Production/Production Capability Balance

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effec­tive Peo­ple, Stephen Covey intro­duces a con­cept he calls P/PC Bal­ance. P is short for Pro­duc­tion, PC for Pro­duc­tion Capa­bil­ity. He uses Aesop’s fable of the goose who laid the golden eggs to demon­strate it. The farmer, want­ing more eggs ℗, unwisely kills his goose (PC) and never gets another egg. There are dif­fer­ent kinds of PC — machin­ery, peo­ple, money — but all of them must be respected and main­tained if any pro­duc­tion is going to occur.

I’ve expe­ri­enced first­hand being the slaugh­tered goose. The last pay­ing job I had was as a coor­di­na­tor for a local restau­rant. I believed in the com­pany, and took pride in my job, despite the fact that it was only a part time gig that was to help stretch the bud­get until money wasn’t so tight. My employer respected me, and even though there were tense times, I was given raises and excel­lent eval­u­a­tions. Then, as is nor­mal in the hos­pi­tal­ity indus­try, man­age­ment shifted.

My new store man­ager inher­ited a staff that was hard­work­ing, with a sur­pris­ingly low turnover rate for being a restau­rant. Imme­di­ately, he started chang­ing things, with­out explain­ing the whys or lis­ten­ing to anyone’s input. When peo­ple tried to explain to him how things worked he would sim­ply answer that he had 20+ years expe­ri­ence, what could we tell him?  I remem­ber dis­tinctly try­ing to tell him he had staffed the entire restau­rant wrong on a week­end. I gen­tly tried to explain to him that Birm­ing­ham, AL runs its fall Sat­ur­days around Auburn and Alabama foot­ball, and that he had placed his light crew on the wrong shift. We would be slammed when the games weren’t play­ing, and dead when they were. He told me he had looked at the pre­vi­ous years traf­fic for that week­end, and it told a dif­fer­ent story — we would be busy in the evening. I asked him had he com­pared it to the foot­ball sched­ule. He scoffed and said, “Like that mat­ters. It never did in Atlanta, and that’s only an hour away. I think I know more about both man­ag­ing a restau­rant and foot­ball than you do.”

Yes, oh Great One. Of course my pre­dic­tion was right! The kitchen and the wait­staff crashed dur­ing the pre­dicted rush. This was just one exam­ple of the way he treated his employ­ees who were famil­iar with the cus­tomer base, and the restau­rant, on a daily basis.

I tried to ignore him, and do my job to the best of my abil­i­ties despite him. After all, this was a part time job, just to make ends meet, right? I didn’t need all of that drama, and he wasn’t worth my time.  Finally, so many peo­ple quit that he began over­work­ing me (“I know you’re sup­posed to be part time, and this is 12 days of work in a row, but you’re one of the ONLY peo­ple who can do it!”) I couldn’t avoid him any­more.  In addi­tion, he con­tin­ued to show me very lit­tle appre­ci­a­tion or respect.  I got fraz­zled, and began los­ing my tem­per more often.  I wasn’t see­ing my fam­ily enough.

Even­tu­ally, I asked for a raise to com­pen­sate for it all.  There was a lot of drama involved, because he did some very under­handed things that were against com­pany pol­icy.  But I was pre­pared to nego­ti­ate, because I really believed in this restau­rant.  I felt bad for my man­ager, too, as he was hav­ing per­sonal issues that he cer­tainly made no secret of, and was deal­ing with a floun­der­ing restau­rant. I really did not click with the guy, but I tried to show him com­pas­sion and work it out.

Then he laid the killing blow on this goose’s neck.  We were almost to a meet­ing place.  He had said a lot of things, some of which I appre­ci­ated and oth­ers that reminded me that there was no drug test­ing at my job and maybe he was just on crack.  Then he told me, “You see, the thing is, we’re just peo­ple, but this place will go on even if you quit.  This restau­rant, this busi­ness, is big­ger than you.  It’s big­ger than me.”

!!!!

He had already told me I was replace­able, which I had con­ceded.  Other peo­ple could do my job — most of them not as well, but I wouldn’t end the restau­rant if I walked out.  I accepted that.  But I value myself way higher than any place where peo­ple go to eat, drink, and be merry.  I’m a per­son.  How­ever any­one would value an orga­ni­za­tion above the indi­vid­u­als that com­prise it bog­gled me.  I even made him repeat it, and asked did he really believe that.  He did.  If he thought he was smaller than a restau­rant, more power to him.  But I per­son­ally, am much more valu­able than that.  I said so and left, com­pletely at peace with my decision.

Stephen Covey tells us that “the PC prin­ci­ple is to always treat your employ­ees exactly as you want them to treat your best cus­tomers.”  That store man­ager didn’t last much longer than I did, but he man­aged to drive quite a few qual­ity employ­ees off before he came to a “mutual deci­sion with man­age­ment that it was in both par­ties best inter­est that he resign.”  Today, that restau­rant is doing just fine, much bet­ter even, with­out him. I’m sure he’d some­how think that only proved his point.  I’m just not that tiny.