had this. Jimmy missed it,” and so forth. How did they get that training? They might’ve missed it. This goes around day seven. They’re on shift the next day, seven, and so forth. I’m sure in this case, they have a way to even get it to those folks. That over-and-over or that repetition builds the rituals that you talked about. It’s so dramatic and so impactful over time. Ritz-Carlton has that reputation of being the top level of service across the country. Let’s go to your book. Culture by Design is your latest book.

There are three books I’ve written. The first book was called Fundamentally Different. It was a book about the original set of fundamentals that I created in my first company. All the things that I teach came from this company. It was an employee benefits consulting company that I built and led over 100 people before we sold it. All of our success was based on our culture. I wrote a book about that culture called Fundamentally Different.

That book led to people asking me to speak about this and then led to people hiring me. I created this whole process that we’ve been talking about, which we’ve done for over 400 different organizations in almost every industry you can think of, including restaurants. The methodology for how to do that is written in the second book, Culture by Design. The third book is an updated edition of that. Culture by Design is the book. It gives you the blueprint for exactly how to do this in great detail. That book is in all forms. It’s in paperback, eBook, and audiobook too. If members of your audience prefer to listen, you can download it on Audible as well.

Did you do the audio, or did someone else?

It has to be me. I can’t imagine somebody else doing my material. It’s so personal for me. 

That’s what I was thinking.

I did the audiobook for the first book, Fundamentally Different, as well. 

That would be interesting. I hadn’t thought about it before. Imagine listening to someone else.

I don’t think I could do that. The material is so personal to me. Nobody can do my material like me.

I have a quick question for you. I’m curious. COVID probably impacted you in terms of in-person presentations. Have you continued to do stuff online? Are you getting back to traveling and whatnot?

It was a year of very little travel. I’m used to traveling around the country, speaking to groups, and working with clients. We were pretty much homebound, but I did a whole lot of virtual presentations. My normal workshops are usually three-hour workshops with CEOs. I probably did 50 or 60 of those on Zoom. I learned how to do it that way. I’m excited to be getting ready to hit the road. I’ll be in Cleveland and Milwaukee. The week after that, I’m in Lansing, Michigan, Detroit, and a few other cities. I’m back on the road.

Getting those reservations back in line. I have a question for you that relates to something I saw on your website. You talk about the in-person stuff and the training, but it seems like online, you have a program that is almost computer-based or app-based. I’m not sure. You can deliver this stuff to people, and they can consume it in bite-size portions. What does that look like?

Let me explain that. There are two parts to that. First of all, I’ve created a mobile app called CultureWise. That mobile app is on the Android store and Apple. That app is a tremendous tool for a company to deliver their fundamentals and content around their fundamentals every single day and engage their workforce. Our clients are practicing their fundamentals every week.

Every week on their phone, they get a push notification with a daily quick tip or a little insight to remind them of some aspect of this week’s fundamentals. Every week, they get a message with a lesson about the fundamentals. There are video tutorials about the fundamentals that are on their phone. There are coaching tips, teaching points, questions for discussion, and even gamifications. There are all kinds of ways that the mobile app enables them and their employees to engage, explore, and talk about the fundamentals in so many different ways. It’s a great engagement tool.

In addition to that, though, I’ve created a platform. It’s called the standard version of CultureWise. Having done this with hundreds of companies, it won’t surprise you to know that the same kinds of fundamentals come up over and over again across industries. What I’ve done is I’ve built a program. You can see it on the website. I’ve built a program where a company can sign up, and the system brings them to what I call my greatest hits, the best fundamentals I’ve ever written. The company can choose from those fundamentals the ones that most resonate with them. Instead of reinventing the wheel, the same stuff comes up all the time. Why don’t you use the stuff that’s already there?

 

Instead of reinventing the wheel, the same stuff comes up all the time. Why don’t you use the stuff that’s already there?

 

The system allows a company to come in, choose the fundamentals that most resonate with them, and then the system coaches them through how to roll it out to their employees, how to create weekly rituals, and how to get up and running on the mobile app. From start to rolling it out, in 30 days, they’re up and running, practicing their fundamentals. They’re coached by my team on the phone as well. It’s a very simple turnkey solution for your audience members to say, “In 30 days, I’m practicing fundamentals.”

