After many years of advising our clients in the running of their operations, we took the plunge (I maintain I was pushed) last year and took on a country pub of our own. We are proud to say that the Ostrich in Castle Acre is now just about, almost, nearly finished and it is everything that we had hoped for and more.
Before and after the first pint was pulled, the pub has been serving up valuable reminders of the challenges our clients face every day – rising costs, finding the right staff (and enough of those), training and bedding in systems and processes – all while ensuring an optimal experience for our guests. Now that we have been open a few months, it felt like the right time to run a “premortem” session with the pub team to help prepare for busy warmer months ahead.
The question we proposed we were pondering was “do we open for the summer?” We had the staff imagine it now was autumn and that the summer had been an unmitigated disaster, an “everyone has lost their job and suppliers are sending in the bully boys” sort of disaster. The team then wrote down their version of what happened.
The Ostrich will, of course, be open for the summer – the point of the exercise was to harness the collective intelligence of our staff in uncovering any potential roadblocks we hadn’t thought of and to solve for those. I was proud and happy that everyone felt comfortable voicing whatever was on their minds, a consequence, I believe, of our inclusive culture and enabling nature of the premortem process.
The session gave us specific areas to focus on with our team and the business – we now know we need to be clearer in conveying our plan for the pub, that we need to concentrate on training and transferring our experience, skills and knowledge to our team, be more creative with our recruitment drive and double down on implementing our opening and closing procedures.
Seemingly obvious stuff, however, we now understand what our team believe is important and we have set a meeting next week to follow up all that was raised. It was an enjoyable and invaluable hour, one which we will repeat regularly.
Interested in running your own premortem? See my previous blog link below and check out our fancy new website for the Ostrich while you are at it.
After many years of advising our clients in the running of their operations, we took the plunge (I maintain I was pushed) last year and took on a country pub of our own. We are proud to say that the Ostrich in Castle Acre is now just about, almost, nearly finished and it is everything that we had hoped for and more.
Before and after the first pint was pulled, the pub has been serving up valuable reminders of the challenges our clients face every day – rising costs, finding the right staff (and enough of those), training and bedding in systems and processes – all while ensuring an optimal experience for our guests. Now that we have been open a few months, it felt like the right time to run a “premortem” session with the pub team to help prepare for the busy warmer months ahead.
The question we proposed we were pondering was “do we open for the summer?” We had the staff imagine it now was autumn and that the summer had been an unmitigated disaster, an “everyone has lost their job and suppliers are sending in the bully boys” sort of disaster. The team then wrote down their version of what happened.
The Ostrich will, of course, be open for the summer – the point of the exercise was to harness the collective intelligence of our staff in uncovering any potential roadblocks we hadn’t thought of and to solve for those. I was proud and happy that everyone felt comfortable voicing whatever was on their minds, a consequence, I believe, of our inclusive culture and enabling nature of the premortem process.
The session gave us specific areas to focus on with our team and the business – we now know we need to be clearer in conveying our plan for the pub, that we need to concentrate on training and transferring our experience, skills and knowledge to our team, be more creative with our recruitment drive and double down on implementing our opening and closing procedures.
Seemingly obvious stuff, however, we now understand what our team believe is important and we have set a meeting next week to follow up all that was raised. It was an enjoyable and invaluable hour, one which we will repeat regularly.
Interested in running your own premortem? See my previous blog link below and check out our fancy new website for the Ostrich while you are at it.