What Every Manager Must Know When Taking Over a Broken Store

During your career as a general manager, you will someday be faced with the task of coming into and fixing a broken store. There are a myriad of reasons why a store can be “broken”, so it’s important to determine what the root cause of the problems are so you can get to work solving them. Regardless of what the problems are, some aspects of this change will remain the same. In this post, I’ll explain to you some general tips to consider when taking over one of these “broken” stores so you can be successful and stress-free.

First impressions are everything. From the very first moment you walk into the store, the crew will be making judgments about you and trying to decide what kind of manager you will be. This is your opportunity to set the pace of your management of the store quickly. If you want to be seen as a friendly manager, maybe bring donuts for everyone on your first day. If you want to be seen as a strict manager, fire someone on the first day – it makes people pay attention.

Regardless of what kind of manager you try to seem like, be sure to ask each crew member what their expectations of a general manager are. That way you can get a rough idea of how you can help the store’s already-diagnosed needs. If everyone in the crew says to have clear communication, you know that clear communication is a great way to start gaining respect from the crew – you will be like a godsend if what they all desperately need is a strong communicator and you come in and do just that. If you can get that attention and respect quickly, you will get results from your crew quickly.

People will press you at the beginning. Don’t be lenient in order to keep people from quitting – if they are wanting easy standards, they need to be gone anyway. The habits of the less helpful employees will continue if you let them. Don’t let them. You’re there to stop those bad things from happening. If you are able to change a bad store to a good one without firing anyone or without anyone quitting out of frustration with your standards, you probably aren’t doing it right. Expect people to quit. Don’t worry – the ones who quit will be the ones you will want to fire down the road anyway.

Some employees are going to seem helpful and industrious, giving you tips as to how you could help the store as a whole. Be very wary of these people. In my experience, these are usually the manipulators who are trying to get on your good side to gain special favors and special treatment. A good way to discriminate between these fake helpful employees and the truly helpful employees is to judge their work quality rather than their advice and secret info about the store.

I once took over a broken store where an employee came up to me quickly to give me the inside scoop about how to manage the difficult employees, like how to specially negotiate with each employee to get them to do their work as well as which employees to watch out for. He conveniently left himself off that list. Very soon I found him asking to go home early, being on his phone when he should be helping, and eating food that he had not paid for. I had already established a relationship with him as a confidant, so it became even more difficult to get him to adhere to the standards I was laying down. He felt that his help had given him a special privilege to not need to follow the rules for everyone. That was how the old manager operated. I was establishing changes, so it was a difficult lesson to learn for both him and me.

Just as your management style will speak for itself, the truly helpful employees let their work speak for itself. They don’t need to talk loud to advertise their helpfulness. You will naturally find yourself leaning on them for support, and if you’re a strong enough leader, they will naturally want to help. These are the employees you want to develop and promote. As well, don’t worry about them quitting when standards are raised – they won’t. They were probably hoping for a stronger leader anyway and you having standards only excites them. You will even find many diamonds-in-the-rough, employees who want to work hard but were never given a direction as to what to do. All this to say, don’t get close to anyone or trust anyone for a few weeks until the crew gets familiar with who you are and how you operate.

Culture is the name of the game when it comes to establishing yourself as a new manager. If you can command a great culture from your crew, you can command a great crew and a great store. When you walk into the store for the very first time, you must be thinking about establishing the culture of excellence that grants both you and your crew the stress-free environment that you both desperately want. Chances are that a broken store got that way due to a broken culture. Many times, all you have to do is fix the culture and the rest falls in line. Therefore, work on the culture from the outset. Show the team that you will be hardworking and attentive to the store’s needs. You will be a strong contrast to the previous manager but in all good ways. Establish who you are quickly and firmly. Let the bad ones fall away and let the good ones rise to the top. Then, just hire up and establish those new standards to the new ones on the outset. If you can do that, you’ll be golden. It’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of stress, but it’s all investment into better success for you, your crew, and your company.