The RANGE Framework for restaurant groups, by Jon Peck, founder of RANGE Hospitality Advisory. Started out of order, without starting over.

Work under way is not wasted

If your group found the framework with work already moving, nothing has to be torn out today. A scheduling tool, a new prep routine or two newly promoted managers can all stay. What changes is how they are judged. None of them counts as a finished step until the document behind it exists and passes its test.

So the job is not to restart. It is to put the missing pages under the work, in order, and let each page decide what the work is worth.

Find the earliest step that does not pass

Where the work started does not set where the group starts. The earliest failing test does. A group that launched a new system first, with no written cause behind it, starts at Recognize, not at Generate.

• Take the Scorecard. It rates each step and names one.
• Check from the top. Read the Done when lines in the order, starting at Recognize, for every step before the one it named.
• Stop at the first that is not true. That step is yours, whatever is running further down.

Write that document while the work keeps going

Open the template for your step: The Diagnosis, The Agreement, The Short List, The Shift System or The Bench Map. Fill it in from the evidence the step asks for, not from the projects already running. A page written to fit what was bought tells the group nothing new.

Nothing new starts while it is being written. What is already running keeps running, at the size it is now.

Keep, pause or stop

Once the document passes, list every piece of work under way. For each one, write the work in a line, then the cause or the number the document names in a line. Ask ownership and operations, apart, whether the first moves the second.

• Keep when both say yes. It acts on what the document names. It keeps running and gets its line on the next document when that step comes.
• Pause when they split, or when the answer depends on a later page nobody has written. Hold it at its current size, in the units it already reached, and put a date on it: the day its own step’s document passes.
• Stop when both say no. It acts on a symptom, or on a problem the document does not name. Stop it even if it was paid for. Write down what it cost and what it showed, so the money at least bought a reading.

How each wrong start is recovered

The hub lists the four wrong starts and what each costs. Here is the way back from each one.

• Started at Align. A plan was agreed before anyone wrote down the cause. Leave the plan where it is and write The Diagnosis. If the plan aims at the cause it names, rewrite done with that cause in it and the plan becomes your Agreement. If it aims elsewhere, the plan is reopened at Align.
• Started at Narrow. A list was cut before done was agreed. Keep the parked items; nothing on them is lost. Write The Agreement, then rank the whole list again, parked items included, against its number. The top of the list often moves.
• Started at Generate. A system is running before The Short List. Do not roll it out to more units yet. Write the earlier pages in order. If the system serves a fix that makes the list, write it up on The Shift System and run Generate’s third-month test on it. If it serves none, pause or stop it as above.
• Started at Elevate. People were promoted or trained before the systems ran. Nobody is moved back. Get each Shift System running first. Then train the promoted managers to run those systems, and draw The Bench Map at Elevate from who runs what.

What to tell the managers

Managers notice when work changes course, so tell them before they guess. Say it once, in writing, the same way in every unit:

• which document is being written, and who signs it;
• what keeps running, what is paused and until when, and what stops;
• the date they will hear next.

Present a stop as a change in what the group is aiming at, never as a verdict on the people who ran it. Ask no unit to run the old version and the new one side by side.

When to go on to the next step

Go on when the document passes its test, not when every project under way has been sorted. The paused work waits for the step it belongs to, and is checked when that page is signed. Repeat until the group reaches the step where the work first started. From there it runs in order like any other group.

To run each check, read how to run the five tests for done. To keep the pages together as they are written, read five documents, kept as one file.