Area manager cadence: a week that actually moves numbers

New area managers often inherit a diary full of "pop-ins". Coffee with the GM, a walk of the floor, a vague "how are things?" and a drive to the next postcode. Friendly. Expensive. Rarely commercial.

A weekly rhythm gives visits a purpose: review the numbers, leave one action, write it down and check whether it happened. Pair this with a multi-site dashboard habit from Rolling up a multi-site P&L (or build that pack first). Without numbers, every visit becomes a social call.

This sits alongside Leading through your GMs — that piece covers the leadership approach; this one covers the weekly routine.

The weekly numbers review

Block it. Assumption (illustrative): about 2 hours early in the week, same day every week, before you drive anywhere.

Look at the three weekly numbers per site — LFL sales %, labour %, GP % — and last week's agreed actions. Decide which sites get a full visit and which get a call. If everything is "fine", you're not looking hard enough or your thresholds are too soft.

Visit structure: check, coach, one action

Every visit, same routine:

1. Check — walk the floor to check section strength, waste, brief quality and guest recovery, not only the office.
2. Coach — one skill or one standard, demonstrated or corrected on the floor.
3. Agree one action — owned by a named person, with a date. Not five. One.

Then leave. Long visits that try to fix everything fix nothing.

Written follow-up the same day

Assumption (illustrative): about 30 minutes write-up per visit. Same template every time, sent to the GM the same day. If it's only in your notebook, it didn't happen.

Monthly 1:1s with each GM

You need a proper 1:1 with each GM every month — career, performance, blockers, the uncomfortable stuff that doesn't fit a floor walk. In a 5-site estate, that's five 1:1s a month, which in a weekly budget means about 1–2 per week, not five every week. Spread them out. Don't pretend you can have an in-depth conversation with every GM between Monday service and Friday payroll.

Sample week across five sites (illustrative time budget)

Assumptions (label these on your own plan):

• Numbers review: 2 h
• Visits: 5 × 3 h = 15 h (including a short floor walk and the commercial check)
• Write-ups: 5 × 0.5 h = 2.5 h
• Travel: 6–10 h (depends on geography — use your real drive times)
• GM 1:1s this week: 1–2 × 1 h = 1–2 h
• Buffer for fires, hiring and head-office calls: be honest, don't pretend zero

Low travel total (illustrative): 2 + 15 + 2.5 + 6 + 1 = 26.5 h of structured work before buffers.
High travel total (illustrative): 2 + 15 + 2.5 + 10 + 2 = 31.5 h before buffers.

Adult workers should average no more than 48 hours a week (usually over 17 weeks) unless they have a written opt-out (Working Time Regulations 1998 in Great Britain; Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 in NI). Design the cadence to land at or below that average even with a bad travel week. If your geography can't fit five full visits every week, cut visits, not sleep — rotate in-depth visits and use calls for sites on track.

One-page visit template

Use one page. Top line first — this is what connects week to week:

• Last visit's action: done / not done (and if not done, why)
• Date, site, GM on duty
• Three numbers snapshot (LFL %, labour %, GP %)
• What you checked on the floor
• What you coached
• This visit's one action — owner, deadline
• Risks / help needed from area or support centres
• Mood / retention note (one line)

Print it or keep it in the same shared folder. The "done / not done" line stops the same conversation repeating for three months.

What good looks like after a month

You can name each site's open action without opening email. GMs stop asking "when are you next in?" because the rhythm is predictable. Travel time is scheduled, not accidental. And when a site goes wrong, you already have a paper trail of what you asked for and what happened.