Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service, with Tia Tassava
When Total Food Service asked us to write a weekly crisis management column, we couldn’t conceive it would last more than eight weeks.
Today, our 20th weekly column, and with no apparent end in sight, we can no longer consider these crisis conditions. At the same time, we also thoroughly reject the notion that anyone should grow accustomed to continued public health, economic and societal challenges as being the new normal or some such thing. Accepting this level of turmoil as a new status quo would mean we have no control over our businesses or fate. Hospitality entrepreneurs are too dynamic, the industry is too vital, and there is far too much at stake for us to resign ourselves to being victims.
In truth, there is every reason to expect overall business conditions will worsen as Summer 2020 fades to Fall. With greater urgency, our best guidance is to refer back to, double down on, and incorporate in your standard managerial practices proven fundamentals highlighted during our initial three installments, paying particular attention to April 20, “Planning and Purposeful Pivoting.”
If nothing else, COVID-19 and everything related to it has come at us in waves. The combination of planned school reopening and traditional flu season leads us to believe there will not only be many more waves, waves we believe will roll in and out with particular fury. Your level of ongoing analysis, planning, and business dexterity will determine whether or not you will master these waves like a champion surfer or be capsized. Although we couldn’t have been more wrong about how long COVID-19 would devastate everything around us without interruption, all of the Day & Nite/All Service/Popular Plumbing research conducted before and during the pandemic has been prescient.
Further analysis provides additionally useful guidance:
- Crisis management typically requires short term adjustment to meet new conditions without significant structural, operational, or business model change. COVID-19 is a transformational event, its impact to be felt far beyond the actual public health dangers. Transformational is the operative word as it is passively experienced, reactively managed, as a result of significant change thrust on us with precious little warning or prior experience;
- Globally, we are conditioned to respond to transformational change by waiting for brilliant experts to rapidly come to our rescue, telling us what to do and how to do it. Whether it is the World Health Organization or respected US institutions like the Centers for Disease Control, ambiguity coupled with instruction-on-the-fly shows there are no experts to be relied on;
- Therefore, COVID-19 can only be viewed as a transformative event. This then classifies it as conditions to be actively managed to, totally dependent on possessing the power and capacity to anticipate, catch and fully ride every single wave;
- Unprepared organizations will suffer from the worst possible of all afflictions at a time demanding transformative management: analysis paralysis. Consider the five months of mid-March to mid-August 2020 your business version of surfer training where you now have gotten your bearings and know-how to balance your business board. The months ahead promise to be a daily version of something between Oahu’s Pipeline and Western Australia’s Cyclops business surfing.
As an active pursuit that must be practiced with precise urgency, steering clear of analysis paralysis, transformative management harnesses multi-disciplinary strengths with a clear purpose of getting maximum control of more than current events. Indeed successful transformative management initiatives always emphasize long term impact. Day & Nite Performance Solutions serves not only as an invaluable resource for you to rely on, but its history is a prime example of transformative management. The Company’s practice started over a decade ago and is the marriage of several disciplines now entirely repurposed around indoor environmental quality, workplace, visitor, guest, and food safety. Further propelled by the Company’s advanced Balanced Scorecard practices, the Company is oriented to take a highly collaborative, change-as-a-routine, evolutionary approach to all facets of business. On technical, strategic, and operational levels, the Day & Nite family of companies is anxious to help you become your best transformative self so you can master every wave as the business version of Duke Kahanamoku.
Please support Day & Nite’s philanthropic partnership with the James Beard Foundation Open For Good campaign. Learn how you can contribute to keeping restaurants open for good without spending any money by emailing us at jbf@wearetheone.com.
