11/17/2016 Nando's spices up its leadership style | Personnel Today

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Nandos spices up its leadership style

On 10 Oct 2006 in HR practice, Performance management

A rapid growth programme meant the Nandos chicken restaurant chain

needed to build leadership and delegation skills fast. Alex Blyth reports.

The business

Nandos is a South African chain of chicken restaurants, which reached the UK in

1992. It now has 3,000 staff in 122 restaurants and an HR team of 10. Each
restaurant also has two buddies who are in charge of HR matters and training at
that outlet.

Nandos management places a strong emphasis on staff motivation, believing that

happy employees provide good customer service. Every restaurant manager is
known as a Patraos Portuguese for head of the family. Area managers are known
as MDs and each has a fun budget to hold parties and days out for staff. This year,
the company took all of its managers to the famous Rio de Janiero carnival.

The challenge

By the end of 2001, Nandos had 40 outlets and planned to open 20 restaurants
every year until 2005. But with such rapid expansion would come a number of
challenges.

We were concerned that, in going from a small company to a large one, we might
lose our values of pride, passion, courage, integrity and family, says Marcelo
Borges, Nandos learning and development manager. We didnt want to become a
large, faceless chain of restaurants.

MDs would also go from managing six restaurants to managing 10, and Borges
feared they would lack the skills needed to successfully delegate day-to-day
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management issues.

Finally, Nandos wanted a higher proportion of its managers to come from within
the business. In 2001, only 21% of managers had been promoted from within. By
increasing this, Nandos planned to save money and maintain its family culture.

The solution

Nandos decided that the answer to its talent management challenges would be to
build coaching skills within the organisation. So, in 2001 it set up a two-day, in-
house training programme in which all MDs and Patraos learned about leadership
and the concept of the one-minute manager.

It also used the GROW model, which was developed by former racing driver John
Whitmore. GROW is an acronym for Goal, current Reality, Options and Will.

Whitmore designed a four-day programme for all directors and MDs at Nandos,
followed by a two-day programme for all Patraos. But the coaching was not cheap.
The first level, in-house introduction, costs 7,000 a year; the second, developing
coaching skills, costs 40,000 a year; the third, Whitmores advanced sessions,
costs 20,000 a year.

And adoption was not immediate. Everyone was excited by the principle, but when
it came down to giving up time for this, we did encounter some resistance, recalls
Borges. Were in such a busy industry that its not surprising. We had to work hard
to make everyone understand that coaching is not a time-consuming activity. Its all
about empowering others to find their own solutions. Were also trying to move
away from coaching as a label. We want managers to coach as an instinctive
reaction, not as a conscious decision.

The outcome

Since the coaching programme was established, Nandos has grown from 40 to 122
restaurants. Its MDs now look after 10 restaurants each, rather than the six they did
in 2001. The companys turnover of managers has fallen from 35% to 20%, which
compares favourably to the industry average. Internal talent pipelines have also
improved Nandos now gets 40% of its managers through internal promotions,
and 90% of Patraos have come through this route.

Borges believes that all of this has been achieved while maintaining the companys
culture. He cites the quarterly staff surveys as evidence of this: 91% of staff say they
have fun at work, 96% say they are proud to work for Nandos, and 87% say their
manager ensures they are trained for the job.

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The company plans to continue its steep growth curve by opening another 25
restaurants a year and even launching in the US.

Guide to managing talent through coaching

1. Use coaching to prepare people for a specific task, such as promotion or a new job.

2. Use mentoring to provide employees with a relationship with someone who has
experience of particular work and who can therefore provide regular, informal coaching.

3. Create a bank of mentors who volunteer their services as a mentor to coach others with
less experience.

4. Link coaching, mentoring, and counselling programmes to the business plan.

5. Integrate coaching and mentoring into graduate schemes.

6. Include coaching and mentoring in any strategy for your business succession planning.

7. Consider using coaching, mentoring and counselling to demonstrate a new culture one
that takes a softer, more people-focused approach.

8. Offer coaching and mentoring through the senior management training programme, so
that senior managers have direct experience of coaching, which should help them to
achieve their own career goals, and mentoring, which should help them to help others
achieve their career goals.

9. Consider including coaching, mentoring and counselling as part of an employee care

package. This helps to attract and retain staff.

10. Consider buying into a telephone support service.

Source: Richard Smith, director, Croner

Talent: a diversity task list

Embed diversity into the organisations strategic talent management objectives.

Do a diversity health check on all talent management activities and programmes.

Ensure criteria to identify talent is fair and objective, without gender, age, race or
religious bias.

Pursue several different pipelines and pathways when recruiting.

Provide development to make line managers aware of their own biases and stereotypes
and ensure they are not reflected in talent identification and recruitment.

Monitor staff, obtain data on how particular groups are feeling to ensure they have equal
access to career opportunities.
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Track particular ethnic and minority groups to gauge whether they are being nurtured
and developed in their roles.

Foster informal networks for particular groups.

If I could do it all again

When we launched the Whitmore programme, we put all our managers through it
and they were all really enthusiastic when they went back to their branches, ready
to implement it right away, says Marcelo Borges, learning and development
manager.

But I think many of the staff were taken aback by the sudden dramatic change in
management style. It would have been better if wed done it all more gradually. It
worked out in most places, but taking it more gradually would have allowed us to
support the transition across the board.

Nandos an employees perspective

Louise Agran is the marketing director at Nandos. She attended one of the early
courses run by John Whitmore and was very impressed. She says: I was blown
away by the approach. It makes much more sense to encourage team members to
take responsibility. You can only get so far by being directive.

Agran says she introduced a coaching style of management to the marketing

department as soon as she returned from the course, and she is convinced it has
been highly beneficial. People enjoy their jobs more now, she says. They know
what theyre doing and are ultimately more effective. Id like to send more of my
staff on these courses.

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