Dare to Serve
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Dare to Serve

How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others

Cheryl Bachelder

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eBook - ePub

Dare to Serve

How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others

Cheryl Bachelder

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About This Book

Become a Dare-to-Serve Leader! How do you transform an ailing company into an industry darling? Adopt servant leadership. When Cheryl Bachelder was named CEO of Popeyes in 2007, the stock price had slipped from $34 in 2002 to $13. The brand was stagnant, the team discouraged, and the franchisees were just plain angry. Nine years later, restaurant sales were up 45%, restaurant profits had doubled, and the stock price was over $61. Some see servant leadership as incongruent with results, but this book confirms that challenging people to reach a daring destination, while treating them with dignity, creates the conditions for superior performance. In this updated edition, Bachelder includes her post-Popeyes observations and new examples of how you can switch your leadership from self to serve.

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Information

Publisher
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Year
2015
ISBN
9781626562370
Edition
1
Topic
Business
Subtopic
Management
Index
Business

PART ONE

HOW TO DRIVE
SUPERIOR RESULTS

I have not always enjoyed success as a leader.
In the fall of 2003, unable to sustain a turnaround of KFC restaurants, my boss suggested that it was time for me to leave. In other words, I got fired.
Few things are as clarifying as losing your job. My confidence was shaken. This was supposed to be the pinnacle position of my career—my day in the spotlight.
Perhaps that was the problem. The spotlight was not where I was supposed to be.
After meandering through a few consulting projects, I decided that my “retirement” work would be serving on boards. I was honored to join the boards of True Value Hardware Company and AFC Enterprises, Inc., the parent company of Popeyes.
In the spring of 2007, the CEO of Popeyes left the company. After a search committee reviewed several candidates to be the next CEO, the board asked me to lead the organization.
Looking back, this move was providential. In my previous role as a leader, I had been humbled. Now I would be given a chance to redeem that experience by leading the people of Popeyes.
I had a chance to step out of the spotlight; to lead the people to a daring destination; to serve them well along the journey; and to create the conditions for superior performance.
Popeyes’ performance results have been remarkable.
I only wish I had been humbled sooner.

ONE

WHOM WILL WE SERVE?

It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.
ROBERT K. GREENLEAF, THE SERVANT AS LEADER
I AM AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST, a certified member of the positive-thinking club.
When we were growing up, my mother woke my siblings and me by playing loud music on the stereo and saying “Good morning! It’s a beautiful day. Rise and shine.” There was no opportunity for negativity. It was going to be a good day.
I continued this tradition with my children. The mantra of their childhood was, “Your attitude is your altitude.” They still grimace when I say it, but the message is etched in their minds. Decide how you will approach this day—and that will determine your day.
The same is true in leadership—your attitude is your altitude.
When I joined Popeyes, the place needed an attitude adjustment. The problem? The people we were responsible for leading were viewed as “a pain in the neck.”
The franchise owners were “difficult.” The restaurant teams were “poor performers.” The guests were “impossible to please.” The board members were “challenging.” The investors were “not on our side.”
The first step in turning around your organization’s performance? Think positively about the people you lead. Your attitude will determine the altitude of your performance results.
DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #1 How do you think about the people you lead? Are they a “pain in the neck” or essential to the future success of the organization?

THE BUSINESS SITUATION

Popeyes’ performance in 2007 couldn’t have been much worse. Every data point that we measured was going the wrong way. Sales were declining. Guest satisfaction was worst-in-class. Restaurant profits were down in absolute dollars and margin. Morale at the company was negative. Franchise owners were mad and “sick and tired” of bad results. Investors were disappointed in the stock performance and wanted answers. The board was tired of hearing promises that did not materialize.
In the following year, economic conditions would deteriorate as well. Lehman Brothers would disappear. The stock market would fall precipitously. The United States would head into a steep recession that contributed to the slowdown of the global economy. Times were not good.
The odds were stacked against a successful Popeyes turnaround.
What leadership approach would lead to success?

