Pheby Food Concept Group
Laura Harvey attended our Directors Development Programme.
Case Study Profile
Laura Harvey
Pheby Food Concept Group
Laura Harvey, from Pheby Food Concepts Group, attended our Directors Development Programme to develop her knowledge and skills around directorship. Laura wanted to gain a clear and concise idea of what it takes to operate at director level, as she has recently been promoted to operations director.
Read her case study below.
Company Overview
The Pheby Food Concepts Group is a restaurant management group established in 2008, in Chester. We started with the brand Wok and Go and now have 16 stores in the UK and two in Portugal. We have now opened Dough Dough in Chester, our first Artisan Pizza restaurant. In addition to our stores, we have 7 virtual concept brands that cover Mexican, Asian and American cuisine.
The Learning Objectives and Challenges
My main motivation for attending the Directors Development Programme was to develop my knowledge and skills around directorship. I wanted to have a clear and concise idea of what it takes to operate at director level, as I have recently been promoted to operations director.
Within my new role I am accountable for managing our area managers, the marketing department and business development managers. For this reason my main objective was to gain, develop and implement, upon my return, new leadership skills within the senior leadership teams.
The main challenges to my team were conflicting personalities within the various roles and departments. As mentioned above, I am new to this role so it is imperative that I learn how to handle and resolve these kinds of conflicts so the team remains effective.
The Learning Experience
I attended the Directors Development Programme in June with tutors Tim Evans, Stuart McCombe and Matt Eld. I found them all to be highly engaging and very knowledgeable. In each session I learnt something new to take back to my team. An added bonus was the group discussions, during which we would talk about our issues, solutions and ideas around the topic of conversation. These discussions were very beneficial and I feel like I learnt a lot from them.
Whilst in the course we learnt about the DISC model. This model is used to help teams understand differing personalities and to work together more cohesively. I have since used this model within my senior teams and the results are all positive. I have completed many senior leadership programmes before, yet never covered this, and this had been the most beneficial to us.
How Has Your Training Benefited You So Far?
Since implementing the DISC model, my senior team have been working better together, team morale has improved and the team are more productive and forth-coming in working together. I sat with another member of my senior team and discussed the delegation tool, which she has now implemented with better delegation to her team. She uses this model weekly and is really starting to see the benefit and difference within her role.