Chef, restaurateur, turn around king. Gordon Ramsay can do it all. How do I know? Well, my weekends were pretty light with Connie in Australia so I found myself binge watching Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell. After about 30+ episodes over a few weeks, I noticed some common trends, pitfalls, and advice GR imparts on his, often unwilling, participants.
Let the bullets begin!
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Hire smart people and let them do their job[/perfectpullquote]
It’s your responsibility as an owner or leader within your organization to identify and to help cultivate talent from your team. Once you’ve established clear responsibilities and expectations then the best thing you can do is get out-of-the-way. Smart, motivated, and fairly compensated individuals will always go above and beyond when given the freedom.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Simplify everything[/perfectpullquote]
From menus to lobbies to interior design, the most common theme for inexperienced owners is how quickly they overcomplicate. Multi-page menus are usually the first glaring mistake GR points out before ordering. “How can any kitchen cook this much food?” is a common phrase you hear throughout the series. The lesson here is: Simple is scalable. What I’ve learned in my time at a startup is to instill simple processes for as long as possible. Don’t scale until it they become painful and, only then, iterate to the next step. Forcing the slow process growth of a fast growing organization deserves a post of its own.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Establish a clear leader[/perfectpullquote]
In restaurants, hotels, or any other business where multiple partners may be involved a clear leader must be established. Call it a managing partner or CEO or whatever – someone needs to drive the ship and be accountable for the success of the organization. Steve Jobs had a concept of DRI – Directly Responsible Individual. Essentially, each task within the organization – big or small – has a clear owner and is held accountable for completion. When too many people are responsible then no one is responsible.
Some other common lessons:
- Put the customer first
- Be authentically you
- Lack of customers is a symptom, not the problem
- Don’t chase sunk costs
- Use your own product
What shows do you watch? What business lessons have you learned recently?