Catersource advantage

THE ADVANTAGEWHY ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH TRUMPS EVERYTHING ELSE IN

BUSINESS

Old Puff• Opened in 1980 as family-owned business• Positive reputation in the community• Purchased in 2003, annual sales of $1.8M, at

operational limit• Infrastructure required improvements to

support growth

New Puff• Tremendous potentials + aggressive growth plan =

267% growth in 3 years• Over 400 staff members

– Diversifying segment base• Expanded to Tampa with acquisition and now a new

commissary• Five exclusive venues • Engaged Leadership Team

Two Requirements for Success

• Strategy• Marketing• Finance• Technology

• Minimal Politics• Minimal Confusion• High Morale• High Productivity• Low Turnover

Smart

Health

The Four Disciplines

Two OrganizationsFirst – Lead by a team open, passionate, able to debate issues and commit to decisions, who hold each other accountable and focus on what’s best for the company.

Second – Lead by a team guarded and protective, holding back in difficult conversations, half-hearted, and hesitant to point out other’s unproductive behaviors, pursuing their own agenda.

Where do you want to work?

Build a Cohesive Leadership Team

• A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for the organization

• ‘A small group of people’ – 3 to 12, and really ideal would be 3-8

• ‘Collectively responsible’ – selfless and shared sacrifices

• ‘Common objectives’ – collective focus, with comp tied to that achievement

Teamwork Model

Five Behavioral Principles1. Building Trust: Team members who trust one another are

comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another about their failures, weaknesses and fears.

2. Mastering Conflict: When trust is present, teams are able to engage in unfiltered ideological debate around ideas, issues and decisions that must be made.

3. Achieving Commitment: The ability to engage in conflict and provide input enables team members to buy-in or commit to decisions.

4. Embracing Accountability: After commitment is established, team members must be willing to hold one another accountable and remind each other when actions are counterproductive to the team.

5. Focusing on Results: Collective team results must supersede any departmental or personal objectives or pursuits.

Aligning the leaders

Personal Histories Exercise• Purpose: To improve trust by giving team members an opportunity to

demonstrate vulnerability in a low-risk way and to help team members understand one another at a fundamental level so that they can avoid making false attributions about behaviors and intentions.

• Time Required: 15 — 25 Minutes• Instructions: Go around the table and have everyone answer three

questions about themselves.1. Where did you grow up?2. How many siblings do you have and where do you fall in that

order?3. Please describe a unique or interesting challenge or

experience from your childhood.• Debrief: Ask team members to share what they learned about one

another that they didn't already know. This reinforces the purpose of the exercise and allows for a natural ending to the conversation.

Mastering Conflict • With trust, conflict is just pursuit of truth• Conflict avoidance at the top transfers it down• Ideally, the team should engage in constructive conflict

but not destructive• Willing to recover if the line gets crossed• Mine for conflict in meetings, and reinforce it when it

happens• Trust is critical

Achieving Commitment• Can’t happen without trust and conflict – people

need to provide input, ask questions and understand the rationale of decisions

• Can’t wait for consensus – disagree and commit• Leader’s responsibility to break ties• Have to prevent passive sabotage (undermining piece

and not allowing it to come up after the fact)• Must have clear agreement on message

• Requires commitment first• Peer-to-peer accountability is the primary and most

effective source of accountability on the leadership team of a healthy organization

• Can’t all come from leader, but leader has to be willing to confront

• Hardest part of building a cohesive team• Ultimately, courageous and selfless (it’s not about you or

me, it’s about the company)

Embracing Accountability

Focusing on Results

• Ultimate outcome of trust, conflict, commitment and accountability is results

• Need to focus on collective goals – not departmental goals – one team, one score

• Have to place higher priority on leadership team than the team they lead

• Leadership team must embrace the power of team number one

Two OrganizationsFirst - Led by a team who share a passion for what they do, abide by a set of values; have a clear plan for success and know exactly how they differ from their competition; can articulate their top priority and understand how every team member contributes to achieving that priority.

