“Those who cannot do, teach”—or so the old adage goes. Not true, says Julia A. Stewart, chairman and CEO of the restaurant company formerly known as IHOP. DineEquity has acquired and integrated Applebee’s International in the past year and a half and is now in the process of transitioning to a franchise model. So, what’s the best way to manage for performance across more than 3,300 restaurants, particularly when times are tight? Turn the workplace into a classroom, asserts Stewart, and you’ll see the results in the strength of your brands. You say that leaders should be teachers. Where does this conviction come from? From my own best teacher: my dad. I was born in Visalia, a small city in an agricultural part of California, a very down-to-earth community. My dad taught high school civics and U.S. history, and throughout my life I learned from his example—from how he approached his students. If Dad was teaching a class on Abraham Lincoln, he’d work extremely hard to find some obscure details that would humanize Lincoln and pique the students’ interest. He couldn’t have cared less if those kids memorized dates; he wanted to motivate them, make them curious, get them thinking about Lincoln’s strategy and choices. Walking into a room of bored eighth-graders, Dad would throw out some piece of information—like “Lincoln was a locally famous wrestler when he was young”—that made the history lesson interesting, and in just a few minutes have them all sitting up straight, asking questions. That’s the kind of rank-and-file engagement most managers are shooting for. School is a very different environment from the workplace. How does this approach play out on the job? If my father had had his way, school would have been my job—I would have become a teacher, too. He was convinced that teaching was the noblest profession and was livid and mortified when I decided to go into the restaurant business instead. But years later, when I’d hit the “big time” and was a VP at Taco Bell responsible for a thousand restaurants, I was able to show him how, as a businesswoman, I was using what he had taught. One day we visited six or seven restaurants together in South Central L.A. These were workplaces where employees typically didn’t get a ton of praise or thank-yous. At each one, I’d go behind the counter, get on the food prep line, and catch an employee doing something right. I’d say, “Great job—that’s the perfect way to portion that taco” and then turn to the next person down the line and ask, “Did you see how well this was done?” Or I’d stand in the middle of the kitchen and half-shout, “Who did the walk-in here today?” There would be silence, and then someone would confess, “I did.” And I’d compliment him on the job and ask the people in the kitchen to gather around so they could see what had gone right and what could be done even better the next time. At the end of the day, Dad took me out for a drink and told me, “Julia, you teach and mentor, too—you just do it in a different classroom.” That comment still inspires me, and I think about it when I’m dealing with employees, whether they’re frontline workers or senior managers. If I’m on a plane with one of our top people, I’ll ask a lot of questions about her work, ask for her expertise on a problem, and focus on coming up with a solution together. In other words, I coach—which is a kind of teaching. Do you expect your direct reports to be teachers at heart, too? I don’t demand that all our managers share my exact philosophy, but I do expect them to approach frontline service employees with respect. I won’t hire a candidate for a senior position until we’ve gone out to dinner together and I’ve watched him or her interact with the food server. The ones who act friendly and seem genuinely interested in others have the capacity to become great teachers and coaches. The rude ones don’t—and they don’t get hired. What impact does an educational approach have on the business? When employees feel like they’re learning—in the office or in the kitchen—they become more enthusiastic about their work, and that shows through to the customer in a hundred different ways. Our company runs on the strength of its people and its brands, and particularly in this economy, those brands—and our employees—need to deliver.
