Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback (9 page)

Exercises

1. Consider your responses above: Are you doing all you can to build know-how and expand your IQ?

•   What additional know-how could I use?
  
•   Where and when am I going to get it?
  
•   Am I listening with an open mind to the thoughts and ideas of others?
  

2. Do you seek out opportunities to build your know-how? Think about the people you interact with on a regular basis and ask yourself:

•   Who are three people I know who might have some knowledge that would help me execute my Big Goal?
  
•   Seek them out and go get your know-how!
  
•   What are two things you can start doing tomorrow that would help wipe out “not invented here” among your team?
  

I believe leadership is a privilege. I also believe deep down in my bones that all people, when given a choice, have an inherent desire to do the right thing, to contribute, and to make a positive difference through the work that they do. And I’m absolutely convinced that it’s crucial to have this mind-set in order to get the most out of the people you work with. As a matter of fact, I believe that there is potential in every person, and as the leader, it’s my job to unleash it.

To put it another way, if there are distrust and bad feelings among the people you work with, is it any wonder that business suffers? I’ve often told the story about how, when I became president of KFC, I inherited not only a business in decline, but a system that was full of animosity. For a whole host of reasons (not the least of which was a pending contract dispute) the company’s leadership and the franchisees simply didn’t like or trust each other. I may have been new to KFC, but I understood right off that none of us was going to be successful in an environment like that.

My first official act as president was to get together with my executive team and let them know things had to change. I told them that I understood how hard things had been. “But,” I said, “I want you to know something, I love working with franchisees. And from now on we’re going to trust our franchisees. Fighting isn’t doing either side any good. We might have some bad franchisees, but most of them put their blood, sweat, and tears into growing the KFC business, and one thing
I know for sure is, they don’t like losing any more than we do. So I don’t want to hear anything bad about them.”

Next I had to convince the franchisees that it was a new day, so I went out to all nine of their regional association meetings and asked what
they
would do if they were in charge. I broke them into groups, and each group had to come back and present its ideas. Then I just sat back and listened.

That was the beginning of a new relationship. And I truly believe that if I hadn’t started things off this way, what came next would never have happened. The two things that are largely credited with turning around KFC during my time as president from 1994 to 1997 are the introductions of two popular new products: Crispy Strips and the Chicken Pot Pie. And both of these products came about only because we had a more open relationship with our franchisees. Crispy Strips started because a franchisee down in Arkansas created, on his own, a freshly prepared chicken strip that helped boost his business by 9 percent. When I heard about this, we took the first plane down to have a look. We not only loved his product, but he took us to his supplier, who worked with our R&D team to get enough supply so we could roll the product out across the United States.

Our Chicken Pot Pie also was a result of working closely with franchisees. I created what I called our Chef Council, composed of franchisees who had a passion for making great food. We’d start taste-testing new recipes at 9:00
A.M.
and eat so much some of us had to take a nap in the afternoon! One of the Chef Council members came up with a recipe for a pot pie that started the ball rolling for another big success.

The thing is, this helped make my career. Crispy Strips and our Chicken Pot Pie hugely boosted sales and led to other new products that did the same. KFC started growing again and almost doubled profits in just three years. And I got the credit for turning around a brand that had been losing for a long time. That success earned me a reputation for leadership that put me in a position to eventually run Yum! Brands. If you ask the finance people what ignited the business, they will tell you it was the new products, but my answer would be that it was a triumph of human spirit. It all started with one simple
decision: to trust franchisees. That opened the way for them to trust me and the corporation in return, and together we unleashed the power of our people to succeed.

MIND-SET CHECK

“Give people an inch, and they’ll take a mile.” versus

“Believe in people, and they’ll believe in you in return.”

