Among other things, encouraging innovation at all levels of your organization can turn a potentially bad situation into a positive one.

What does it mean to be innovative? As a foodservice or hospitality professional, you may think innovation only belongs at certain levels of your organization. Replication is so critical, you may simply want people to do what you want them to do, when you want them to. Our guests want the same product the same way, day in and day out -consistency is core to our success. The irony is that if there is a faster and more effective way to get to the consistency we demand, we want that, too. The new way is, in essence, innovation.

As usual with leadership, paradox is present. You may want innovation, but only when you want it or with whom you want. For many in foodservice and hospitality, innovation may not always be thought of as critical to success when compared to effective replication. Is it possible to have both innovation and consistent replication when you want both? Yes, and I'll tell you how.

Born and Made Innovators
There are certainly some cultures that are more innovative than others. If leaders are both born and made, the same could be said for innovators. A true story in the ongoing saga of growth and development at Nick's Pizza & Pub of Elgin, Ill., supports this point. Imagine it's 7 p.m. on Friday night and the 350-seat restaurant is at capacity with a 45-minute wait.

The 9,000-square-foot building is packed with parties of all sizes. Suddenly, a severe plumbing backup in the public restrooms is reported -every one of the toilets in both restrooms is overflowing and not stopping.

The decision is made to shut down the restrooms. Repair work is going to take at least four hours. With 500 people in the building, this is a huge problem.

The initial reaction of the managers is to close for the night. Then, creativity and innovation takes over. One of the pizza makers, a 17-year-old, reminds the managers of the two restrooms for team members on the basement level, to which the guests can be guided. In less than a minute, a bad -potentially reputation-harming event -takes a turn for the better.

The kitchen, known to staff as the "heart of the house," is swept and two team members are pulled from the pizza line and sent to tidy up the basement bathrooms. A host is sent to the restrooms to serve as a guide, sending guests needing to use the facilities to another team member who walks guests to the open door of the kitchen. The team smiles at guests who, feeling a bit awkward -grudgingly at first -move toward the entryway to the kitchen.

Guests are handed off to the manager, who takes over as tour guide. "Thanks for your patience with our plumbing problem this evening," the manager says. "In just a second, I'm going to walk you through the heart of the house to our restrooms downstairs. Please be careful walking through, and stay right with me because the ovens are really hot.

"OK, here we go! Guests in the heart!" the manager announces to the now-more-relaxed patrons. It is amazing to watch the guests as they are led past the ovens, then around a tight corner and down the steps. Smiles begin appearing on their faces, kids start to seem excited to see the pizza being cut on the paddles.

This unusual experience is suddenly surpassing all expectation. At the bottom of the stairs, there is periodically a line of guests. Another team guide is at the bottom of the stairs and just outside the doors of the restrooms. Suddenly, a standing tour begins.

"While you're waiting, let me tell you about our production area," the manager says. "This is an area we almost never have our guests visit!" He starts speaking about about prep and storage began. For about every fourth guest, a team member tidies up quickly by emptying the trash can and picking up paper. The team member then guides guests back up the stairs for their exit cheer, "guests in the heart!"

The bathroom tours keep up for four-and-a-half hours. Pretty soon, people seem to be standing at the door of the heart as much for the tour as any real need to use the facilities.

The guests that were at Nick's that night still talk about the experience of being cheered through the heart of the house. Imagine the outcome had the young pizza maker not been encouraged to speak up or the managers were not so open-minded.

Five Steps
From this story, we can move to five steps that support innovation:

1. Share a sense of purpose by acknowledging the importance of every job and every person in your company. Lead from a position that there are no dead-end jobs, no low-end jobs in your company. Every position and action depends in some way on some other position.

2. Honor values that include both the importance of consistency and vision. Consistency is everything to our business. Customers must be able to count on your product. Thus, production and sales must support that consistent experience.

At the same time, imagine a team that holds an ongoing commitment to consistency and equal commitment to staying jazzed about their habits in production or sales. When everyone companywide understands that consistency is critical, clear replication and constant idea generation is the outcome.

3. Safe space is also necessary. Imagine a safe space to talk, a safe space to share an idea that others may think contradicts the norm, a safe space to honor the habit of your production specifications and still question possible changes that could improve performance.

The concept of safe space is more than an open door. It means having the trust to have hard conversations, the ability to step into conflict, disagree with each other.

4. Consciousness and awareness at work foster innovation. The story at Nick's is not about feeling like you're in a dead-end job.

Each person on the staff is truly a part of the team. When there's a challenge, the team rises to the occasion as we got to see in the story just shared. Celebrate ideas and the risk it takes to speak up about new ideas. Celebrate doing consistent work in consistent ways. Also, celebrate the times folks actually open themselves to offering new ideas.  FAD

Rudy M. Miick, FCSI, president of Miick & Associates, can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text78197 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 720-641-7565.