Sustainable Leadership Power (3 page paper)

Organizational Team Building: South Dallas Cafe

Organizational Team Building: South Dallas Cafe

Goals of the Three Teams

South Dallas Café is a family own business that is located Dallas Texas for the past 20 years. This restaurant deals with southern style, home cooking food and beverage, that serves meals such as pork chops, catfish, chicken fried steaks, meat loaf, burgers, spaghetti, roasted ribs, chips, salads, and soft beverages, including water (South Dallas Café, 2019). The cashiers, the runners, and the kitchen staff all make up one team, then there is the technical team, and the control system. The restaurant utilizes the self-service system, which means that customers must place their orders from the counter before they can take their tables. The place gets particularly busy between 11am and 2.30pm, then again between 7.30pm and 9.00pm. This means that the teams must work together to ensure a smooth operation during these times.

The cashiers are the first people to interact with the restaurant’s customers. Their role is to take orders as fast as possible, and to do it accurately. They must also up-sell the day’s target items to help the restaurant with meeting its day’s revenue target. At the same time, they are responsible for taking care of the customer’s needs or concerns while at the order counter, and must do so professionally before considering to direct the matter to the supervisor or branch manager if the case is complex for their mediation. The cashiers must work out their role with diligence, accuracy, and must remain pleasant despite the pressure (West, 2012). A case of slackness and inaccuracy in this team can derail the whole process resulting in an unpleasant moment for all teams.

Sluggishness and inaccuracy obviously mean long queuing times for the customers. Generally, nobody wants to stand in a queue for a long time particularly when they have other errands to run or they have limited time between their lunch and some work they must complete in the office and no matter how much they love eating at their restaurant, they will be forced to reconsider their day’s feeding plan. An event like this not only interferes with the client’s plans but also harms the business’s revenue target. It can also cause impatience amongst the waiting customers who could then voice their frustrations ruining the mood for everyone (West, 2012). Besides that, it makes the company look incompetent.

The kitchen staff are responsible for preparing meals as the orders come. Knowledge of the company meals, speed and accuracy is essential in this department. Teams must work together to ensure that they do not dispatch food leaving other items behind. They must ensure to work together on orders so that they complete food items together for release. Frustration can be the order of the day when teamwork fails in this department. Reading wrong orders means disorganization, which can be time consuming and frustrating for the runners as well as the customers (West, 2012). The runners on the other hand are responsible for serving meals released from the kitchen.

The runner’s supervisor must ensure that all items are ready before allowing orders to be carried to the table. This individual must also ensure that the items are correctly prepared to meet the meal standards of the restaurant (West, 2012). Compromised standards mean that the kitchen staff must repeat the process, which not only delays other orders but also harms the company’s revenue goals. Runners must be careful to carry the right orders otherwise, they could end up with the wrong consumed meals in the case that the customers fail to raise alarm and choose to eat it. They must also take care of the customers’ needs and interact with them accordingly to create a pleasant environment for them. Also, runners must clear tables on time and ensure cleanliness in the premises for presentation and hygiene purposes.

The technical team is responsible for ensuring that the computer systems run smoothly. They must be quick to handle any technical issues on the cashiers’ machines, branch computers, lighting, and camera operations. They must also be ready to offer solutions for broken equipment to avoid stalling the restaurant’s business. The control staff include the branch manager and accountants whose role is to ensure that the branch’s operations run smoothly. This individual offer direction in all processes and makes sure that all departments are well prepared. He is also responsible for customer welfare, which includes welcoming them to the restaurant and handling their issues and concerns appropriately. He must also take care of this staff teams by keeping them motivated and ready for the day (West, 2012).

Team’s type of Leadership

The first team is manager. The restaurant manager directly supervises all activities carried out by this team. He must ensure that they are ready for their duties by checking their punctuality, dress code adherence, stocks levels, preparation processes and readiness, cleanliness and hygiene practices, health, and motivation. All matters must be reported to him at all times to keep him updated. He is also directly responsible for staff hiring and discipline matters. The technical team is self-directing, meaning that they in charge of their processes. However, this team must work together with the restaurant staff to keep a good communication flow to able to attend to situations as they arise, hence the reason why it does not directly rely on the branch manger’s direction. The accountants and the branch manager are self-governing, meaning that they make decisions based on their assessments. This way, the accountants do not have to completely rely on the branch manager’s decisions regarding financial matters that pertain to the branch but can seek their superiors’ directions in complicated matters.

Current Stage of Team Development

The first team is frequently undergoing changes owing to the hiring and firing processes. Thus, they switch between forming and storming. Forming often happens when there are many new staff who are motivated to work. These individuals are basically willing to learn, and patience is often their virtue. However, they face storming from older staffs who think that they should learn faster and prove their capacities in order to reduce their strain since they must overwork to compensate for the skill shortage (Egolf, 2001).  As pushing goes on, the newer staff begin to question their authority and they all end up seeking the direction of the branch manager.

The IT team are in the norming stage. They are few and each person understands his/her role. They know each other’s strengths and do not shy away from asking for help amongst themselves. However, there are times when they find themselves in the storming stage when workload and pressure increase. The third team exhibits symptoms of the norming stage and the performing stage (Egolf, 2001). The branch manager must work with the IT and accountants in the norming phase and then switch to the performing stage to run the business accordingly.

Team Dynamics

Team dynamics plays a vital role in the success of each of the three teams. The first team is made up of six individuals, meaning the combination of different personalities at work towards a common goal. At the same time, there is a challenge of forming social bonds that could display favorism towards each other when it comes to running certain tasks. To manage this, the supervisor and the branch manager design a duty rota that allocates duties to each member and ensures a smooth transition in shifts. They also hold daily morning meetings where they discuss any existing issues and applaud each other for achieved goals. They also learn to handle each other’s roles so that they can chip in whenever there are staff shortages or when a certain department is overwhelmed. The manager handles staff discipline cases and his decision is final. The second and the third team may communicate through emails and memos since they may not always meet directly when they need to. Even so, the manager is in full control over how his branch is managed and therefore holds a separate office for status purposes.

Team Performance and Productivity

The three teams are led by set organizational goals and objectives (Levi, 2011). The productivity of the first team depends on the cashier’s ability to upsell food items, backed by service quality from the other two teams. There are performance motivation incentives set for all departments. Cashiers have monetary awards for meeting their daily targets while the other teams receive free weekly burgers and milkshakes for good weeks teamwork. The management also shares increased profits with the teams and offers training on a regular basis. The other team’s duty is to ensure a smooth running of the business and their performance is evaluated by how smooth the process was and the profits made on a monthly basis. The manager however, motivated through quarterly bonuses while the rest of the team receives annual salary increments.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards for Each Team

The first team is awarded both intrinsically and extrinsically. The manager praises them for a good day’s performance and teams name the most competent worker of the day. They are also encouraged to keep working together as a team. On the other hand, they receive free meals, and share profits with the company (Hurd et al., 2008). The second and the third teams are also praised for their good job by their superiors and also receive salary increments while the manger receives monthly bonuses as extrinsic rewards.

References

Egolf, D. (2001). Forming, storming, norming, performing : successful communication in groups and teams. San Jose: Writers Club Press.

Hurd, A., Barcelona, R. & Meldrum, J. (2008). Leisure services management. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Levi, D. (2011). Group dynamics for teams. Los Angeles: SAGE.

South Dallas Café. (2019). About us. Retrieved from https://www.southdallascafe.com/about

West, M. (2012). Effective Teamwork : Practical Lessons from Organizational Research. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.