The thing people don’t realize about trusting others is how much it can expand the possibilities for success. The following are some examples of how the simple act of putting one’s faith in people has led to big financial success:

They Do Things Even They Didn’t Know They Could Do:
Early in his career, David Cote, now CEO of Honeywell International, had a new job running a chemical factory when, just three weeks after he started, one of the manufacturing guys came to him and said, “We just found an air permitting problem, and we’re going to have to shut down that operation for two weeks.” Cote was still just getting his footing in his new position, and as he told me, “Other than a high school chemistry class, I’d never had anything to do with chemistry.” So he had no idea how to solve the problem. What he did know, however, was that there was no way things could be shut down for that long. “So,” Cote recalled, “all I told him was that I refused to accept that.” Instead, Cote suggested he get everyone together in a room who might be able to help and, in twenty-four hours, he wanted an
answer as to how they could make sure a two-week shutdown didn’t happen while still complying with the air permits.

The manufacturing guy looked at Cote and told him it was impossible, but Cote stuck to his position. “I remember walking out of there thinking,
Oh man, I don’t know what else to do,
” Cote said. “
I just hope I’m right that they can figure this thing out.
” The next day Cote arrived early, thinking of how to manage the shutdown, and found that his faith had not been misplaced. Not only had the team come up with a way to fix the problem that wouldn’t require a shutdown, the new solution was going to cost them $200,000 less than their original plan. Even Cote was amazed. He said to me, “That really stuck with me, because it shows that teams don’t always know everything that they’re capable of.”

They Become More Invested in Their Work:
I met leadership expert Ken Blanchard in 2000 at a KFC franchisee meeting, where he talked about the importance of creating a people-first culture within an organization in order to bring the concept of customer focus to life. After all, you can reach your customers only through your people, so you better hire great ones, train them well, and empower them to satisfy your customers. I liked what he had to say so much that I invited him to come to speak at one of our top-management meetings in Louisville, where he told a story about how Ritz-Carlton trained its hotel employees to handle customer complaints and gave them a $2,000 discretionary fund that they could use to satisfy customers without having to get anyone’s permission first. We liked the idea so much, we brought it to Yum! and developed what we called a Customer Mania training program, which taught front-of-house
employees how to listen to customers, be empathetic to their issues, recover from mistakes, and exceed expectations within reason. It also included a policy whereby restaurant employees could use up to $10 to help resolve customer issues on the spot without having to call for a manager. It had a huge impact on team members, who felt respected and empowered, and in turn, on customers, who felt their issues were being handled better and faster. (Ken Blanchard was so taken with our approach to building a new company that he even wrote a book about us called
Customer Mania: It’s Never Too Late to Build a Customer-Focused Company,
which was published in 2004!)

They Rise to the Occasion
: Stephen Burke remembers with trepidation the time when he was first asked to go to Paris to be the president of Euro Disney. The park had been open for only six months, and it was “in terrible shape,” as he described it to me. “We looked at the numbers and realized that if we didn’t do something very dramatic,” he explained, “not only were we going to lose half a billion dollars the first year, but it was going to get worse because interest was going to compound.” It was clear that what they had wasn’t working, and what they had was a lot of Americans who had been sent over from Orlando to build the park and staff it. They were essentially using the Orlando handbook to manage the park in Paris, so Steve and his team decided to send the Americans home. In their place, they gave big promotions to a lot of young Europeans and encouraged them to figure
out how to run the park so that it would please their European customers. “That was the single smartest thing we did,” Steve told me. “It completely changed the company and unleashed a lot of enthusiasm. The thing it really taught me is that if you have people who are really in touch with the customer, if you have people who are excited about what they do, give them the keys, because if you do, they’ll do the right thing nine times out of ten.”

If you can establish an environment where every single person feels that they are part of a team and have a chance to contribute, you’ve created a situation where people can do great things. To build an environment like this, you have to start with trust.

Reaching out to people and building relationships based on trust might seem like a natural idea, but how do you do it? This is not the sort of thing they typically teach in business school. Below are things you can do to show people that you believe in them and that you care.

