The Best-Laid Plans—A Lesson in Curiosity
Early in my career, I developed training materials for the restaurant industry.
It is a unique and wonderful industry—fast-paced, energizing, and often exhausting. In a restaurant, teamwork is paramount and hierarchy is irrelevant when a line of customers is at the door, and vacant tables are strewn with dirty dishes. I am sure you have seen a restaurant manager tucking away their tie or jewelry and bussing a few tables in a frenzy. Food service professionals know how to have each others’ backs during these busy periods, and strong teamwork is just good business.
The restaurant industry is also deadly. Foodborne illness can and does kill. Protecting customers and preventing foodborne outbreaks is a top priority for any responsible establishment. Developing and implementing a food safety plan is not just good business practice; it is often a requirement of the local health department.
Items like detailed cleaning instructions, standardized recipes, equipment maintenance schedules, shelf-life charts, and job aids are typical examples of the documented procedures and policies included in a food safety plan. How often should food thermometers be calibrated to ensure accuracy? How should we store food and rotate stock? How long should a five-ounce chicken breast be grilled, and how hot should that grill be? The answers to these questions live in the written food safety plan.
Experienced restaurant professionals know that even if a food safety plan is air-tight, the system itself is always at risk and must be reinforced continually, moment by moment. The plan is simply the basis for informing and coaching employee behavior in a restaurant. Individual behaviors are an integral part of every workplace system. Training and awareness are contributing factors as well. Cultivating food safety behavior and habits also takes consistent modeling, positive reinforcement, and ensuring that the needed tools and resources (including staff) are available—every time.
But sometimes, mistakes are made, shortcuts are taken, and the best-laid plans aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, even regarding food safety.
I describe this by saying, “We can point to the plan, but the system surrounds us.” Let me share an example:
The Plan: A sign in the restroom instructing employees to wash their hands with soap and warm water before returning to work is part of the written plan. It’s what is supposed to take place.
The System: The system in action is whether or not employees consistently wash their hands with soap and warm water. If staff are not following the posted instructions—you guessed it—the system itself is not working (even though the plan is solid). In other words, the system is what actually happens in real-time.
A Case in Point
Over one weekend in June 1998, a large catering operation in the suburbs of Chicago catered 300 events, during which 5,600 people were sickened with a specific strain of E. coli bacteria (ETEC). The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated the outbreak thoroughly by examining the catering operation’s most recent health inspection reports, examining potential risks, testing food samples, and interviewing staff and customers.
The staff prepared an estimated 78 batches of potato salad that weekend alone, which were more orders than they could handle. They also had a malfunctioning sink in the main kitchen that was out of hand soap and paper towels, and the cold food was transported in a refrigerated truck that did not have a working interior thermometer. A final report issued by the CDC in 1999 said that poor sanitation and refrigeration probably fueled the outbreak.
Sounds simple, right? Potato salad made with unclean hands and improperly stored and transported led to widespread illness. The investigation and science bore that out. But how did the system actually lead to these mistakes? The restaurant leadership team was left to carefully examine how, where, and why the system within the restaurant failed its food safety plan and then untangle the system that resulted in the outbreak.
Why Isn’t the System Supporting the Plan?
How well do you and other leaders understand what negatively impacts your real-time system? Unfortunately, many managers are inclined to point fingers and immediately shift blame. However, identifying a scapegoat does not result in systemic change. Instead, it can inaccurately present the disconnect as a one-off or something that has been oversimplified. Scapegoating is also a culture signal that making mistakes is unsafe. This behavior erodes the culture dimension of Trust.
Rather than making assumptions, premature solutions, and judgments, leaders must dig in objectively to determine what contributing factors are tangling the system and impacting behavior. Leader-First Leaders know that to uncover the system factors at play and then improve them, they need to be annoyingly curious. That is where the Curiosity Touchstone comes into play.
Our responsibility as Leader-First Leaders is to practice genuine Curiosity when investigating why a system isn’t supporting its designed plan. You cannot address the root cause unless you ask the right questions of the right people in a spirit of mutual trust and a shared goal to improve the system together. Encourage those closest to the breakdown to share how and why they think the system is disconnected from the plan and listen carefully to what is said and not said. Are they getting inconsistent or conflicting messages? Observe processes in action and survey other leaders who impact the system through their behavior and culture signals. Test your assumptions. Ask for—and accept—feedback and input on system improvements.
In our case study, there were several possible lines of inquiry.
How did it happen that the operation accepted too many orders? Have they ever established safe maximum production limits? How is overall order volume monitored
How were additional temporary staff trained in safe food handling, and how were staff supported in following food safety procedures (supervision, handwashing supplies, timed breaks)?
How was the delivery truck inspected, maintained, and monitored?
How can the operation better plan ahead and stock additional cleaning supplies in anticipation of their busiest time of the year?
This article describes just one example of what it looks like to be annoyingly curious. But Curiosity isn’t just about getting to the heart of problems. Rather, it is a transformational Leader Touchstone in almost any situation—positive or negative. There is always more to learn from others—about your business, staff, processes, challenges and history, and successes. Be the curious one!