Business Leaders interview: Jason Danciger

Tell us a little about yourself and your business.

I am Jason Danciger the managing director of Hana Group UK, Ireland and Eastern Europe.

We bring the theatre of Asian cuisine to UK food halls and foodservice environments with a healthy & nutritious innovative offer that is changing face of retail and contract catering in a good way. We offer sensational, fresh sushi and hot dishes of outstanding quality & price with clean ingredient decks of raw produce that we cook in front of customers from scratch daily. We work with skilled chefs with extensive training in order to ensure a constant level of excellence and expertise.

In numbers circa 800 people, 300 sites, £2m per week.

What motivates you in your work and what do you find most fulfilling about being a business leader?

In one word ‘people’. The strong relationships with my teams, our retail partners and our customers. It’s a people business and seeing teams develop is perhaps one of the greatest rewards & compliment for good leadership.

How did you develop your leadership skills and how would you define your leadership style?

I never stop learning & listening, it’s all about people. I have made mistakes and said things I regret but learnt from these mistakes and vowed to be better. I am lucky to be surrounded by such a great team and they inspire me daily. Building high performing teams takes good communication, shared vision, individual tailored development plans, structure & process and buckets of positivity & passion.

Innovating is crucial in our very diverse industry. How do you stay ahead of trends and incorporate them into your global strategy?

Kaizen – continual improvement is woven into our DNA. We read, listen, watch, travel, discover and try, test & try again. We encourage all of our 800+ team to input, share and contribute. Building relationships with our supply partners and heading to source of production (where produce is grown, cared for or made) always yields positive results.

What do you consider to be the key component(s) of effective business operational development?

Clear two-way communication, good clear & simple processes, colleague mission, vision & values, providing that all important ‘freedom within a framework’ to spark involvement and ownership, buckets or recognition & rewarding success

How do you approach identifying areas for improvement within a company's operations?

Listening – to our customers, our retail partners and our people – the first two groups add insight the last group has first-hand knowledge to identify areas for improvement and we embrace openly & often.

Where do you think the most promising investments should be focusing on and/or made on?

Sustainability & known provenance that is imbued into quality offers that exude value for money. We have record breaking ROI on delivering what the customers want.

What is or are your biggest career achievement(s)?

Am but a simple foodie, caterer, grocer, chef, restaurateur but this poem perhaps sums up some of my greatest achievements:

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Do you have examples where your leadership made a difference? If so, what were they? 

Tenacity – a very valuable asset - the ability to not go native, not give up or be swayed, not to take easy route and hide under bureaucracy. I have been faced so often (daily at times) with ‘it can’t be done, no’ we’ve lost, it’s over, it’s impossible’ and with patience and tenacity have proved those imposters wrong and have never been tempted to say I told you so but won those people over from disbelievers to ambassadors.

What’s the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned?

Park the ego. Everyone has ego, its natural & eclectic part of who we are, confidence is great but huge ego that blinkers one from involving or listening to your teams can destroy businesses. I have seen this so many times & sadly witness often. Low ego = high long-term profits, high ego = low long-term profits. Have so many examples its embarrassing and thus my team have full freedom to challenge, disagree and tell me I’m wrong & I thank them for that.

How did you identify and seize opportunities for advancement in your career?

I’m old fashioned & just work hard, I simply come in every day & try and achieve something that’s about it. It seems to work but I may however miss out as I don’t claim to be a good politician, but I do claim to be a good diplomatic however and perhaps just ‘real’. I will never be remembered for what I did or what I said – I will only be remembered for how I made people feel.

Have you achieved everything you wanted in your career so far? 

No more building & more people development to do, more messages to share around sustainability, quality food, our fabulous industry – more songs.

How important is personal development to your success, and how do you approach it?

Time to reflect is huge. I have regular 360 and have done for years. I am always doing something to keep my brain going! Last week I was taking a French B1 exam, this week advanced excel, next week IT fraud, following week after positive impacts of seaweed, I am lucky to have had many great mentors – so more to discover & do until I finally pass away hopefully doing what I love. Oh, come on one more poem please Krishnan from Edna St Vincent Millay: dedicated to so many of us in hospitality: 

My candle burns at both ends;    It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—    It gives a lovely light!

How do you prioritise tasks when everything feels like a priority?

Process – simply low hanging fruit, prioritisation for business & people. I rarely struggle with this and use process to quantify.

What was the hardest decision you have taken as a leader? 

Letting people go, more so when down to overall poor leadership direction, heartbreaking to make people redundant when they truly add value.

What steps do you take to measure your own performance?

I have more targets than Olympic archery; apart from usual KPI’s and business success its whether teams are enjoying journey (engagement & leadership scores) I add to this with an exaggerated new year’s resolution list that includes a few rowing challenges.

What does success mean for you as a business leader?

2-year LFL is indication that you are improving, other KPI’s aforementioned other than that frankly it’s what my customers, my retail partners, my supply partners & my team tell me if we are successful, not me.

What challenges do you feel are coming in the next 12 months and what are you doing to address them?

Higher labour costs, resting commodity costs, more ongoing greed from banks at the expense of the economy and higher bureaucratic costs. You can’t avoid them and shouldn’t worry about what you can’t control. Working smarter, efficiently and jointly finding new & innovative streams of growth using your current assets is way to address them.

If you had one piece of advice for aspiring leaders – what would that be?

BE the change you want to see in the world, it isn’t corny, it works & it starts with YOU