The Miick Method: Building Brand from the Inside Out

At Miick, we work with you, digging deep to define and refine the purpose and operating values of your company, your brand, culture, and the team members in it. Here’s an overview of how the Miick Method works:

KNOW WHO WE ARE

Our clients achieve a deeper sense of purpose in their work. This is our goal. To arrive here, we want you to be able to answer the question, “Beyond income and profit, what’s the benefit, the experience and outcome our guests, customers and team receive from the products or services we provide?”

Our work with you to investigate, refine and clarify this sense of purpose, and the values that get you there, leads to highly motivated staff members. Each ends up working with a sense of passion in ways you’ve likely not seen before. Team members end up eager to demonstrate the pride in their participation. This understanding of purpose and values is of utmost importance. 

No professional sports team, dance troup, musical event, or military entity would send a team on the field without clarity of how to achieve the objective. Do your best, use your common sense would not be the siren call. 

We also work with you to define excellence. Once defined, instead of relying on common sense, the leaders and team work together with shared definitions of excellence, on purpose, using shared clear values in decision making. If this isn’t happening for you already… it’s time to call us.

COMMUNICATION

Step two of the Miick Method is to create a Safe Space for open communication. Leaders and team end up seeking out the positive, looking for ways to inspire rather than reprimand. Another outcome of Safe Space in your business is that the whole team learns to give and receive feedback, rather than “constructive criticism” in ways that build performance instead of undercutting trust.

Oh, by the way, clear communication that supports knowing who we are as a brand is most everything the millennials on your staff want. 

FISCAL SYSTEMS

Most owners and managers, regardless of industry, shield team members from fiscal information. We coach the opposite. The folks we work with end up better off fiscally by a multiple of three (three times average fiscal performance) when everyone understands the costs and opportunities of doing and building business. More so, we set up anticipatory fiscal systems that have you and your team looking forward instead of backwards at an old financial statement. 

HIRING SYSTEMS

From the clarity of knowing who we are, using effective, Conscious Communication that creates Safe Space, the crucial next step in the Miick Method is hiring. We work with you to define and refine an ongoing hiring system. Instead of hiring being an event happening at the last minute when someone leaves, hiring becomes a practice that builds our brand.

The steps defined so far support the folks we work with to create an opportunity for new team members to join by choice instead of chance. Purposefully instead of depending on luck.

[Here’s more on effective hiring to find a culture fit and high performance] 

TRAINING SYSTEMS

A natural outcome from knowing who we are, having fiscal clarity of top and bottom line performance, supported by safe space to give and receive feedback, supported by a clearly effective experiential hiring system, is training design. No clarity, no training, no execution. Period. We work as facilitator and guide to co-create experiential training that’s fun as well as effective! Outcome: brand execution. Work done on purpose and fiscal results that will take your breath away. Here’s more:

ONGOING LEARNING

Last in our six steps is the awareness that learning is ongoing! Especially in the 21^st century, if we’re not learning and implementing, we’re done. If you’re ready to keep learning and keep exploring opportunities to evolve performance, you’re ready for Miick.

We’re here for you.

This September, we’ll be putting The Miick Method to the test at our annual Leadership In The Fall Line® leadership development ski retreat. This unique opportunity will be held in Portillo, Chile. Learn more.

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It’s time to rethink the stereotypes of the Millennial and younger workforce. If you’re having challenges in general with this age group as a workforce, the issues are likely more yours than theirs. Tough to swallow? We’ve found the gap in understanding true globally, not just in the U.S.

No doubt, Millennial challenges are real. At the same time, the challenges are not going away. There’s bad news and good news here. The bad news is that traditional leadership and management habits need to shift, and must shift. The good news is that leadership and management habits get to shift, and must shift!

By now you’ve likely seen plenty of lists of what “the Millennial” wants. Worse, when you or I get stuck in old habits it’s easy to translate the core Millennial want as, “money for nothin’, thank you very much,” only without the, “thank you.”

Instead of a list, here are five actions to take in real time that can shift the performance of your workforce named Millennial (or younger). Each of the five actions stands on its own, and each builds on the others.

5 Actions for Supporting Success of Your Millennial Workforce

1) Celebrate Passion

You’ve a great opportunity here! Take a few minutes, and remember why you got in this business in the first place. Share your passion for excellence. Share your passion for work well done. Instead of telling your staff about passion, MODEL it! We can’t demand passion either. What’s amazing about this generation is they’re all about living a life passionately! Use this age group of staff to re-kindle your passion and the passion of great food, great service, smiles and the fun of work well done!

Interview for passion! No passion, no job! No applicants with passion? Keep interviewing! Hiring right may be the ultimate role of leadership. Hiring right means finding and celebrating passion! You and I are likely not to be able to train passion. We can HIRE it; the trick in hiring passion? You and I have to define it for ourselves, then share our passion!

2) Provide Purpose, the WHY of Our Business

What do Millennials want? From experience and academic research, a sense of Purpose is the big drive for this age group. No interest here in a dead end job. No interest in a boring job. Give work meaning, done passionately, and you’ll find almost endless energy, uh, on Purpose!

What’s the big why of restaurants, regardless of concept? What is it we provide through our food, drink, service and décor? A good place to begin your search is the root definition of the word restaurant, “A place one goes to be restored” or the root of restaurateur, “Restorer of soul!” If you’re willing to go here, that is to your Purpose or big WHY, performance shows up from inspiration and intrinsic motivation. This is the good news. The not so easy news, the big WHY or Purpose needs to be defined. If you’ve got the courage, you can include your millennial team members in the dialogue to define your “Why.”

