Management in the Kitchen

Management in the Kitchen: When Shouting Doesn’t Work
It would be easy to imagine that the management style at The Sun Inn, Dedham – a
quintessential coaching inn at the heart of Constable country – would be as quaint and laid-back
as its surroundings. But in fact as much attention is given to creating the right culture in the
business as is lavished on the sensational food.
Having attended Mitchell Phoenix’ Governing Change programme himself, and with an
ambitious vision of where the business is going, owner Piers Baker sent his chef, Ugo Simonelli,
on the Foundations of Management programme towards the end of 2009. In the following
article Ugo reflects on how chefs learn, why shouting at your staff doesn’t work, and what
impact the Foundations programme had on him and his team.
How did you acquire your culinary skills?
I started working in a kitchen when I was a teenager,
and during my career I have worked with famous chefs
like Attilio di Fabrizio, and I learned a huge amount from
them. But the thing is, I have never been trained to do
anything in the kitchen. Nobody ever sat me down and
said, “now we will teach you how to do XYZ.” In my
very first job the chefs said to me, “you must watch us all
the time. Being a chef means you have to look
everywhere – watch what we are doing and learn.” You
could say I stole the skills I have by looking, listening and
asking questions. When I came to England I thought
twice about training someone. For a fleeting moment I
thought, why give them the skills I had to learn over
such a long time for free?
But I only thought that for a moment. I knew exactly why
it is important to train others, and working with Piers
(Baker, owner of The Sun Inn) and going on the
Foundations course confirmed this view. If I pass my skills
on correctly, I have time to sit in the office and attend to the business, to make the profits go
up, to open more businesses and manage them properly. I’m not jealous of my recipes: I’ll give
you any recipe you want!
By acquiring my skills through looking and listening, I realised that there is always something
more to learn, if you will only look for it. So when the chance to go on a management course
came up, I thought why not?
What is management typically like in a kitchen and a restaurant?
Management in the kitchen is tough: you have to deliver the product in a three hour service,
with no questions or excuses. You have to make quick decisions and you don’t have time to
beat around the bush. You need to be concrete in your communication. Because of this, the
majority of chefs think they have to shout to get their message across. The problem is, shouting
is the only management tool they know.
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In ten years of working as a chef around the world this is what I picked up about
management: chefs don’t do appraisal, work plans, or job interviews. They just say, “that is
your job, you have to do it properly,” and if you don’t do it properly, they shout at you. If
someone makes a mistake, chefs don’t go back and say, “maybe you need more training,”
they just shout at you more. From the beginning of my career as a chef, this is the management
style I experienced. Not surprisingly, I emulated it. Then when I started working for Piers he
explained his management approach to me and I understood there is a better way to manage
people, a method which makes people more confident in what they are doing.
People don’t often associate chefs with management training courses. What did you expect
when you came to the first day of the programme?
On the train to the first class, I asked myself why certain football teams, rugby teams and the
Ferrari Formula One team are successful. I wondered if the management course would show me
how to make my team successful in the same way, and it did. It showed me how to drive them,
motivate them, appraise them, and take ideas from them.
In this job you work with people from all round the world. In a hotel in Switzerland there will
be people from Italy, America, England, Spain, Portugal - everywhere. You have people who
never went to school, people who can’t read or write, people who have just cooked their
whole lives. They have different habits, languages, and cultural attitudes to food and how we
eat. Think of all the ideas in those people’s heads. One thing the management programme
showed me is how to get those ideas out and use them. Mitchell Phoenix tells you you’ve got
good potential – you’ve got five, six, seven people with brains in your team, and you probably
aren’t using them.
I’m a great chef, I can make nice food
and create good relationships with
clients, but I wasn’t looking after my
team as well as I could – and they are
my main support. I didn’t always
communicate with them properly,
sometimes I just shouted at them.
Every time I came back from one of
the classes I saw clearly: all my team
wanted to know was exactly what I
wanted them to do. They wanted
clear instructions, they wanted to be
motivated, and now I had the guide
about how to do it.
I have been a chef (which is a kind of
team leader) for 7 years. And in some
remote part of my brain I already knew many of the things we covered on the course were the
right way to manage people. Life experience told me they were correct. The knowledge was
there but I didn’t act on it because I wasn’t 100% sure I was right, and none of my role
models had worked that way. I knew shouting at people didn’t work, but I didn’t know what
else to do.
How did you put the ideas into practice?
Every time I finished a class I felt very enthusiastic. I would try to put everything into practice as
soon as possible. That meant I saw the results straightaway, which gave me more enthusiasm: I
thought, this works, let’s do it again! Let’s do more of it!
One thing I did was to run appraisal meetings with every member of my staff. I designed a
questionnaire for them to fill in before the meeting, recognised the successes they had had over
the previous period, and set a measurable goal for each of them – so we could see exactly how
they were doing in relation to that three or four months later. As a result of this the team
became more confident because they knew what they were doing well, and they knew what
they had to work on. The whole process had a significant impact on their motivation and level
of focus.
www.mitchellphoenix.com
London - New York - Singapore
It’s great to hear you are reaping the benefits of engaging your team. What about shouting at
them – is it possible for a chef to ever really give up shouting at his staff?
I can’t lie to you - it’s not like I don’t shout
anymore. Especially when we feed 150
people in two hours. Under pressure some of
my old school mentality comes through. The
other day I was doing paperwork in the
office. I came out and saw a table of nine,
with seven people sitting there with their meal
in front of them and two people who didn’t
have their food. I went in the kitchen and
they said, “we are missing two dishes.” I said
to the chef working that day, “where are
they?” He said, “I’ve already done them,
service must have lost them. I’m not cooking
them again.”
We had seven people sitting there, with the
hot smoky meal in front of them, waiting for
two other people before they could start. So I
admit it, I shouted at him. The chef didn’t like
it, but he cooked the two meals.
The next afternoon I sat in the office with the
chef and got him to think about why it all
happened. I explained our principle that our
priority is to feed the customers first, and we
sort out any problems between us second.
Now he knows our principle he can work to it
in the future. I shouted at him to get the meal
made, but I educated him afterwards so we
won’t have that situation again.
What are your plans for the future?
What impact has the course had on
how you view management in
restaurants?
I notice examples of good and bad
management more. I went to a pub the
other night and ordered fish and chips
to take home. They told me to come
back in later and pick it up. I came
back, picked up the bag, went home,
opened it – and inside was a curry.
There had been a mix-up. Someone
out there had just opened their bag
expecting a curry, and found fish and
chips. So I went back to the pub to do
a swap. When I walked in I saw the girl
there crying. I said, “why are you
crying? Don’t worry about the mix-up,
we can swap them over.” She said,
“the chef has been shouting at me.”
I thought about the situation, and said,
“did he give you instructions about
which bag to take?” Of course he
didn’t. Here is a management problem
– poor communication. The chef
probably just said, “it’s in the bag over
there,” and pointed in a vague way.
Did he show her which bag? Did he
write a note on the bags – this is curry,
this is fish and chips? No chance.
In the long term, I’d like to go on television. I can transmit my love of food to other people,
and the best platform to do that is through TV. Maybe it’s a good job I haven’t completely
forgotten how to shout at people, because that’s what a lot of TV chefs seem to do!
Sample Ugo’s cooking at:
The Sun Inn
High Street
Dedham
Essex
CO7 6DF
01206 323351
www.thesuninndedham.com
www.mitchellphoenix.com
London - New York - Singapore