Modern University for Business and Science

MGT501 – Managing people and individuals

Case B - MBA course
Summer 2023

Food for Managerial Thought

“We’re always hiring. And we’re
always firing.”

——SCOTT LAWTON, COO OF BARCELONA RESTAURANT GROUP

Throughout the video for this case, Scott Lawton, COO of Barcelona Restaurant
Group, * talks about the company’s approach to human resources (HR), which is, he says,
“the biggest thing we do.” At the very end of the video, the interviewer asks him if he would
hire himself for a managerial position at Barcelona. “That’s a good question. I think I
would,” he replies, but after a moment’s hesitation, he reconsiders his initial response.
“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know if I would have the floor presence that I demand
out of my managers. I’m not sure that I’d be a great floor manager for Barcelona.”

What does a floor manager do? Typically, the floor manager in a restaurant is a jack
of all trades. He or she must train and schedule employees and ensure operational
efficiency by managing employees and controlling inventories and cash. Above all,
however, a floor manager
is responsible for customer service—making sure that customers come first and that every
employee understands that dictum. And that’s why, according to Lawton, HR—
particularly, the approach to hiring people—is critical at Barcelona: “For any company
that’s involved in customer service,” he says, “hav[ing] the right people in front of your
customers is the most important thing you can do.”

So, why would Lawton—at least in his own opinion—not be the right person to hire
as a floor manager at one of his own restaurants? Perhaps it’s something in his perception
of his personality. Training people to do certain jobs is always a major task in HR

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management, but Lawton is skeptical about training as an effective method of developing
exactly the right people for Barcelona. “We can train people all day,” he explains, “but we
can’t find happy people with good attitudes.We can’t train that into people. Either they are
or they aren’t…. You can’t train people to be enthusiastic, nice, fun, great people.

“You have to hire that,” he argues, and the Barcelona approach to finding the right
people to deliver the required level of customer service seems to be hiring new employees
until the person-job fit clicks. And, of course, firing employees who don’t fit. “We’re always
hiring,” says Lawton. “And we’re always firing.” Very few managers, he reports, actually
quit Barcelona, but he notes that, in his three years with the company, “we’ve turned over
60-70 percent of management…. And that is because we’re not afraid to let people go. We
demand a certain level of quality, and we’re continually raising the bar on what our
expectations are.”

And not only does the bar go up, but employee agility often goes down. “This is a
high-burnout business,” explains Lawton. “… Somebody who is great a year ago may not be
great this year.” Take DJ, whom we never meet but whose name comes up in a managers’
meeting.
After reminding managers that they’re “famous for friendly service,” Lawton alludes to
some reports that he’s received about DJ’s performance: “I’m getting some signs,” he says,
that customers “did not feel welcome by DJ. They love Barcelona, but they said [DJ’s
attitude] just didn’t feel like Barcelona.” DJ’s manager agrees that customer perceptions
were probably accurate at the time but hastens to add that, on other occasions, “I saw him
hustling and doing a good job.” “Well, let’s put it another away,” interjects cofounder and
CEO Andy Pforzheimer. “DJ can be good. Right now, he’s not. So have somebody else there
or make him real good real fast.”

In any case, when it comes to upgrading the work force through firing and hiring, there’s
always the fallback position of paring away the bottom 20 percent. “We’re always hiring,”
Lawton tells his managers, because “we’re always culling out the bottom 20 percent.
There’s always somebody better out there than our worst servers.” He himself conducts
hiring interviews every day and advises his managers to do the same: “That’s how you get
better. You hire your way out of your problems.” In the last stage of his own hiring process,
explains Lawton, he asks prospective employees to “pretend that you’ve worked for us for
six months. I want to see who you are. I want to see you commanding the floor, making
friends with the guests, talking to the staff. I want to see who you’d be for me.”

Watch these videos on YouTube :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4YMD9YywhY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GY6qFNjxhg

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ADDITIONAL SOURCES
“How Maia Josebachvili Turned Her Skydiving Hobby into a Business,” Fast Company.com, October 19, 2010, www.fastcompany.com
on June 13, 2012; Dave Blake, “Interview with Maia Josebachvili, CEO of Urban Escapes NYC,” New York City Interview, May 29, 2009,
www.nycinterviews.com on June 13, 2012; Tiffany Black, “30 under 30: Maia Josebachvili and Bram Levy, Owners of Urban Escapes,” Inc.,
July 19, 2010, www.inc.com on June 13, 2012; Donna Fenn, “Living Social and Urban Escapes: A 30 under 30 Marriage,” Inc., October 19,
2010, www.inc.com on June 13, 2012; Riley McDermid, “LivingSocial Acquires Urban Escapes to Take Lead in Daily Deal War,” VentureBeat,
October 19, 2010, www.venturebeat .com on June 13, 2012.

CASE QUESTIONS
1. Would you be enthusiastic, nice, and fun if you worked for Barcelona? Why or why not?

2. Focusing on the issue that’s central to this video—HR strategies and processes—explain
why conflict is liable to arise at Barcelona. Judging from the video, what types of reactions
to conflict—avoidance, accommodation, competition, collaboration, or compromise—are
most likely to be evident, whether at individual outlets or within the managerial ranks?

3. Consider your answer to question 2. Does top management at Barcelona tend to depend
more on stimulating conflict or on conflict resolution? Do you approve of the preference, or
do you think that the other approach— or some combination of the two—would be more
effective? In other words, how would you go about achieving the optimal level of conflict
summarized in Figure 15.1?

4. Here’s an excerpt from the kind of advertising that Scott Lawton talks about in the video:
{Extremely Busy Restaurants in Connecticut’s Fairfield County are Looking for a General
Manager Job Responsibilities include but are not limited to the following:

• Ensure our high standards of guest service are upheld.

• Develop, coach, mentor and evaluate performance of the management staff.
• Execute operating procedures to ensure uniform performance throughout the company.
• Drive Sales, Profitability and Guest Satisfaction results in the market.
 Oversee management and operations at your locations.
Execute company-wide strategic plans & implement processes to achieve them.

Given what you know about Barcelona’s HR policies, do you think that you have the right
personality for a job like this one? Do you have, or would you be interested in developing,
the skills for such a job? What reservations might you have about the job? (Note:
The starting salary for a General Manager at Barcelona is “$100,000 +++.”)

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Kindly read and follow the requirements:
- Try to elaborate your answers with critical thinking, and giving recommendations
and using terminologies from the content taught.
- Unlimited word counts.
- The deadline for submission is on wed. 11 August 2023. Submission before the
deadline is obligated, any late submission after the deadline will not be marked.
- The case A worth 30 % of your final grade.
- The submission must be on Moodle solely, it is not a group work.
- Every file must be named by your first name and last name only without anything
else.
- You are reminded that plagiarism, which is copying someone else’s words or ideas
without attributing them to that person, is cheating. This is a serious examination
offence and at the very least will result in a mark of zero being awarded for this
piece of work; By handing in this coursework, you acknowledge that it represents
your own, unaided work and that you have appropriately acknowledged all
sources. Make sure that all submitted answer will be detected on Turnitin for
checking the plagiarism rate, plagiarism above 20 % is not accepted, and Turnitin
could detected any AI similarities, even from ChatGPT. Sources must be cited
according to APA reference Style.