The RANGE Framework for restaurant groups, by Jon Peck, founder of RANGE Hospitality Advisory. How to run the five tests for done.

A test, not a feeling

A step is done when its document passes its test. It is not done when the work feels finished, or when the meeting ran long enough. Each test is a question a group can answer yes or no, out loud, with the people who will carry the next step.

Run them in order. A step’s test only counts once the test before it passes, because each document is built on the one before it.

Recognize: one cause, read together

Put The Diagnosis in front of ownership and operations at one sitting. Each reads it, then each says the cause back in their own words.

• Pass: both versions name the same place and roughly the same monthly cost.
• Fail: one hears “labor” and the other hears “the schedule”. Go back to the reading where they split and take it again.

Nothing gets bought until it passes. A fix paid for first turns the page into a defense of the purchase.

Align: three managers, one answer

Choose three managers who run shifts, not the people who wrote The Agreement. Ask each one, apart: what does done mean for the problem we agreed on? Write the answers down word for word.

• Pass: the same number, the same date and the same name, in whatever words.
• Fail: three versions of done. Rewrite done with the managers present, then ask three managers again a week later.

Narrow: the ninety-day question

Lay out The Short List and ask ownership: if the group works only on these two or three fixes for ninety days, can everything else wait? Then go down the parked list one item at a time and give each a date to come back.

• Pass: a plain yes, and a date against every parked item.
• Fail: a yes with conditions. Cut from the bottom of the list until the yes needs none.

Generate: month three, with nobody senior checking

Pick a week in the third month of each system on The Shift System. For that week nobody senior checks on it or sits in on its routine. At the end of the week, read the number the system moves.

• Pass: the routine ran on every shift, and the number shows it.
• Fail: it slipped once nobody was watching. Find the part the managers skip, build it into the shift, and start the three months again.

Elevate: thirty days without your best GM

Sit down with The Bench Map and ask: if our best general manager resigned today, what would stop in the first thirty days, and who covers each item? Write every item, and a name against each.

• Pass: every item has a name, and no one name covers most of the list.
• Fail: one name keeps coming back. That person is the bench. Start developing someone behind them before the next opening has a date.

Keep what the tests leave behind

Each test leaves something on paper: the managers’ answers on The Agreement, the dates on The Short List, the third-month check on The Shift System, the names on The Bench Map. Sign them and keep them with the documents.

When a test stops passing, its step reopens, and the steps after it wait until it passes again. Five documents, kept as one file covers how the pages move together.