Twelve Month Action Plan in 1000 Words (Or Less)

I’ve consulted with the best and interviewed the rest, and here’s what I’ve learned about succeeding in this business: you need both Skill and Will combined with Pluck and Luck. This is a street-tough industry. It will either make you or break you—smaller than the period that ends this sentence.....

Copyright 2007Sullivision Inc.

By Jim Sullivan

I’ve consulted with the best and interviewed the rest, and here’s what I’ve learned about succeeding in this business: you need both Skill and Will combined with Pluck and Luck. This is a street-tough industry. It will either make you or break you—smaller than the period that ends this sentence.

So keep focused, and here’s your monthly planner for next year:

1. January: Get help in the mail. When planning your direct mail pieces, use the Post Office first as your primary research tool to analyze what other businesses are doing. For the next six weeks, save every piece of promotional and advertising material you receive in the mail. Then make two stacks—one for material that appeals to you visually, and one for pieces that don’t. “Make a list of what caught your eye in the mail you liked; then evaluate the ones you didn’t choose, and ask yourself what they lacked,” says Portsmouth, NH consultant Peggy Sharp. Then keep those visual and copy elements in mind when you sit down to design your next marketing, catering, large group brochure, or menu.
2. February: Take your marketing outside the box…literally. When guests call ahead to reserve a table for a large party or celebration, get some colored chalk and write a fun welcoming message to the group on the sidewalk out front (“Congratulations Cindy!” or “Happy 45th Anniversary to the O’Byrnes!” etc.)
3. March: Know the price of nice. There are only so many ways you can put food and beverage together; the real secret of hospitality success is in the service. But—can “service” be taught (training) or must it be “bought” (hiring)? “Yes, service can be taught and the best way to teach it is leading by example,” says Dan Leonard, Managing Partner for Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville in Orlando, FL. “We teach service daily in the ways we welcome, train, interact with and respond to the needs of our staff.” Leonard says that service is not just “giving”, it’s also “taking away”—barriers to service delivery that we sometimes create via policy or procedures. He adds that service is not so much a process as it is a "state of mind; as leaders we set the tone each and every shift. Deliver great service to your staff and they will in turn cheerfully do the same for our guests.”
4. April: Re-focus training needs on the 3 basics. Employee performance problems originate from one of three perspectives: “Don’t Know, Can’t Do or Don’t Care.” Design your new—and ongoing—training programs to address these 3 areas for every person you train. To overcome the “don’t know” and “can’t do” people, the solution is to teach them very well, and for the “don’t cares”? Treat them very well. Or let them go to weaken some one else’s workplace.
5. May: Focus on finding keepers. Hire people that share your values and culture as part of who they are instead of trying to inject it via a “training program”. You can’t manage change but you can help people do what they already want to do.
6. June: Learn how to eat an elephant. We do that one bite at a time. If service or sales are slumping, set incremental but attainable goals for your team to improve over the summer months. By the yard it’s hard, by the inch it’s a cinch.
7. July: Capture your past before it disappears. As company founders and baby boomer-age executives begin retiring over the next couple of years, a lot of corporate memory—and the expertise it teaches—can be lost. What are you doing to capture it? Start compiling recollections and tape awards ceremonies and speeches by senior executives. Compile a memory book of anecdotal stories that characterize the start and key milestones of your organization.
8. August: Make time to find time. The newest Palm Pilot has a “to-do” list for 1,850 items. Pretty sobering thought. But maybe we also need a “stop doing” list, too. Look at your business this month and see if there’s something that you could stop doing—take away unnecessary policies, procedures, restrictions—to bring more energy to your workplace. Sometimes taking something away can be as positive and invigorating as adding something new.
9. September: Solicit opinions you don’t like. Many business owners make the mistake of misunderstanding their “loyal opposition”: committed but blunt-speaking employees. The best ideas in your company may come from seasoned vets who want the company to win, but are less than tactful in the way they share their concern with you. The truth hurts and there’s a fine line between whining and constructive criticism, but knowing the difference can only help you grow.
10. October: Make it good to go. Get it together on takeout/to-go or don’t do it at all. Stop leaving the process in the hands of a cranky bartender or impatient hostess who’d rather you didn’t bother them by waiting to pick up your phoned-in food order to go. The takeout guest is your job, not an interruption of it.
11. November: Fix what needs fixing. Don’t leave those operational problems unattended this month. Never leave a nail sticking up where you find it.
12. December: small is big; focus on the little things. Instead of trying to be a 100% better than the competition next year, try to be 1% better in a hundred different ways. Same result, better odds. Happy days.

Thanks for your time, and remember: if you had half as much fun reading this as I had writing it, then I had twice as much fun as you.

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