1. Know That People Want to Contribute:
   Start with the right attitude: Realize that 99.9 percent of people come to work every day wanting to do good and try hard. So
   you
   have to go to work every
   day thinking about your people that way and appreciating them for it, not looking to catch the 0.1 percent who want to mess things up or don’t act in good faith. This isn’t always easy, because we all worry about the possibility of someone taking advantage of us; we fear we’ll look bad if they do. But you have to remember, you’re the leader, so it starts with you. If you don’t trust people, why should they trust you? I can tell you one thing for sure, I’ve never ever trusted someone who didn’t trust me … and I guarantee you it goes both ways.
   
2. Demonstrate That Everyone Counts:
   It’s been shown that the most successful companies have a culture where every single person feels valued. No matter what their position, they all know they have a chance to contribute and make a difference. Coach John Wooden told me he used to liken his team to a car. One star player may be like the powerful engine while others are more like the nuts that hold on the wheel. “But if we lose that wheel, how good is that engine?” he explained. “Everyone is important. Everyone must feel that they are needed. If you feel you are not needed, I think you’re through.”
     I recently saw an example of this when I visited India. Our team there, led by general manager Niren Chaudhary, has made corporate social responsibility a real priority, setting as their mission to achieve “growth with heart.” One of their initiatives is to have at least one
   KFC store in every major city run by team members who are hearing and speech impaired. I visited one such store in Bangalore where they greeted me by doing our Yum! cheer in sign language. I was amazed to see how the kitchen worked with a system of lights replacing the buzzers and bells that typically tell staff when food is ready. At the front of the house, there are special menus that customers can point to in order to communicate their orders. The restaurant even provides table tents that teach people basic sign language, which the customers love. Niren’s ability to see the potential in every person and to provide a place where that potential can be utilized has been a huge success. That
   restaurant in Bangalore is ranked the second best out of 118 stores in India. What’s more, it serves as an inspiration to the entire organization as to what people are capable of.
   
3. The More They Know, The More They Care:
   This was a principle I learned when visiting Walmart. One way to show people you trust in their abilities and intentions is to share with them what you know. No one understood this better than Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. Early on, he established Saturday meetings, where he would gather people together for the sole purpose of sharing with them everything he knew about the business. Why bother? He once wrote the following, which I think explains it: “The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them. If you don’t trust your associates to know what’s going on, they’ll know you really don’t consider them partners.”
   
4. Ask Questions That Promote Insight:
   To find out more about who people are and what they think, one of my favorite questions to ask is, “What would you do if you had my job?”
     Getting inside people’s heads is important, so don’t be easy on yourself. Don’t ask questions of just the people you work with every day. I call this “going two deep.” It means you don’t get to know what just your boss is thinking, you get to know what your boss’s boss is thinking. And you don’t get to know just your direct reports. Spend some time with those who report to your direct reports. Extend this idea even further, to customers or clients or anyone who might have something to do with the goal you want to achieve. Have you shown them that you care by asking them what they think and getting to know them better?
   
5. Take Responsive Action:
   Once you’ve found out what people think, you’ve got to act on that and show that you’ve taken them into account. John Calipari, head basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, told me how, in 2009, he recruited top high school player John Wall to his team. It was soon clear that this
   guy was about to go pro, and Calipari could see that the other team members were growing jealous of all the attention he was receiving. Calipari could have just let his star player be, but that would have destroyed the spirit of the group and the trust they needed to have in each other to be a great team. So he took action. He pulled Wall aside and said to him: “John, you are definitely the star of this team and you are definitely going pro. I want you to take as many of your teammates as you can with you. You need to help them be great too.”
     Wall took his
   coach’s words to heart and set his sights on improving not only his own performance, but the performance of everyone around him. The power of all that collective talent was unleashed. When NBA draft day rolled around, Wall was the number-one pick, followed by four of his teammates—DeMarcus Cousins, Patrick Patterson, Eric Bledsoe, and Daniel Orton—all of whom were first-round picks as well. It was a historic feat. Never before had more than four first-round picks come from a single team, but that year the University of Kentucky had five.