How to Build Accountability in Your Pizza Shop Without Being the Bad Guy

In this week's Take Out Tips, Tyrell Reed gives you one practical tip for your shop this week: build accountability without being the bad guy. Vague expectations produce inconsistent results. 

Your team is not the problem - unclear standards are. 

Tyrell breaks down how to set measurable standards your team agrees to, how to make results visible so the numbers do the enforcing, how to build a leadership pipeline so accountability does not rest on you alone, and how to address it when someone falls short without making it personal. 

One action step: pick one measurable standard in your shop, post the results after every shift for two weeks, and watch the culture start to shift. 

Keywords: pizza shop management, team accountability, pizzeria leadership, restaurant operations, independent operator systems. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Here's my one tip for you this week. Pick one measurable standard in your store. Just one. Write it down, share with your team, work through it with your team, understand why it matters, and then post the results at the end of every shift for the next couple of weeks and see what happened. That's it. Just pick one number, make it visible, track it, set your standard and hold and hold and let the standard hold you and your team accountable to it. Hey, there we go. What's going on, Pizza Fam? Welcome back to another episode of the Pizza King Podcast. I am your host, Howrell Reid, and this is Take Out Tips. So you know it's Thursday. I'm here to give you one piece of advice, one practical tip, something that you can put into play this week in the shop and make a difference for you and for your team and for your business. Today I want to talk about accountability and specifically how to build accountability and hold people accountable without having to be the bad guy all the time. Like how to how do I do it? How do these folks do it without having to micromanage folks, without having to be the bad guy, without having to um tear somebody down, you know what I mean? Without having to, you know, just just be that that dude that brings the whole vibe down in the shop. How do you do that? I really want to talk about that today because I think it's important we've heard, you know, I'm in a lot of groups, a lot of forums, a lot of uh, you know, conversations where it always comes back to, you know, I got I need to build systems, I need to hold people accountable. It's, you know, it's hard to hard to get people to to work hard, it's hard to find good people. It is, it's difficult to, you know, to run the shop if I'm not there, if I'm not taking care of everything, I'm the one that's got to do it all. We hear that a lot, especially with with the independence. And it's just something that I really want to talk through today and kind of give my my tips, my point of view on what that looks like, you know what I mean? What that what that actually uh translates to in the restaurant. And I and I know but like what what folks are thinking on IT, I tried that. I tried to make the rules, I've tried to, I wrote things down, I had the meetings, I posted the sign, and people still just did whatever they wanted to. And I hear you, but I got something to tell you. Like me, I'm gonna tell you, you know, right up front. If you are the only person that's holding your team accountable, you are going to burn out. It's it's just a matter of time. You can't be the only one. The goal is never to get tougher on people, it's not to be louder. You know what I mean? I'm not even talking about being more consistent with your accountability. The goal is to build a system where the standards are holding people accountable, not necessarily the the leader. You know what I mean? The leader sets the standards, follows the standards themselves, adheres to them, but the standard, the standard becomes what we all measure ourselves against, right? So let me just break down what that looks like in real life and how we do it in our store. The first thing I want to talk about is the real reason that accountability breaks down in the store. Accountability doesn't break down because your team doesn't care. You know, it it breaks down because the expectation was never clearly set in the first place. This is what I see more than anything. You know, think about the last time you were frustrated with somebody on a team and you you pulled them aside and you said something like, Man, you need to be more focused, or you're gonna have to pick up the pace, or I need you to, I need you to take this a little bit more seriously. The question I have for you is what does more focus look like? What does it mean to them? What does picking up the pace mean in real numbers? Like how many minutes, how many seconds, and what does taking it seriously actually require, actually require? If you can't really answer those questions specifically, your team can't either. You know what I mean? They just they just won't. Vague expectations produce inconsistent results every single time. If it's vague, it's people are just gonna, they're gonna interpret it for themselves. The first step in building accountability is replacing vague language. And that's why I wanted to start there. You have to replace language that is vague and and non-specific with concrete standards, not feelings, not this is the vibe we're going for. I'm talking about numbers, I'm talking about specific behaviors, and I'm talking about results that you can actually measure to start setting accountabilities. Second point I want to make is you have to set standards that your team actually agrees to. One of the things I see folks get wrong is they they they come in with standards that are already written down and handed down like law, like, and I get it in a franchise situation, that's usually how things go, but as an independent, you have some flexibility, right? So you come in and you start handing out, you know, standards and and target times and ticket times and all these things like like it's the law. Like, you know, people are gonna smile at you, they're gonna nod, and then they're gonna forget about that shit. I'm just telling you the truth. Why? Because they didn't really have any say in it. You know what I mean? It was, it