How to maintain systems while honoring staff culture.
By Zachary Milner
Hey everyone! Welcome back to the Roadhouse Gazette! Today, we pick up right where we left off with Issue #4, with our beautifully creative Service Group having now implemented real change that has made a difference…but has it made the exact difference it thought it would make? Oftentimes, even when everyone at Service Group agrees on how the System should work, the finished product multiple months down the line looks a lot different than it did on paper. Does this mean Service Group failed on delivering the key changes? Nope! Well…does this mean that our team didn’t listen to the System and kept doing it the way they were used to doing it? Also nope! What we call this conundrum is a System/Culture Gap, and we’re going to dive deep into how every single workplace in the country struggles with or overlooks this gap, and what can be done to address it.
The Business Perspective Chart
So, here at Zingerman’s, we closely abide by Business Perspective Chart (BPC).
Some definitions that will help everyone:
- Vision: The way things will look/be if everything goes the way we want it to.
- Principles: Our ethics and values as a company.
- Systems: How we say things should be done.
- Culture: How things are actually done.
- Beliefs: Something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion.
- Results: We strive to hit all three of our bottom lines equally!
The System/Culture Gap
As illustrated by this nifty chart, the work Service Group does in the hour and a half they meet weekly is very systems-based. All who attend bring up Systems that either are faulty, or don’t exist, and try to fix or create them respectively. Once the System is approved and implemented…this is where that pesky gap Systems/Culture Gap takes place.
If you, dear reader, have worked in a business, or run one yourself, I am sure you’ve had a scenario that you’ve been shown how to do something, but actually see how altering the System a certain way makes the end result more efficient to achieve. Which is right?
- Following the System to a tee as shown?
Or
- Bending the rules to achieve the same results, except more efficiently?
The answer, humorously enough, is both are right and wrong. Any System put in place should be followed as best as possible, as a team member signs up for a job with the expectation from the manager to abide by what’s in place. But what if the employee who bends/breaks the System has a better method of doing the job? Herein lies the gap between what the System is asking for and the Culture of what is actually being done. The wider the gap, the more dysfunctional the work can become, be it as simple as how to clean off a table to as complicated as grilling 20 burgers to different temperatures at the same time.
Our goal is to shrink the Systems/Culture gap as much as we can! The shorter the gap, the more we’re all on the same page and thus have a better chance at achieving the results, which for us are our three bottom lines!. So logically, we have two ways we can handle this:
- Ask the employee to stop going off script and to follow every step of the System properly.
- Pro: This shortens the gap, heavily favoring shrinking the Culture side of it in favor of the System being good as is. Everyone is on the same page.
- Con: Employees may not be heard, causing disgruntlement. Also, if their idea is more efficient, there’s a potential loss of growth and efficiency.
- Side with the employee, agree with their adjustments to the System, and let them do their thing.
- Pro: This shortens the gap as well, heavily favoring the employee’s adjustments and yielding the better results of their work. Also, employee feels heard and respected.
- Con: There are now two, manager-approved Systems in play for the same task, and now employees not only have a choice of which to do, but feel emboldened to do everything their own way, sowing chaos.
How to to effectively shrink the Gap
Quite a pickle indeed! As presented above, heavily favoring Systems or Culture can cause unwanted disruption, which does not help a business achieve their goals. It takes the whole team, and patient leadership, to shrink this gap in a way that honors both. Here is a third way that hits the sweet spot:
- Ask the employee why they’re doing it differently. If it’s better than the System currently stated, update the System to match the employee’s ingenuity.
- This way, everyone can benefit from the change and the leader still keeps everyone on the same page!
Systems are meant to be firm, yet subject to change, to be the most effective they can be. Every System designed by the Roadhouse Service Group is simply our current best effort. We know, even while making a System, we may well see this return to Service Group to get tweaked, updated, or scrapped entirely for something better. That’s the beauty of allowing Culture to influence how we do business! How the work truly gets done is how we get the results we need to deliver amazing food, service, and for us to be more profitable so we can stay in business and continue to be a pillar in our community.