3) Define Values and Use Them

Oddly we talk about values all the time in business and as a country. That said, values are typically used as a noun, “our Values,” rather than verbs.

Research and experience both scream out again that this generation loves the sense of being led by values. “Values as actions” modeling may be the most frustrating for the more traditional leader or manager. Back in the day, it was plenty easy to say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Wake up folks; those days are GONE. Make no mistake, now more than ever, you and I as leaders and managers must walk our talk. This age group of workers then turns into a perfect mirror for you and me as leaders or managers. Inconsistency shows up; the stronger your millennial team members are, the faster they’ll quit.

4) Define Excellence 

What do Millennials want? Integrate steps one through three. And the most pragmatic action we can take to see radically high performance, actually regardless of age, Millennial included, is to define excellence in each position of your company. The kiss of death is to rely on common sense, because there is none. Define excellence in service, production, clean up, fiscal procedures and watch performance rise. Leave those definitions to training your staff somewhere else, and watch all hell break loose. A lack of definition allows loud critique, no common sense, meetings after meetings, and drama galore.

The guidepost here is whenever you use a word or phrase that “ought to be obvious,” be sure and define that word or phrase. Hints, watch out for: professional, clean, good attitude, work ethic, etc. If you feel like the Millennial doesn’t have it, they only will if and when you and I define “It!”

5) Provide Autonomy 

What’s the want? Autonomy! The good news about defining Purpose, Values, and Excellence, and celebrating each passionately is that now we can provide actual autonomy for our team!

There’s no doubt that hard work is due to define items one through four. With this definition, you now allow Millennials to begin leading themselves. This younger generation has been on their own in many ways for a longer time than any generation to date. At the same time, this autonomy hasn’t always been guided by excellence coaches or life choices. When the work’s done, to define excellence on purpose, guided by values, done with passion…get out of the way. Now our work as leaders is to be guides instead of bosses, coaches instead of cops.

* Look for part two of this blog here.

Want to learn more about hiring the right people and helping your entire workforce succeed? Start by reading the 5-Step Hiring Tips from Miick.

The post Five Ways to Support the Success of the Millennial Workforce appeared first on The Miick Companies.

The New York City Ballet; the Bolshoi; Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre; Martha Graham Dance Company; The New York Philharmonic; The Boston Pops; The Cleveland Philharmonic; The Stones. They all have it.

Green Bay; Lakers; Heat; Yankees; John Wooden; Pat Summit; Pat Riley; all had and have it. The Samurai; Army Rangers; Seals; all have it. The Four Season’s, The St. George, The Breakers, The Little Nell have it.

Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Marian Anderson, Bette Midler, Leontyne Price; Spielberg, Ron Howard, Penny Marshall, Nora Ephron. While named as individuals, each and all also have teams that had and have it. Danny Meyer, the person who seems to have made the word “hospitality” common nomenclature with Union Square Hospitality Group, has it.

Far too often I hear folks use the phrase “5 star” and “hospitality” interchangeably. The words are not by default synonymous. Do not confuse 5 star and being hospitable as the same thing. Five star is being kind, yes, nice, no. Caring yes, soft no. Adaptable and fluid yes, unconscious, oblivious, or careless… never.

What is ironic, perhaps, is that 5 star performance often times demands high training budgets, high end investment. However, 5 star hospitality can be as priceless as an attitude of care, of outreach, and connection. Added expense to any given company, team member, or guest, no. So regardless of budget, locale, business size, or sales volume, 5 star hospitality is an attitude and a choice.

A+, 5 star, defined or not, Passion, Purpose, Values and Vision align; Values are verbs and show up every day as behaviors in performance. More evidence of 5 star execution? Fiscal performance is as definitive and achieved as is stage performance.

The way one works and one lives is aligned in the world of 5 star performance. The persons and organizations named above are intentional, passionate, and purposeful no matter their entity, mission, or field. So, too, any one of us stepping into this world choose to play here. Nothing less than awake, astute, and conscious is acceptable.

The irony is that this conscious effort leads to unconscious competence and mastery. At mastery, focus shifts to the times the shot, step, or mark is missed. On a miss there is instant “awake-ness” to re-center, to re-balance back into “flow.” The cycle time to re-center is close to instant in 5 star.

More so, performance is relentless and demanding. Performance excellence is data based in each. Good enough isn’t. At the same time, each player has the other’s back. The choice to be fearless is not the same as being stupid. The opposite is true; love and purpose wins over fear.

BE-ing Values Driven is not soft or mushy. Performance is measured and met. Not one entity listed above is perfect. At the same time, each is diligent, hard to get into, AND has a waiting line for ANY opportunity to get in.

With 5 star performance, smiles show up under pressure and at the completion of every event. And performance is only as good as the weakest player.

Make no mistake, 5 star “hospitality” is equally relentless. Five star is simple really, it’s just not easy. Like every other entity named above, excellence is in the details, and each player, each team, the whole experience is held to exceedingly high standards.

Hospitality at this level is not to be confused with a dysfunctional family being “nice” to a visitor for a hand full of moments. Five Star IS 5 star because performance is defined and each of us as players choose to live every moment in the practice that got us here.

Join me here if you will. It’s a choice. 

Get a closer look at what it takes to be Five Star.

“Five Star” comes down to company culture for so many reasons. To get a closer look at how to create and implement a company culture that expresses your values, take a look at our Company Culture Tips Sheet.

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