Second - Run by a group of well-intentioned executives who have a good understanding of the details of the business but are not strategic; they talk about being more strategic, but don’t have a consistent method for evaluating decisions, and manage a long list of diverse goals; and most have a limited knowledge about the responsibilities of their peers.

How much of an advantage does the first have over the second?

Creating ClarityThe leadership team must agree on the answers to six simple but critical questions1. Why do we exist?2. How do we behave?3. What do we do?4. How will we succeed?5. What is most important, right now?6. Who must do what?

Question 1: Why do we exist?• Core purpose from Built to Last• Why a company exists has to be completely idealistic• Employees in every organization need to know that at the heart of

what they do lies something grand and aspirational• Ultimately, every company exists to make lives better• Not designed to be tactical or practical• Based on the real motivations of the people who founded or are

running the organization• Not about marketing – internal or external• Answers ‘How do we contribute to a better world?’ (Both them and

for us)• Take that answer and ask Why? To get to highest purpose

Question 2: How do we behave?• Core values guide employee behavior• Can’t be effective if broad and inclusive• Types of Values

– Core – just 2-3 that are inherent and unchanging– Aspirational – values a company wants to develop– Permission-to-Play – minimum behavioral standards– Accidental – unintentional values developed over time

• Core values – Apparent in the organization for a long time– Must be more committed to this value than 99% of competitors– Found in best employees (and missing in employee misfits)– Must be embodied by leadership team

Question 3: What do we do?• Simplest of the six questions• Not idealist – just a description of what the organization

actually does• One-sentence business definition• No adverbs or qualifiers, no details on strategy• Can change over time• What’s yours?

Question 4: How Will We succeed?• Essentially – the strategy• Strategy is simply the plan for success – intentional decisions a

company makes to thrive and differentiate from competitors• Broad – every decision is part of it• Important to boil down to 3 strategic anchors• Create an exhaustive list of everything intentional you do – hiring,

product/service approach, marketing, décor• Then look for patterns to find three strategic anchors• Strategic anchors change when market conditions change• Provide clarity to walk away from opportunities that don’t align with

strategic anchors

Question 5: What is most important, right now?

• Most immediate and tangible impact on the company• Companies have too many top priorities• Create alignment by having one top priority at any given time• Identify a thematic goal

– Singular – one thing is the most important now– Qualitative – not about specific numbers (yet)– Temporary – clear time boundary of 3 to 12 months – Shared across leadership team – all member focused on this as

their top priority• Not about rallying the troops – more about clarity for how

the leadership team will spend their time and resources• Must identify four to six defining objectives to achieve, and

also identify standard operation objectives

Question 6: Who must do what?• Division of labor – starts at the top• Easy step but can’t be overlooked• Worthwhile to clarify so everyone on the leadership

team knows and agrees on who does what • Make sure all critical areas are covered

Two OrganizationsFirst - Led by a team who remind employees why the company exists, its core values , its strategy and its top priority. They communicate the same message to employees, and make sure they know the concerns and ideas of their people to use in decision making. The company has simple practices for recruiting and orienting people based on core values, managing performance based on top priorities, and training and rewarding based on culture and strategy.

Second – Leadership team limits communication to a few events each year, mainly on tactical initiatives, doesn’t share consistently after meetings, and aren’t aware of employee opinions. The company has plenty of processes, but most are generic and complicated, not customized to the unique culture and operations of the company.

How much of an advantage does the first have over the second?

Over-communicate Clarity• Employees are skeptical about what they’re told unless they hear it

consistently over time.• Need to be CROs – Chief Reminding Officers. But Leaders are hesitant to

repeat themselves. Why?– It seems wasteful and inefficient – want to avoid redundancy– They fear it is insulting or patronizing to repeat a message.– They get bored saying the same things over and over.– Need to overcome all this and do more reinforcing of key messages.