was, it's not theirs. It was yours. They're your standards. And you, you haven't, you're not consistently following your your standards either. So it means nothing to them. So when your team has the ability to help set the standards, they start to feel ownership of it. And we talk about this a lot in the leadership, in the leadership accelerator in the in my coaching program. When we start to give people ownership of their roles and of the standards that they set and hold hold them, hold their own selves accountable to, they protect that. They protect, people protect what they create. Well, you you set up a, you know, a simple, here's an easy way to do it. Set up a simple meeting, right? You know, we have a little staff meeting, pick one thing you want to improve, call it, let's say we're talking ticket times. Hey, item on the on the agenda for the meeting. Everybody kind of, you know, everybody gets an input here. What do you, where do you think tickets time should be on a Friday night? And you get you're gonna get questions all over the board, but you get to have a conversation. You get to drive that conversation. If you know in your mind and in your heart that the ticket time needs to be 10 minutes on a Friday night, and somebody may say eight and somebody may say 20, this this gives you an open forum to have the conversation on why. What's what's you know, what's causing us to be at 20? Why do you think we can get it done at eight? All right, how about we land somewhere in the middle and and call it 10? But you get to guide the conversation, but the number comes from the group. The number comes out of a time where people can't agree, right? So it's not just your number, it's the group's number, it's the store's number, it's the team's number. Now, write that down, print it out, post it somewhere, and make sure you communicate it to everybody because that has just become your standard and your team created it. You can do that with so many different things in the restaurant. People love, you know, to take ownership of roles and of positions. This is a great way to do it where we can start to set and build standards as a team and then hold ourselves accountable and let the standard and let the standard hold us accountable and let our other teammates hold us accountable because everybody knows it. That's a great, that's a great start. A third point I want to make is that results need to be something that is visual. You know what I mean? This is this is something that people skip a lot, right? And it really does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to accountability. Having visible results changes behaviors, is because it's so simple. Think about any sport, performs differently. You know, players perform differently when there's a scoreboard, right? You we all got little kids in little league, you know, is they're playing, they don't know the score, they're just playing. But when you put that scoreboard out there, people play differently. They're aiming to win. Not because the coach is watching, but because the number is right there in front of everybody to see, right? Your pizzeria ain't no different. Pizzeria ain't no different than being on that, on that field or on that court. If the standard is a 10-minute ticket time, post the results at the end of every shift, your average ticket times and see what happens. Write it on a board in the back and start tracking your ticket times. You know what I mean, during your peak, uh, during your rush. You know, call it, you know, six to eight every night. Where what are our ticket times? Put it in the group chat. Hey, ticket times were 13 minutes tonight. Let you know what happened. Say it out loud. Call it out at the end of every shift. That's one of the things I love and respect about professional athletes is that no matter what, win, lose, or draw, they step up to that podium and talk about their results after every single game, every single outing. And that's why, and that's what makes them professionals, right? Because you have to, A, get look at your results, explain your results in front of the world, and then go and make those adjustments. So that's what happens when you we're talking about taking our operation to the next level, low-level stuff. You got to start tracking your results and it's got to be public and it's got to be visual. You know what I mean? You know, tonight we average 15 minutes. We know what the target is. Let's talk about what got in the way and see where the conversation goes. As a leader, that gives you a chance to coach somebody, that gives you a chance to hold somebody, you know, hold people accountable and change the outcome. When people see the number, they can connect their efforts with the outcome. The connection is what builds the culture and an accountability in the restaurant, right? You don't have to be the enforcer. The scoreboard is the enforcer. You're just talking through the solutions and the adjustments. That's how you change the change the narrative. And you don't have to be the bad guy. You're actually helping. You're actually helping at that in that situation. Fourth point I want to make use your team leads to carry the standard. Like you, we talk a lot in the Leadership Accelerator Program about having that one-to-one structur that one-to-one structure. One main leader, two junior leaders, and one person in development. So when you're just the one person, the solo operator, you're wearing every hat, you need to start building that structure of having junior managers or shift leads or an assistant, having that leadership pipeline that we talk about so much in our coaching program to help push and manage the accountability. Like, so this is how you multiply yourself, multiply your accountability without cloning yourself, is you develop people. You need to build team leads, you need to build a pipeline of leadership so that you can empower people to hold standards. B, you can have some time off and some, you know, in a break and some time away from the shop and some support in your position. You know what I mean? But in order to do that, it means two things. Number one, they have to be trained. They can't just be told that, hey, you're you're the manager. You really have to walk them through what running the store looks like, what