It sounds like an easy way to get started if you were thinking, “I’ve got to build manuals and processes and shoot my own videos, talk, and this and that. It’s turnkey to get started. I like it.

Exactly. In 30 days, they’re up and running. It’s extraordinarily affordable too. 

 

Avoiding Bad Hires

We’re going to point people there. I’ll mention it. It’s CultureWise.com. We’ll hit it at the end. This is the last question as we start to wrap. We talked about this a little earlier, hiring people. What are your last parting thoughts? What are some keys to avoiding bad hires? You don’t want to be tempted because there are limited people and just take them. How do you avoid bad hires with the thought process that that’s going to stick a knife in your culture if you make the wrong choices? What do you think?

Earlier, I referred to the eight-step framework, the eight different things. We focused on two of them. One of those eight steps is what I call selecting. How do you select people who are going to be a good fit in your culture? You’re raising a really important question. If we bring in people who aren’t going to be a good fit, we’re never going to be successful. It’s not always easy to figure out. Even when we figure it out, and you made a very important point, it’s so tempting sometimes to think, “I’m going to change this person.  I know they’re not a good fit, but I bet I could change them.” I’ve got to tell you, the chances of that are slim. We don’t change many people. They are who they are.

The equally important challenge that we all face, and we’ve always faced this, is the challenge that every company, especially in hospitality, has in finding anybody to hire. Somebody will fog a mirror, and we think, “Bring them in because we’ve got to get them.” I sometimes say it feels like we’re comparing this candidate we’re interviewing to an empty chair. We’re like, “Compared to an empty chair, that guy looks good. Is he really what we were looking for? No.”

It’s so tempting to bring those people in, but you would be better off having an open spot and not being able to do what you need to do than bringing in somebody who’s not the right fit. That person who is not the right fit is going to destroy your company. There is nothing more important that you can do than get the culture right, and you can’t get the culture right with the wrong people.

 

There is nothing more important that you can do than get the culture right, and you can’t get the culture right with the wrong people.

 

That’s easier said than done. I want to be candid about this. It’s nice to say that in the theoretical world, but in the real world where every one of us exists, we are fighting for people. We are trying to serve our customers. We’re frustrated that we can’t find the right people. We get so tempted to bring in those people because we’re like, “I’ve got to fill a spot.” All I can say to you is there are very few things you can do that are more important than being disciplined about this. I’d rather see you not have the people you need than bring in people who aren’t going to be a fit because you’ll never build the restaurant or hospitality business you want with the wrong people.

I’ll make a comment about that. You may know this better than me. I was talking to a woman who had worked for Chick-fil-A for most of her career in corporate. We know how good they are. She said to me that one of the single biggest things they focus on is hiring. They will leave a position open for a year rather than fill it with somebody who’s not the right fit. They’re so rigorous that they’d rather leave the position open. They’re not going to put somebody into a position that they don’t think is going to be a fit.

Somewhere in my notes, I had written the question that you already answered. I said, “Is it possible to change somebody?” You may think so, but it doesn’t happen.

I always say to people it works about 2 out of every 100 times. You’re betting against the odds. It’s not impossible, but you’re betting heavily against the odds.

Your website is CultureWise.com. Anything else you want to point them to? Is there a download here or there, a mobile site, or social stuff? Anything else?

The best place is CultureWise.com because on that site, there are many videos. I have a lot of videos that explain things in very simple ways. There’s a tremendous amount of learning, all done in simple, easy-to-understand ways. The website’s the best place to go.

The site is good. He does have a lot of videos on there that are very well-produced. I feel like we could talk about this for several hours, but we’ll start to wrap. I appreciate you being with me here. Folks, that was David Friedman of CultureWise. Make sure to check out David’s book, Culture by Design. Visit their website at CultureWise.com. For more great restaurant operations, service, marketing, tech tips, as well as people tips, stay tuned to RunningRestaurants.com. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much.

It’s great to be with you.

 

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