If your staff worked a long week would they come in on their night off to socialise with you? It might seem like too much to ask, but if you’ve built a high performing team on shared values and a clear vision it won’t be a hard thing for them to do. This happens frequently at The Botanist in Leeds.
Launched just over three years ago as one of several high-end bars in Leeds’ newest shopping centre, Trinity Leeds, the team has won a clutch of national awards each year, broken a World Record and continually smashes internally set targets. The management team puts that down to a few simple things which are easy to replicate in your business.
So what’s at the core of The Botanist’s success? Here’s how they’ve done it.
Hire slowly, fire quickly
At the heart of The Botanist’s success is a rock-solid team hired for their shared values. Creating a team who all believe in the same things – even if that takes longer – means they are more likely to stay and more likely to be successful. Getting rid of the people who don’t fit and doing that quickly is a priority for the management team and a technique they’ve successfully replicated across the group.
Simon Sinek says “A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other.”
A team that trusts one another, with shared values and a clear vision, will have a passion for the job, better morale, will go out of their way to help one another and, like the team at The Botanist, won’t see it as a chore to come in on one of their nights off to celebrate smashing the latest success.
The right incentives for the right people
The hospitality industry is notoriously competitive and traditionally has a high turnover of staff. Keeping the right people not only depends on ensuring they are a good fit in the first place, but also on recognising their achievements in the right way.
All core aspects of The Botanist are measured regularly against a set of strict quality standards from cleanliness to stock levels, performance ratios to customer service. Bonus payments for the whole team are linked to these results, ensuring that there is an incentive for everybody to consistently achieve them. This creates a culture of accountability and of team work, encouraging everyone to be at their best all of the time.
Define success
If you don’t know what success looks like, how will you achieve it? The Botanist has clear and structured targets for both key performance indicators (past performance) and business growth indicators (future performance) which ensures everyone knows what success is and can track how they are doing on a daily or hourly basis if necessary.
They have invested in a strong culture and have robust systems which can track everything from sales to margins and stock accuracy. As a very wise man once said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
What will you do?
It might be easy to say these are the things which have created The Botanist’s success, it’s much harder to re-create them in your business. But nothing worth having ever came easily, so how will you ensure your team shares your company’s values?
Will you be brave enough to get rid of the brilliant jerks that are holding you back? Have you properly defined and communicated success so your team knows what they are aiming for? And have you got the right incentives right to ensure you reward and recognise hard work?
Developing a dream team is one of the essential building blocks to running a successful business. If you are working too many hours or are frustrated about any element of your team, it’s time to take action.
Access our tool here to get started: tendo-uk.com/dreamteam
