Building the “Dream Team”
As a manager your thoughts often stray toward some kind of mythical dream team. A culmination of professionals you have worked with, learnt from, and encountered in your hospitality life. Like playing fantasy football but the players are sommeliers, maitre d, section waiters, cocktail bartenders, and runners. You sit at your computer flicking through different skin designs for your cyber restaurant. Then compete on line, scoring bonus points for most covers in a service or highest spend per head. Your virtual waiters can compete amongst themselves to see who’ll sell the most cocktails, and if you want to have some real fun you can just sit back and let virtual chef ring that damn bell till his head explodes.
Daydreams aside, if you can’t poach Jean-Baptiste Requien from Ramsay or entice Lok Thornton away from his wine shrine in the Grampians it’s time to get down to some good old fashioned, build it from the ground up, style of work. You may already have the semblance of a team, maybe you’re going into a new restaurant, or taking on a fixer upper but whatever stage you’re at sit down with a pen and paper and make a list or sketch out what you want. How many section waiters you need, what attributes you desire within them, a mixologist who can stir the driest of dry’s and shake up the filthiest of dirty’s, a runner who can self expedite and is uber alert. List them down and build them up.
Getting the message across is now a chance for you to flex your communication muscle; it’s not just a matter of presenting a job description and setting them on their way, you need an open dialogue constantly reaffirming what you want, continuously sharing your vision so it’s not just some distant whisper but a booming vocabulary reverberating around the restaurant, a potent essence that binds your core team. And as peripheral members come and go this core team and its message will infect the new comers, it will be the standard, and the core will quickly bring any fresh blood up to speed.
Once the dream team is assembled don’t for one moment think your job is done. You’ll need to pay it constant attention, guarding it from becoming a monster that’s way too high and mighty, fending off complacency, and regularly topping it up with inspiration and motivation. Lead and develop your team members allowing them to grow and flourish so they may one day leave the pack to go off and start their own squad, as they do you will feel a pang of pride knowing you had a major influence in their development, and as they come to terms with the complexities of management they will look to you and your methods and within them find the answers and inspiration allowing them to create their own “Dream Team”.
