Why developing experienced multiunit leaders is criticalWhy developing experienced multiunit leaders is critical

Sullivision.com chief executive Jim Sullivan

My last four columns have addressed creative strategies for finding, selecting and developing unit managers and hourly team members in this year’s shallow talent pool. 

This month, I’d like to add to that body of knowledge by discussing the concepts of onboarding and inboarding, and not in the way those concepts apply to hourly teams and unit managers, but how they apply to the supervisory level. This is the most overlooked in terms of training and development: above-restaurant leadership — area directors, franchise business consultants and multiunit franchisees. 

One of the fundamental differences between us and retail is that the restaurant industry both manufactures and sells its products in the same building. Enter the kitchen area of any quick-service operation in North America and you’ll discover an assembly-line manufacturing process that would make Henry Ford beam. 

Writer Karl Taro Greenfeld described it best in a Bloomberg Businessweek post: “Every Taco Bell, McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King is a little factory, with a manager who oversees three dozen workers, devises schedules and shifts, keeps track of inventory and the supply chain, supervises an assembly line churning out a quality-controlled, high-volume product, and takes in revenue of $1 million to $3 million a year, all with customers who show up at the front end of the factory at all hours of the day to buy the product.” 

Greg Creed is CEO of Taco Bell parent Yum! Brands Inc., and a veteran of the detergents and personal products division of Unilever. He put it this way: “I think at Unilever, we had five factories. Well, at Taco Bell today I've got 6,000 factories, many of them running 24 hours a day.” 

Foodservice Multiunit Leaders (MULs) are, therefore, effectively plant supervisors of six to 10 combo manufacturing/retail facilities across their marketplace. It’s a complex and challenging role to master and evolve with. And now a training and development gap is becoming evident for industry MULs. 

Our recent research shows that foodservice companies spent nearly 10 times more time training their hourly and unit manager teams than they did developing their Multiunit Leaders in 2015. How do you explain this oversight? 

Maybe it’s because MULs operate at such a high leadership level that foodservice executives assume they need no additional development. Or maybe it’s because our industry has grown so rapidly through franchising and quality that we focused on customer-facing team development and ignored the “manager of managers.” Or maybe we just didn’t know how to design and implement tenure-tiered developmental programs when leaders reach the highest levels. But there’s a learning curve at every phase of leadership, especially tenure. This is particularly true of our Multiunit Leaders, whom in many cases today have tons of experience and decades of tenure, too. 

Has your company carefully considered how to develop the MUL, franchise business consultant, or multiunit franchisee with five, 10 or 15 years of tenure in the role? I’m guessing you haven’t, since most companies put very little thought into even the first phase of Multiunit Leadership development: how to effectively transition a successful GM into the Multiunit Leadership role. For many companies, sink or swim seems to be the preferred method of orientation.  

It’s a common fallacy that only leaders in trouble need coaching. Acclimating managers to a vertical promotion requires patience and a plan. 

“What most restaurant owners, franchisees or executives forget is that it takes six to seven years for someone to master the behaviors of being an exceptional GM,” said Sam Rothschild, partner and COO of Slim Chickens, a 32-unit fast-casual chain based in Fayetteville, Ark. 

“Once you promote that veteran GM to become a newbie Multiunit Leader, you’re at a perilous crossroad: You’ve potentially endangered a high-performing unit by removing an exceptional GM from it, and you’ve also potentially crippled that new leader’s confidence and growth,” Rothschild said. “The truth is that the tolerance level for a new MUL to perform in the role is immediate — certainly less than a year — even though the new skillsets are markedly different from a GM’s. And if they fail to perform to those expectations, they are often let go. So then you lose on three levels: 1) You lost a great GM. 2) You lost the surefire sales and profit from a great restaurant. And, 3) You’re still looking for a new MUL.” 

Horizontal and vertical MUL mentors should be assigned to newbies. Which brings us to onboarding and inboarding.

Onboarding is the process of integrating external-to-internal hires into your company’s culture. A more rudimentary version of this process used to be called “orientation.” 

More than just a catchphrase, onboarding has proven to be effective in both reducing employee churn and successfully aligning new hourly workers and unit managers to a company’s values, mission and brand. You can apply onboarding to internal promotions as well, accelerating the successful transition from GM to MUL. Start by asking your veteran MULs what they wished they knew that they didn’t when they first made the transition, and research industry best practices, too. 

And what about ongoing development for tenured, veteran MULs? Consider the concept that author Michael Watkins refers to as inboarding. Think of it as the process of acclimating internal promotions to the politics, expectations and challenges at the upper levels of the company’s leadership ladder.

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Watkins recommends that companies, "Assess transition risk and provide support accordingly. Some transitions are more challenging than others. Often the level of risk is a function of how many distinct types of transitions leaders are experiencing as they take [or mature into] new roles. Match transition support to the types of challenges leaders are facing.” 

MULs who have been in the job for more than a decade deserve periodic coaching on industry trends, technology and best practices in hiring, training, retention, time management, service and sales. 

So think deeper and harder about the process you use to develop your Multiunit Leaders at every transition and tenure phase. After all, you won't be remembered for the numbers you delivered as much as for the people you developed. 

Jim Sullivan is the author of two bestselling books, Multiunit Leadership and Fundamentals, and is a popular speaker at leadership conferences worldwide. Get his training catalog at Sullivision.com, and follow him on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter @Sullivision.