Looking For The Right Managers

The greatest challenges I think that everyone can agree on is money!
You've got to pay the right price to the right people, and I think the independents like me are always fighting the chains and hotels here in Las Vegas that have the deeper pockets not to mention very attractive benefits that as a small business simply cannot afford. Restaurant chains such as The Cheesecake Factory and the Applebee's of the world are successful for a reason. They've obviously done things right for a long time but do I want to emulate them?
So, what I am trying to do is watch what they're doing and try to make it applicable to my situation while still keeping my management style.

For example, the amount of hours we ask from our managers is always an issue. I didn't want to be the company that worked its managers 80 hours a week and they didn't get any time with their family or away from work. I can recall working at The Chateau on The Lake in Branson,MO as a banquet chef (don't get me started about that place) where 90-100 hour weeks was the norm for ALL managers yet what we ended up being where basically slaves with a salary! Well, I don't intend on doing that to my managers/chefs because I want a positive environment where my managers feel they are getting a fair shake. This does not mean I will carry non-performers on my payroll, but what I do instead is try my best to coach,mentor & motivate them the best I can. I find, even with the most amazing resumes, star performers need encouragement and coaching. One idea I have is telling them "I'm going to make it so that once a month you only have to work a four-day workweek. You get three days off. There's no vacation time involved, and I don't want you to work 15 hours a day on those four days to try to keep up with work. I just want to give you an extra day off once a month to have a three-day weekend, or wherever it falls in the middle of the week." This worked for me in the past when I was in management and I know it will work for my managers as well.

I will try hire from within or people I already know in the industry however I do stay away from friends! I intend once we are open to promote from within as much as possible actually, about 98 percent of the time. I say this realizing it's not possible in all applications because being a start-up here in Vegas is tough and even tougher considering the competition for good if not great managers.
I think the challenge I will face initially, when hiring from the outside, is that he or she does not know my culture,expectations and most of all management style. It's for this reason that I tend hire most of my servers and hosts with no experience. I like an unformed piece of clay that I can mold to make my own server. I can train for the talent. I hire for personality and that works for servers because then you can groom them and bring them in and bring them up to the management some day. As a manager, I don't want to have train you on my culture and learn how I serve my drinks and even how our food comes out. I want you to already have that knowledge. I want to teach you how I deal with my customers, my guests in my way! :-)

So all this goes back to how I look for managers and what kind of"team" I want to put into my place.
Each manager has specific responsibilities, and then we have the General manager. I like to compare our management team to a football team. I use a lot of sports analogies, and I call the GM the coach. The coach isn't out there running the plays. He or she is not the quarterback. Assistant managers and floor managers are like the quarterback coach or the defensive line coach. They're the ones who are out there kind of running your team. Your team players - your host and your bartender, your servers - those are the players, and those are the people who are out on the field doing the day-to-day front line jobs. So, your GM is not going to be out there running the plays. He or she has got to be the one who makes sure the proper team is assembled so that all of the holes are filled. The GM, in our organization, will have a lot more responsibility, but it's more of an overseer's responsibility. Our GM doesn't even schedule the staff. We've got one of the other managers, actually the assistant general manager, doing the overall scheduling. The bar manager orders the bar product and schedules the bar staff . The chef orders the kitchen product and schedules the kitchen staff.

Now if something doesn't get done right and I walk in on a Friday night ,after being in another location all day, and we we are out of half the menu from 8 o'clock on , and I'm pissed off, I'm not going to go to the chef. I get to go to the GM and say, "What's going on here? Why is this failing?" I think that's how our team should be split up.

Although as the Executive Chef I certainly can berate the chef myself it will make him loose face in front of the line cooks and waitstaff, which is not the right thing to do, so instead I will empower the GM to make the right decision and expect them to perform at peak levels at all times.

I am still working out who will fill these roles but I think I am on the right track. Any opinions?