• Leaders need to tell ‘true rumors’ • Cascading communication takes the message through the company• Three keys to cascading communication

– Consistency of message– Timeliness of delivery– Live, real-time communication

• Have to end leadership meetings answering the question: What are we going to go back and tell our people? And make sure there is agreement

Reinforce Clarity• Every process that involves people needs to reinforce the

answers to the six questions• You need to institutionalize culture without bureaucratizing it• Hiring, performance management, training and compensation

need simple systems specific to the company• Hire for cultural fit • Orientation needs to be built around the six answers and leaders

need to take an active role in design and delivery• Performance management needs to be simple and stimulate the

right kinds of conversations on the right topics.• Compensation & reward has to be tied to one or more of the big

six questions• Leaders need to give recognition and personal appreciation, and

be quick to take out employees who don’t fit the values

Great Meetings• A cohesive team with clarity requires more meeting time, not less.• Eliminate meeting stew – can’t combine tactical, admin, strategy,

personnel and brainstorming in one session.• Four types of meetings

– Administrative – Daily Check-In – 5-10 minutes– Tactical – Weekly Staff Meeting – 45-90 minutes

• Real time agenda – issues & what’s most important now?– Strategic – Adhoc Topical- 2-4 hours

• Competitive threat, revenue drop, new opportunity – monthly or so

– Developmental – Qtr Off-Site – ½ to 1 full day• Review strategic anchors, cohesiveness – clarity,

communication

Checklist for A Cohesive Leadership Team

• The leadership team is small enough to be effective (3 to 10 people)

• Members of the team trust one another and can be genuinely vulnerable with each other

• Team members regularly engage in productive, unfiltered conflict around important issues

• The team leaves meetings with clear-cut, active and specific agreements around decisions

• Team members hold one another accountable to commitments and behaviors

• Members of the leadership team are focused on team number one. They put the collective priorities and needs of the larger organization ahead of their own departments or themselves.

Checklist for Creating Clarity• Members of the leadership team know, agree on, and are passionate

about the reason the organization exists• The leadership team has clarified and embraced a small, specific set

of behavioral values• Leaders are clear and aligned around a strategy that helps them

define success and differentiate from competitors• The leadership team has a clear, current goal with a collective sense

of ownership for that goal• Members of the leadership team understand one another’s roles

and responsibilities, and are comfortable asking questions about one another’s work

• The elements of clarity are concisely summarized (‘Play Book’) and reviewed regularly by the leadership team

Checklist for Overcommunicating Clarity

• The leadership team has clearly communicated the six aspects of clarity to all employees.

• Team member regularly remind the people in their departments about those aspects of clarity.

• The team leaves meetings with clear and specific agreement about what to communicate to their employees, and they cascade those messages quickly after meetings.

• Employees are able to accurately articulate the organization’s reason for existence, values, strategic anchors and goals.

Checklist for Reinforcing Clarity• The organization has a simple way to ensure that new hires are

carefully selected based on the company’s values.• New people are brought into the organization by thoroughly

teaching them about the six elements of clarity.• Managers throughout the organization have a simple, consistent and

non-bureaucratic system for setting goals and reviewing progress with employees.

• Employees who don’t fit the values are managed out of the company. Poor performers who do fit the values are given the coaching and assistance they need to succeed.

• Compensation and reward systems are built around the values and goals of the organization.

Organization Health“When an organization’s leaders are cohesive, when they are unambiguously aligned around a common set of answers to a few critical questions, when they communicate those answers again and again and again, and when they put effective processes in place to reinforce those answers, they create an environment in which success is almost impossible to prevent. Really.”Patrick Lencioni

CATERING PURCHASING SOLUTIONS

Las Vegas Convention CenterSouth Hall – Room S113

1pm – 2pm on Tuesday March 25th

THANK YOU!

Warren Dietel | [email protected] | 407.629.7833

To download a copy of my slides, go to: http://www.slideshare.net/WarrenDietel

www.facebook.com/puffnstuffcatering | Twitter: @pscatering