Ideas and Implementation: The Sync Proven Process

By Mike Walls – Operations Consultant & Beverage Certified Cicerone

Ideas are a wonderful thing to have, but it’s the implementation that leads to success.

Sometimes it goes like this:

You’re getting great ideas from this newsletter and thinking about how they would work in your business. Then the phone rings, an email comes in, or there’s a knock on the door to your office. And just like that, you get swallowed up by the day and the idea that you know would help grow your business, improve your life, and build up your team, goes straight to the idea graveyard, never to be heard from again.

The good news is that this happens to everyone, and it’s not your fault. You simply haven’t discovered the right framework to create action from great ideas and continuously improve your restaurant.

We have some principles for dealing with situations like these and some frameworks that will help you make operational realities out of your big ideas through the power of implementation.

To start, we use the Sync Proven Process:

The sequence is as follows:

1. We introduce a system for project management that makes working on your business a scheduled and natural part of your daily flow.
2. We create a simplified picture of the business by creating distinct buckets for each department, their responsibilities, and the teams responsible for carrying them out.
3. We use an alignment tool to help everyone understand that we’re all here to create outstanding guest experiences and make money while giving excellent service.
4. We use the meeting and project management tool to plan, the simplified picture of the business to focus, and the power of alignment to help the team understand why we’re making changes and how it benefits them, the restaurant, and the guest. Then we add technology, policy, or system to the business.
5. Now that we have built some momentum, we clearly define leadership roles and responsibilities and define our short, mid, and long-term goals with greater precision.
6. We then create a business scorecard of 5-15 key metrics or “leading indicators” that will help us understand the health of the business and the impact of our changes at a glance, and proactively, before the numbers hit the P&L (which is a “trailing indicator”).
7. Finally, we end in the Continuous Improvement Cycle which looks like this:

Using the foundation of the Sync Proven Process and the six simple tools represented by each tile in the diagram above, we firmly plant the business in a cycle of continuous improvement that revolves around setting goals, implementing changes, measuring and celebrating success, and repeating in specific intervals.

We teach our clients how to do this using Synergy U, our eLearning platform, and 1:1 coaching sessions.

If you’d like to learn more, reach out to mike@synergyconsultants.com today!