A Quick Study | by Dr. Jerry Newman
I got an e-mail from one of my legions of readers (legions being defined as three) several weeks ago. He asked me what test he should use to select new crew members. I wish the answer was Chinese Menu simple: Pick one from column A and one from column B. In reality, you have to answer two questions. Question 1: What behaviors do I want crew members to show? Question 2: How do I select applicants who will show those behaviors?
Question 1: What behaviors? For the past several months I’ve been interviewing chief people officers, chief operations officers, and key members of their staffs in some of the largest quick-serves in the world. One of the key questions is always, “What do you want your people to do?” Sometimes the answer is easy and scripted in great detail. When an angry customer comes to the front counter, Yum! folks want to see BLAST. The acronym stands for Believe the customer is right, Listen, Apologize, Solve the problem, and Thank.
But what should crew members do when there’s no manager or acronym immediately available to guide them? This, I think, is the true question. What should your brand stand for?
If you want to be great, the answer to this question should be the same whether it’s Jim Skinner, David Novak, or any restaurant general manager or crew member answering. No brand can script everything it wants employees to do. Consider this real situation I encountered:
It’s my eighth and final restaurant, approaching the end of a two-year stint as an undercover crew member. Aaron, an 18-year-old assistant manager, is scheduled to interview me. As he walks up to begin the questions, he spots the line on the application asking for birth date. Aaron looks puzzled and says in all sincerity, “I don’t think the law allows me to hire you. You’re too old.”
It takes me a full minute to realize he’s had just enough training to be dangerous.
Aaron thinks the Age Discrimination in Employment Act forces him to not hire me. Good naturedly he accepts my “reinterpretation” of the law, and the remainder of the interview goes well. Clearly, you can’t script the response an Aaron should give to a senior applicant.
I hope it’s also clear that Aaron’s response wasn’t ideal. So what should you do? One key is to craft a brand plan to guide behavior. McDonald’s calls it the Plan to Win. Yum calls it HWWT2–How We Work Together, How We Win Together. Burger King calls it the True North Plan.
Do you have a plan? What do you stand for? When crew members meet one of those thousands of situations where guidance isn’t available or remembered, how do you want them to react? What behaviors matter?
Let me single out Yum, although all great brands have a brand plan. While HWWT2 has dozens of sub plans, the key boils down to six behaviors that everyone should exhibit and are tracked by a variety of important metrics.
They are:
- Believe that people have good intentions
- Customers rule
- Breakthrough (positive change) results are everyone’s responsibility
- Build know-how
- Teamwork rules
- Recognize and celebrate successes
There is nothing in these six general behaviors that is earth shattering. McDonald’s and Burger King have similar brand plans; they share this information with me knowing that I will talk to you. They’re confident I’m not giving away the secret formula.
Great plans first identify the behaviors that are key, but the hard part is figuring out how these behaviors should be implemented. A good brand plan is like a fungus that grows on everything. If you really believe your plan will differentiate you, it needs to seep into the culture, into how you train people, and into how they are evaluated and compensated.
It’s also essential that you make sure you hire the right people using selection tools that focus on your key behaviors. Yum, not surprisingly, develops selection tools that identify people who fit the brand plan. The first law of selection is to hire for fit.
Don’t take my word for it. Dozens of great scientific studies provide overwhelming evidence that success comes from hiring people who fit your culture, who believe in and demonstrate the behaviors that you stand for.
Don’t care about that science mumbo jumbo? Take a look at the successful brands, big or small. I bet they have a brand plan that guides behavior in every nook and cranny of business and people operations. When I worked undercover my best manager admitted that she hired me because she thought I would fit. Those were her words. My words: Burger King is building a successful brand plan.
Question 2: How do I select for these behaviors? With all deference to counselors and therapists, most people don’t change their behavior. Look at an application. If the applicant has held five fast-food jobs in the past year, you can predict what will happen if your decision is to hire. Here today, gone tomorrow.
The second law of selection is: The best predictor of future performance is past performance. Don’t expect an applicant who tells you he works best when given solo tasks to suddenly become a great team player. Might it happen? Sure. Will it happen? Don’t bet on it.
This second rule of selection explains why behavioral interviewing is so popular these days. Asking applicants for examples of things they’ve done in the past that illustrate [fill in the behavior you believe is important here], is a classic effort to use the past to predict the future. Why are internships and work-study programs so popular with employers? One major reason is they get to try out people in the actual work setting—a pretty good predictor of future behavior as a full-time employee.
Yes, the selection process is complex. But the answer to all people questions is always going to be the same. What behaviors do you want to see from crew members in your store? Just as I told you in my March column, somewhere in the three triangles (Abililty, Motivation, and Evironment) is a map of how to get there.