NOT LIKE THEM

Picture eight members of the Popeyes Leadership Team stuffed in a small conference room at an Atlanta facility called the Buckhead Club. Our job for the day? To make a conscious decision on how we would lead Popeyes to sustained success.
We started by making lists of the traits we admired in the best leaders of our careers. Interestingly, the conversation quickly turned to the traits that we wanted to avoid, traits that characterized the worst leaders we had met.
On the flip chart, we listed words like self-absorbed, arrogant, and condescending.
Before we knew it, we were telling stories to one another about the difficult people we had worked for. It became a “can you top this?” contest.
That was a turning point in our leadership of Popeyes.
Our first decision—we did not want to lead like “them.”
We started talking about our favorite leadership philosophies. One person mentioned a book that had been influential in his life, Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree. Published in 1989 by the then-CEO of Herman Miller, the book put forth a novel idea—that leaders are stewards of the people and the organizations they lead. When leaders create environments where followers thrive, the business performs well.
Others brought up books that they liked—authored by Patrick Lencioni, Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, and more—and a theme emerged in the conversation. We wanted to be leaders who served well the people, brand, and organization we had been given. We didn’t want to fall prey to the self-focused leadership style we had observed in others. Our belief was that serving people well would generate better business results.
One member of the team said, “I think there is a name for this kind of leadership. Give me a minute to do a web search.” He was the only one with an iPhone at the time and he quickly came up with the answer. A man named Robert Greenleaf had written about a leadership approach called servant leadership. It was about serving the people well—above self-interest.
That’s it!
Serving others over self.
We quickly agreed that this servant leadership notion would guide us going forward.
DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #2 Think about difficult leaders you have worked for. Have you made a conscious decision to lead differently than “them”?
But there was one more thing. We believed that servant leadership would deliver superior results. The performance of the enterprise would be the evidence that we had served others well.
Before leaving the conference room that day, we had a draft of the Popeyes purpose and principles that would guide our leadership for years to come.
Our purpose: To inspire servant leaders to achieve superior results.
Our principles: Six behaviors we saw as essential to serving the people well and delivering superior performance—passion, listening, planning, coaching, accountability, and humility.
We made a decision that day: we decided to serve.
Dare-to-Serve Leaders begin by intentionally deciding on their attitude and leadership approach.
• Decide to think positively about the people you lead.
• Decide to be a leader who serves others over self-interest.
It is both courageous and humbling to remove yourself from the spotlight and shift your focus and energy toward serving others well. This is how you create an environment for superior results.

THE MANY CHOICES

If we were going to serve people well at Popeyes—whom would we serve?
We listed all the possibilities on the conference room flip chart: the guests; the shareholders; the franchise owners; the team members; the board of directors; the regulators; the accountants. Had we missed anyone?
Someone said, “Don’t we have to serve all of those people?”
Hmmm. Could be true. Let’s go through each possibility.
In restaurants, the ultimate goal is to serve your restaurant guest well. After all, guests buy the food—without them, there is no business. If they are not served well, they don’t come back.
We are a public company. Shareholders have invested in this business and expect a reasonable, preferably good, return on that investment. We are hired as their “stewards.” Without their investment, we will not be funded for growth. If they are not well served, they exit our stock—and the stock price falls—reducing our access to capital and the value of the enterprise.
Popeyes licenses the rights to use the brand and the operating system to franchise owners. These owners borrow money and invest it in building Popeyes restaurants, hiring and training restaurant crews, and building relationships with the communities and guests we serve. Without franchisees, we do not have a global restaurant chain—they drive our expansion. If they are not well served, they exit the brand—selling or closing restaurants—and reduce our ability to serve guests our famous Louisiana recipes.
DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #3 Who are the most important people you serve—the owner, the boss, the customer, the employees? Which one is your primary focus?
It takes about 60,000 team members to run our more than 2,200 restaurants around the globe. These team members get up every day, come to work, prepare the food, serve the guests, clean up the place, and close the doors. These team members feed and serve our guests. If we do not serve the team members well, they go to work somewhere else. Without them, we are not open for business.
In our business, we have many choices of people to serve; they are all important. Would we serve them equally, or would we pick one as our primary focus?

THE CHOICE WE MADE

At Popeyes, we chose to serve the franchise owners well as our first priority.
In franchising, we make money in two basic ways: we collect royalties on restaurant sales and we collect franchise fees when a new restaurant is built. Those monies fund the infrastructure of the company so we can carry out the service obligations of our franchise contract: brand marketing, new product innovation, operating systems, quality assurance, and more.
We have long-term contracts with our franchise owners—typically twenty-year agreements with options to renew. Thus, we have long-term relationships with the owners who borrowed the money to build our restaurants and hire the people who serve our guests. Franchise owners do the heavy lifting.
As we looked at our options for whom we would serve, we thought the franchise owners merited our immediate attention. They had made sizable investments and were committed by contract to operate our brand. If they did not prosper, there was no chance Popeyes sales would go up (royalties) or franchise fees would increase (new openings). Either franchise owners would succeed or Popeyes would fail.
This decision is not typical in our industry. Franchisors and franchisees are constantly in conflict—arguing about the contract, the business strategy, the restaurant design, the promotion pricing, or the cost of the food. If the conflict gets particularly bad, threats of lawsuits quickly surface.
When I joined Domino’s Pizza in 1995, Domino’s franchisees sued the company in a class-action lawsuit. When I joined KFC in February 2001, I learned of the long history of conflict between KFC franchisees and the franchisor, with a negotiated settlement in 1996. In my restaurant career, the media has reported on troubled franchisee/franchisor relationships at well-known brands such as Burger King and Quiznos, among others.
Interestingly, unresolved conflict with franchise owners never leads to operational excellence or superior sales and profit performance. Instead, franchise systems with high internal conflict have negative business results. It is predictable. Nonetheless, franchisees and franchisors typically don’t get along.
So we asked ourselves a few questions.
What if we dared to be different from our peers? What if we dared to serve the franchise owners well?
Wha...

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