Servant Leadership Insights

Ben Fauske, an O/D specialist here in Green Bay, provided these insights at a recent Servant Leadership workshop sponsored by Prophit Marketing and Festival Foods:

• Problem with connecting grandiose mission to what I do:  “I save lives … one folded carton at a time!”
• “They are CAVE people … C.A.V.E. … Citizens Against Virtually Everything!”
• Example of a great culture:  My family and I were at Disneyland, on a shuttle bus, an the driver was getting exasperated at riders not sitting down, as safety required. Finally, he broke from his “role” and yelled at offenders.  When we got off the shuttle, he got off with us.  “I apologize.  I should not have done that.  It was wrong, and I should be held accountable for it.  Here is my card and my manager’s card.  I want you to know that whatever you write him about what I did, I will verify and I will accept his penalty.”
• He asked attendees, “Why was the worst team you ever worked on the worst?”  Responses:  Boss had his favorites; too much ego (too much “I”); micromanaging; saying things that were patently untrue; promising things that were never delivered … and a power struggle between team members.
• What got him into O/D work?  “After college, I worked for eight bad cultures in eight straight years.”  (Wonder where his ninth was?)

"Soul Leadership"

Fred Johnson, CEO of Initiative One in Green Bay, at one of his Last Friday seminars, entitled “Soul Leadership” ...

• “Emotional Intelligence is the main thing these days for a leader … and I think there’s something just beyond that, 'Soul Leadership’.  It’s where you actually ‘love” the people you work with.  Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, when his teams were at their peak effectiveness, said it’s because they love each other.  You are creating an environment where people actually feel loved.”

Some supporting comments:

• After the Great Recession, the percentage of people wanting to leave their companies was at an all-time high, not because of the layoffs … people expected that.  It was because during the aftermath, managers/leaders didn’t treat them as adults … not keeping them informed of what the situations were (miserable as they were), “coddling” them, being paternalistic.  They felt like “assets” used to protect the bottom-line, not treated as a responsible, reliable, trusted adult team member.
• Millennials, we believe, want a “flow” between their personal and work lives … high inclusion, high relationships … which builds Trust and Commitment.  It’s bad when the work culture is such that it is separated from one’s personal life.
• Leadership Development today starts with creating a positive self-awareness that ultimately yields Confidence … confidence that leading the search, asking the questions won’t diminish his/her influence and respect.  Getting out of the organization’s way so they can help solve the problems, deal with the challenges.
• Every process can be derailed if people who use/manage it don’t feel valued as a person.  As the American Airlines CEO said recently after the United Airlines debacle, “Never let process trump people.”
• Good leaders don’t get “burned out.”  They become comfortable with being uncomfortable … and solving the dilemmas that create that discomfort.
• Perfection kills you as a leader.  It’s an addiction to order … which can never be made perfect.

What Makes CEOs Successful?

From last month’s Harvard Business Review:  The CEO Genome Project, starting by analyzing 2,000 CEOs, and in detail 930 of them, on:

       What does make CEOs successful? After analyzing all of their data, the researchers found that roughly half of the candidates earning an overall 'A' rating in their database, when evaluated for a CEO job, had distinguished themselves in more than one of four management traits. (Only five percent of the weakest performers, meanwhile, had done the same.) The four were: reaching out to stakeholders; being highly adaptable to change; being reliable and predictable rather than showing exceptional, and perhaps not repeatable, performance; and making fast decisions with conviction, if not necessarily perfect ones.

PS:  The study also found that more introverts than extroverts tended to run successful organizations, but barely more.

Then, the in this month’s HBR:  Four Characteristics of Successful Performance by CEOs

1.  Deciding with Speed and Conviction

2.  Engaging for Impact

3.  Adapting Proactively

4.  Delivering Reliably

It gets confusing.

Wisconsin in Top 10, finally, of Best States To Do Business, but ...

       Chief Executive Magazine just ranked Wisconsin in the Top Ten, after continual progress in recent years.  That means we have most of the right policies/programs/mechanisms in place … but doesn’t mean we will have great job growth.  That depends on individual entrepreneurs, and Wisconsin by-and-large isn’t a highly entrepreneurial state.

However, our state business tax rate of a flat 7.9% is still one of the highest.

Little known:  Our rate of workforce participation at 69% is one of the highest in the country; average is 62%.

A Little Political ...

On Business Taxation
       There is much ado about lowering the Federal business tax rate from 35% to either 15% or 20% … a give-away to the wealthy 1% or less or more.
So, what would businesses do with that extra 15% or 20% of profits?  Nothing?  No.  They invest it in further job creation … R&D, commercial development and testing, investing in new equipment and space, hiring and training, marketing, selling and producing.
Private businesses are the Golden Goose.  What they do is create the jobs with incomes that can be taxed and buy property that can be assessed.
So, why not a business tax rate of 0%!
It’s been proposed in some drafts.
We should consider it.
Then, the several trillions of dollars held in foreign countries can be repatriated for investment here … and the practice of producing in the U.S. but selling from countries with lower tax rates can be stymied.
Would not the additional individual incomes and property values create taxation that overwhelms the business tax loss … as well as drive further growth?
What’s so hard?

$15 Minimum Wage

       San Francisco, which adopted the $15 Minimum Wage in 2004, now has a documented 60 restaurants which have closed for reasons primarily attributable to their higher cost structure.  As one person said, “You can only charge so much for a tamale.”  More and more, government heads are realizing that maintaining a jobs base is more important from an economic development standpoint.

It has been argued, and I agree, that if society wants a family to have a minimum income, then do it through the regular tax base rather than through making an employer less competitive.  One vehicle:  The Earned Income Credit.