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Leadership Lessons From The Eye Of The Storm - By Kathleen Wood, President and COO, Raising Cane's |
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There are no books or manuals written on how to prepare and lead a company through the nation's single largest disaster in our history - Hurricane Katrina; then less than three weeks later lead the company through Hurricane Rita. |
Raising Can's accomplished this by staying true to its culture, crew and communities. Kathleen Wood shares Raising Cane's leadership lessons on how they prepared, responded and have continued to manage through the aftermaths of these storms.
After Hurricane Katrina, Raising Cane's shut down and reopened restaurants 37 times in five weeks. The hurricane forced 21 of Raising Cane's then 28 company-owned stores to close. In total, our restaurants were collectively closed for 199.5 days. That was the bad news. The good news is that we were either the first or one of the first restaurants open in Hammond, Covington, Slidell, Harvey, Clearview, Metairie, Lake Charles and Gulfport. We were the first new construction in New Orleans with our Marrero site on West Bank, which opened on March 8, 2006. And, when Raising Cane's reopened its New Orleans location on Veterans Blvd. on September 16, there were only 40 restaurants out of what was pre-storm approximately 3,400, open in the greater New Orleans area, of which, five were Raising Cane's.
How does one prepare for the single greatest natural disaster in United States history? The answer is, 'It's what one does every day!' We learned some valuable lessons from the storm, what I call the 'High C's':
1. Commitment to Culture
2. Crisis Plan in Place
3. Centralize Leadership
4. Consistent Communication
5. Carry Out the Plan
Commitment To Culture
As a company, you have to know who you are, what your represent, you must live your values, be true to your non-negotiables, and insure that your culture is real and relevant as you grow. Our vision is to have restaurants all over the world and to be 'the brand' for quality chicken finger meals, a great crew and a cool culture. We aim to be fast, friendly, clean and to have fun.
At Raising Cane's we use the word love to describe our culture of reward, respect and recognition. And, we live our values. We are fair with each other. We care about our crew. We take pride in what we do. We explain the why.
We also have our non-negotiables. We are committed to putting out the highest quality products and ingredients, using fresh premium chicken tenderloins, and we never sacrifice quality for speed. While we maintain a sense of urgency, we never complicate our simple system. We respect our customers, appreciate our crew, always keep Raising Cane's culture and, most important, we always have fun. We are careful to never grow new restaurants at a rate that doesn't allow us to open in exceptional locations. And we never take a franchisee that isn't passionate about Raising Cane's.
That's our background, but when it came to the storm, Commitment to Culture was storm lesson number one, and along with that we learned that crew safety is our number one priority.
Crisis Plan in Place
Storm lesson number two was to have a crisis plan in place. That meant, for us:
1. The Perfect Safety Box
2. Proactively plan for the entire organization
3. Teach the entire organization our plan
4. Communication back-ups are critical
5. Realize everything is replaceable except people
What is the perfect safety box? That encompasses our passion both for what we do (Fast, Clean, Friendly, Have Fun) and for the safety of both our crew and our customers including Food Safety, Crew Safety and Addressing Substance Abuse and Sexual Harassment.
We also proactively planned. Organizationally that means we planned who would take what role and what each person's responsibilities would be. We planned for how we would manage our staff before, during and after the crisis. Next, we determined from where our product would come during the crisis. We discovered what our supply would be, who would distribute it and how we would store it. We developed contingency plans for finances, including payroll and cash/change on hand. And in terms of the physical property, we had in place a plan to determine how and who would assess the damages and made sure we were adequately insured? The word was connectivity and back up plans were key!
So, storm lesson number two was to have a crisis plan in place. But that was not enough. Everyone in our organization needed to know the plan. We made it an intrinsic part or your system.
Centralize Leadership
The third storm lesson was to centralize leadership. The centralized leadership needed to:
--Inspire confidence
--Be Calm
--Be a role model
--Be flexible, adaptable
--Be decisive in decision making
We had One Vision for our company during the crisis: to re-open ALL locations, including our crew, customers, community and commerce in the mix. We had One Team to accomplish this task and this team's task was to inspire confidence and calm at all levels of leadership. And finally we had One Direction and that was to focus on the future and restore normalcy.
The bottom line in lesson three: never underestimate the power of passionate people!
Consistent Communication
Storm lesson number four was to create consistent communication. We needed to have key messages, to know who we were targeting (affected or unaffected areas), we needed to be able to separate fact from fiction, and we needed to establish on-going communication. The big message here was that crews and customers need to connect to bring them together.
Carry Out the Plan
Lesson number five was to actually carry out the plan implemented. Before the hurricane we created proactive planning and during the storm we adjusted, modified and re-evaluated at every juncture.
After the storm, we rushed to staff our restaurants, set standards, reestablish our culture and return to normalcy. Today, we are upgrading our systems, readjusting our timelines, focusing on enculturalism and accountability.
Because of our careful planning and carrying out of the plan, our 2004 sales increased by 95 percent; our 2005 sales actually increased by 81 percent. Same store sales, which as an industry in New Orleans was zero, at Raising Cane's increased by 16 percent in 2004, in 2005 the industry average was 4 percent, while ours was 16 percent. And our mystery shopper score average in 2005 was over 94 percent.
In the end, we realized that plans are only as good as our people and preparation before, during and after a crisis.
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Contact Information:
P.O. Box 2835, Westfield, NJ 07091 Phone (800) 463-5918
Click for Website
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CHART is one of the oldest and largest nonprofit organizations dedicated to training in the hospitality industry. |
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