the accountability looks like in the store, how to address things when someone falls short, how to keep, you know, you know, processes and not people, right? And not, you know, we we coach behaviors, not not not the people, you know what I mean, and how to report back to you what that looks like. I love having weekly meetings. It it really solves a lot of problems. Second is they need to be supported. So first they have to be trained, and then you have to support them. If a team lead corrects somebody or a shift manager corrects somebody, and then you go and undercut them five minutes later, you just kill, you just kill that relationship. You just destroyed their authority and your own. You know what I mean? So you gotta back your leads up in the moment and then address any any any disagreements privately, right? But you gotta back them up, you gotta support them. You put them in position for a reason, you gotta let them own their decisions and their efforts, and then you coach, and then you coach the adjustments afterward. So when your shift leads or when your managers or your assistants, they carry the standard, you go from being one accountability, one having one point of accountability to having multiple points of accountability in the restaurant. And this is how you scale. This is how you scale culture, this is how you scale your training, this is how you scale your operation. All right. And then the last, the last point I want to make is what you have to do when somebody falls short of the standard, right? So it's not like if, right? It's not a maybe. Somebody is gonna fall short. It's a given. Like no one's gonna be perfect. The question is how do you handle it in that moment? One of the one of the mistakes that I've seen folks make is they make it personal, right? You know, they say things like, I don't understand why you keep doing this, or you always do this this way, or I expected more from you. And that's the wrong way to do it because then you're coaching, you're you're correcting people, not correcting behavior, not correcting processes. That type of language forces people to shut down. You know what I mean? It puts them in defense mode, right? And you stop having a productive conversation. It's the second somebody goes into defensive mode, the conversation is no longer productive, right? So instead, you got to bring things back to the standard. This is what we're doing with coaching standard. Hey, the target was 10 minutes on ticket times. We hit 16 during the shift. Walk me through what happened at your station. You know, you're not attacking them. You're talking, you're examining the gap between the standard and the result. Then you find out that, oh, we didn't have, you know, we didn't have cheese prepped. I had to go back and and you know, pull four or five bins, I had to keep going back to the cooler because my backups weren't stocked. Now we start to have a different type of conversation. And you and you take folks out of that defensive mode and you put them more into proactive, let's work together type mode, right? And that's what we want. Most of the time you find out that it was just a breakdown and process. That's usually what happens. It wasn't, it wasn't them. It was a gap in the training or or you know, a resource problem or something, you know, something broke down along the lines and then they and they caught the end of it. So this is why you got to have those conversations and you can't make them personal. You know, when you address the gap between what happened and and what the expectation was, that's where you start to get into problem solving mode, and that's leadership at a next at you know at the next level. And that's where I want you to start thinking about is how do we make real improvements happen in the restaurant, the restaurant. So that's my tip for here's my one, excuse me. So here's my one tip for you this week. Pick one measurable standard in your store. Just one. It can be ticket time, it could be, you know, your cheese measurement on pizzas, it can be wait time for customers, you know, whatever, whatever matters to you right now, whatever's gonna make the biggest difference. Write it down, share with your team, work through it with your team, understand why it matters, and then post the results at the end of every shift for the next couple of weeks and see what happened. That's it. Don't overthink it. Just pick one number, make it visible, track it, set your standard and hold and hold and let the standard hold you and your team accountable to it. So that's all I have for today. Remember, when standards aren't clear, when they're not visible, you st you you you have to be the bad guy because you're the only one that does it. But when they are clear, when they are posted, when they are agreed upon and they are visible, you stop being the big bad wolf in your shop. The standard becomes the boss and you become the coach to help make the adjustments. Your job is not to trade to chase people down every shift to do all the things you want. Your job is to build a system that holds the standard even when you're not there. That's your goal, right? Otherwise, you ain't never gonna take no vacation. Ain't never gonna be able to come to Expo with us. You know what I mean? If come to Vegas for a couple of days, you're never gonna be able to do that because you don't have standards in the shop. So I want you to start thinking through those things because that's what real leadership looks like in a pizzeria. And listen, that's your takeout tip. If you want to do more with us, come join us in the school group. Come, you know, hit me up somewhere, you know, join join the program. We got a lot of free resources, you know, for situations just like this, even beyond the podcast. So check the show notes. There's links to join the program. The group is completely free. Or go get into one of these paid groups and start really start really working through it. There's a lot of good ones out there. I'm in, I'm in groups. I'm in SPM Pro. Like go go get around other operators and start having some deeper conversations because that's how we start to see improvements in the shop. But that's all I got for you. I gotta call Mr. Wilson back. I'll holler at y'all. Let's take out his for this week. Peace King podcast, we out.