Hey, restaurant world. I get this question a lot and it's
what to do when you disagree with your manager.
So, whether you're in a management position or whether you're in a position where you
report to a manager in your restaurant,
stick around. I think you're gonna enjoy the content coming up right now.
Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin here, author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
founder of therestaurantboss.
com, clickBacon.com, scalemyrestaurant.com, and of course,
author of the book Make It Happen. Now
I love when members submit questions like this because
I want to answer the questions that you have out there. And I got a question
last week about what should I do when I disagree with
my manager or my supervisor. And so again,
whether you're in a management position right now or whether you're on the team,
and you report to a manager.
It's going to be important for you to watch this video to get both perspectives.
So, this happens a lot. Of course, we're not always going to agree with every decision that
happens in our restaurant and in our business.
And I just want to share my opinion with you.
Now my opinion is not always the most popular opinion and hey,
you have your right to disagree.
This is just how I feel and what I teach.
And what I teach is,
let's back up for a second here. Let's first talk about what I love about
our country, what I love about the United States.
Right. We live in a republic or what most people call,
a democracy, where the people have a vote. And that's
fantastic. That system was designed
to change the oppression that
the American revolutionists that in America, they were feeling from the king
of England. Right.
So, they created a system where
people had votes and representation and
things just couldn't be pushed on them,
right, taxation without representation. So,
we created this really great system where we're not ruled by a tyrant,
by a king, by a monarchy.
The challenge with that is that
it takes a long time for things to happen that's a good thing and that's a bad thing.
It takes a long time for things to happen
which could be good because if they're bad things,
they either won't happen because of all the voting, or they won't happen
for a long time. And if we have good things that
some crazy person is trying to overthrow,
it takes a long time or it's impossible for that to happen because of the vote.
But because of that slowness,
it's not always practical
for smaller businesses to run on a republic or a democracy system.
I'm not going to get into differences between those two, you can look that up if you're interested.
But it's not always possible, so a lot of times small businesses run on more of a
dictatorship, a monarchy, a king, right.
The owner is in charge. Whatever the owner says, we do.
That has its pluses. That has its minuses. Its pluses or that
things can happen faster
but that's also its minuses because bad things can happen faster.
And because there's not a group of opinions sometimes.
Sometimes we're not going to agree with every decision,
so the first thing I would say is know the time and the place to disagree.
If you're asked your opinion, express your opinion.
If you're not asked your opinion,
then we need to make sure that we wait until the right time
to express that opinion. We have to be careful about how we express that opinion.
So, the first thing I would say is a little bit more like
the military, like the way that a general and a soldier is.
You know a soldier's job is to be a soldier, to fall in line,
to do your job. The general makes the decisions. The soldiers, the lieutenants, whatever under that,
you know they fall in line.
So, as a team member of a restaurant.
Our job is a little bit more of the soldier role.
Our job is to fall in line, do our job, do it well and get paid.
Again, I know there's going to be some pushback on that. Hey,
I can take it. But I just ask that you think about this for a moment
before you start saying that you know we're overworked in the restaurant or stream,
we're underpaid in the restaurant industry that all may be true,
but that's not what we're here to debate right now. We're just here to talk about what to do
if you disagree with something that your manager asks.
Depending on when it is, the best thing for you to do is just do it.
If it's a Friday night and it's busy, if it's a Saturday night and it's busy, if it's
Sunday brunch and it's busy, and you're asked to do something
you don't agree with how it's done or you don't agree with when you're asked to do it.
That might not be the best time to disagree, so just fall in line and do it.
But then when times are a little slower,
maybe on a Monday or Tuesday,
go ahead and pull the manager aside.
And just say, hey, you know on Friday or on Saturday,
you would ask me to do this and I was just curious
why did you want to do it that way.
Or have we thought about other ways to do that
or are you open to some suggestions. And they may say no.
They're not open to suggestions and then hey, that's your answer. They may say, yeah, sure, we'd love
to hear your suggestions. But I always pose it from the standpoint of
have you thought about this from other angles,
have you thought about that are you open to suggestions rather than
just why did you do that? That's not the right thing to do. That's going to cause a fight no matter what.
The last thing that I wanted to add here
is if you find yourself constantly
disagreeing with your supervisor meaning
your supervisor the owner the manager is constantly asking you to do things or
has systems set up in a way that you don't
agree with on a very regular and consistent basis.
You might have to ask yourself the question, if your core values are misaligned,
if this is just not the right company for you to be working in,
or the right manager to be working for quite frankly.
There are situations where I would say you could leapfrog over certain managers
and go right to owners but you want to be very careful
doing that. You want to make sure that you've exhausted all of your resources and that
you've really put in the effort before you make that leap frog.
Because you're only going to get a couple of opportunities to do that, and if you squander it
or waste it
or if there's a different perspective that maybe you weren't thinking
of and you go right to ownership, it's going to be difficult for you to do that again,
right, to be the boy who cried wolf again.
I get this email a lot. I get emails from
managers who I know are trying hard
and want to implement more systems
and want to do things to make their team better and want to treat their team better. But the owner is
cutting costs and asking them to cut staff and sending people home early
and cutting quality and all this stuff. And hey, at the end of the day,
you can express your opinions when the time is right.
You can share your thoughts but you may not
have core values that are aligned with this other person.
It's going to be very difficult for you to change their opinions
for you to change the way that they do business.
I'm not saying you shouldn't try. You should try.
You should try to do it tactfully and when the time is right.
But there are just situations where you're too far out of alignment and you're
probably better off finding a job that you are more aligned with.
I had to say no to two or three pretty good
opportunities when I was looking for a job as an executive chef
before I opened up some of the restaurants.
Because I just knew that I wasn't
going to agree with some of the things that ownership was doing.
I had come from hotels
with lots of systems and lots of processes and lots of procedures
and big work environments and
lots of walk-in space and
maintenance teams and all that.
And when I was applying for jobs at really busy, really successful,
really prominent freestanding restaurants. And I was offered those jobs
as I got to know ownership more.
And as I did interviews more and spent days cooking with them,
I just realized that at the end of the day
the systems and the process and the procedures that I
knew I would need to implement to make these restaurants
run the way I would want them to run as the executive chef were not
going to align with the systems,
processes and procedures and methods and cost controls
and spending habits that the owners had.
So, I respectfully declined the jobs even though they were offered
to me because they weren't going to be a good fit for me.
I'm fortunate that I was able to see that early on and I didn't get into deep with companies.
But I guess I would say wrapping up here
is I think core alignment is probably the most important thing here.
A lot of the times that we're disagreeing with our managers or our owners
or our team members is just because we just don't agree at the core level.
And that's going to be very hard to change. So
again, thank you so much
for watching this video. I look forward to bringing you another great video just like this next week.
If you haven't had a chance to get a copy of our book,
I don't know where it is over my shoulder here,
go ahead and go to therestaurantboss.com/books, get your
free copy of Make It Happen.
Remember, systems create freedom, freedom creates value and value
creates scale. I love every single one of you crazy restaurant people.
Have an amazing day. Bye.
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