Management by Exception

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Have you ever noticed this? You're at work, and you've done 47 things right, and then your boss

is going to talk about the three things that you did wrong, and ignore the other 47 things.

You promise yourself you're not going to do that at your food truck, and then you do.

You have 200 amazing guest interactions, but you build new rules around the one dude that tried

to gain the system. Let's talk about leading by exception. Hi, my name is Bill Moore,

I'm the executive director of the National Street Food Vintage Association. Let's talk about

why leading or managing by the exception doesn't really work. You've got a solid crew. They show up,

they hustle, they're trying, and then one day someone's late, and you're a little bit stressed

because you're busy right when you open. Somebody forgets to stock the cups right when you reach for one,

and there's no cups. Somebody gives out a little bit too much sauce, and you notice that as the

bag goes out the window. Customer complaints, it gets loud, they want to refund, and they want

free food. Now what happens? The manager brain, the stressed out food truck owner brain,

goes straight into exception mode. You tighten everything. We call a meeting, we lecture the whole

team, even though only one person made the mistake, we create new rules, we start watching people

like they're trying to steal from us, and the team is thanking the whole time. Wait, I've

been busting my butt for months, and they're acting like I'm the problem. Most employees are not trying

to break the rules. Most guests are not trying to scam you. Most days are not utter disasters,

but typical managers talk like the exceptions are the norm. Just read a Facebook group. When you

manage like everybody else is about to mess you up, you created three toxic results. You trained

fear instead of pride into your staff, you get compliance with the rules instead of ownership,

and you stop reinforcing what is good, the things you do want repeated, because you're only

discussing the mistakes. So let me say that again, if you don't reinforce what good looks like,

your team won't repeat it on purpose. Do you remember the moment you started guarding sauce

cups like they were gold bars? You see it all the time, it usually starts with one customer. The one

person that says I need 14 sauces, and now the said you decided to ride a new policy, sauce only

with purchase, one part item, as for more extra charge, that's a new policy. The intention is good,

because you want to protect your feed cost, but if you roll it out like a punishment, and especially

if you roll it out like your team caused it, here's what's happened. Your best customer feels like

they're being nickled and dined. Your staff feels overpolicied. Your line slows down, because now

you got explained to everybody, your team gets more awkward with guests, because they don't want to

get yelled at for giving out one more sauce than they're supposed to. Your service vibe devolves into

conflict management instead of guest service. And it's all because you built the whole experience

around an exception. Managers fall into this trap. So why do we do it? Why do we notice the

exceptions? Because they're loud. Our brains look for the differences automatically. Why do you think

those little puzzle things where compared this picture to that picture and find the differences?

Why they're so popular? We feel like success when we find all the differences. Bad behavior becomes

memorable when you point it out constantly. Mistakes create rework. Complaints hurt your feelings.

So all of those loud things get pushed to the forefront when 95% of the whole rest of the day was

awesome. Quiet doesn't trigger your stress response. You're relaxed. It feels good. So when things

aren't quiet, those exceptions happen. You become stressed. Your brain starts treating the

exception as it's a threat. We all know that a threat, that point of pain, is something to avoid.

So the manager becomes a firefighter. We talked about this on many other podcasts.

Putting out yesterday's fire by soaking the whole thing with gasoline. That doesn't work.

What you want to do is manage the standard, not the exceptions. Here's what I want you to do.

Define the standard in plain language. Not a novel, not a video that takes 15 minutes to watch,

not in a binder, not in a company policy that no one's going to read. Or remember, you want to make

it simple, plain language. We greet every guest within 10 seconds, no matter what. We confirm the

order before payment, no matter what. We restock between rushes, not during rushes. We fix mistakes

fast and with respect. You're going to make mistakes. Next thing I want you to work on is catching

people doing it right on purpose. And I'm not talking about pretending or fake cheerleading.

I mean, specific and real callouts, just like when they make a mistake. I saw you pass out five

saucers. You can't do that. You were very specific on that because you were wound up in upset.

You need to take that same intensity and the same specificity and apply it to the good things they

do. The other 95% of the time they're working. And it's simple. I saw you repeat the order back.

Good job. You stayed calm with that guest when they were complaining. That's awesome. Thank you.

You prepped the line before the rush that made it so much easier when we got busy. Thank you so

much. You picked up the bring without being told. I appreciate that. That's called being a good

manager talking to your team through the position. Handle exceptions privately and precisely.

Whether it's a guest complaining or one of your employees messing up something. You talk to one

person. The guest that comes up to complain. You say, hey, dude, meet me at the back door. Let my staff

take care of the line. I'll take care of you. And you get them away from the crowd because they

will set the expectation that you suck in front of 10 other people. Get them away from the crowd.

But you handle it calmly and employee that messes up something. You talk to them calmly without

making a big deal of it in front of their co-workers. Don't build 10 new rules when you figure out

something isn't working the way that you would hope. That's just an adjustment. That's just a tweak.

You don't need 10 new policies. If you got a customer who's figured out a way to scam your system,

just figure out how to handle that one exception. No big deal. You don't need to have a 10-step policy

and then set up some type of courtroom procedure to make it happen. It's got to be simple. No one

likes hearing company policy. So don't create one for every little exception. It could be as simple

as that guest that complained wanted to refund and more food. So you have a choice. You can have

a refund. You go about your day or you can have the food remade but I keep the money and we still

go about our day. Your choice. If they ate all the food, sorry no refund. We may give you a free

sandwich in the future but we're not refunding money after you've eaten all of it and you just

got to be tough about that. But you don't have to make a whole new policy and make everybody feel

uncomfortable because one person trying to scam you. Here's one line to remember. We reward the

standard. We correct the exception. You have to reward the standard. That's when people are doing

stuff right because you already said this is why you make a burger. This is why you make a taco.

When they do it right, reward it and it doesn't have to be with a bonus, you know, $500. Here you go.

Did awesome. Hey dude. Good job. I appreciate you making that the correct way. So you're gonna do.

Let them know you're paying attention. You don't want it to go the other way around and you only

talk when something's wrong because then your employees will dread here and you talk.

Because sooner or later they're either going to quit or they're going to quit trying

and either way you lose. So write down the things that bug you the most and decide are you just

worried about that exception or is there a pattern to this that we do need to create a standardized

but simple policy to handle. Don't get mad and go oh my god look at that.

Steal in napkins and then writing a whole policy to cover. The one person that comes up was too

lazy to walk to the original food truck they bought from and they grab your napkins. You're worried

about a quarter. Create the goodwill. Thank you guys so much for listening to the Tim and a food truck

training podcast. If you enjoyed today's podcast do two things. Number one, whatever platform you're

listening to, like, subscribe, follow whatever the platform does. So that way you can know when I

upload another episode. And then the second thing I want you to do is go to nsfba.org.

Join our association today. We have all kinds of training this geared to helping you become

successful as a food truck.