When we think about principles of leadership, some things work quite consistently across many organizations with widely different objectives, cultures, communities, and people. These principles work because they’re fundamental and simple—therefore you may have a tendency to dismiss them.
May I suggest that you think hard about them? My guess is you’ll find at least one where you might be able to do something a little differently.
PRINCIPLE 1: LEADERS MUST LEAD
Leadership is not a function of title or responsibility; leadership is a function of doing what leaders do—cause other people to be more effective.
When I was president of General Mills, we had five different businesses; one was the restaurant business. One weekend the head of the restaurant division and I inspected our Olive Garden in California. The idea of Olive Garden is to have a wonderful, friendly environment where you’re greeted at the door; the hot food is hot, the cold food is cold, the service is wonderful, and you have a great experience for about $10 per person.
One Friday night about 5:30 p.m. we walked up to one of our restaurants; nobody greeted us. An Olive Garden on Friday at 5:30 p.m. ought to be basically full; by 6 p.m. there ought to be an hour wait, and by 6:30 p.m. there ought to be a two-hour wait. The restaurant was almost deserted. We waited until finally somebody came out and said, “Can I help you?” We were led to a table—the only table where the gorgeous California sun was right in our eyes. We pointed that out and they said, “We’ll be happy to take care of that.” Sure enough, thirty minutes later somebody came and pulled the shades down.
We waited forever for a server; the hot food was not hot, the cold food was not cold, and there was lettuce on the floor. It was the worst experience I’d ever had in any restaurant. The head of the restaurant division could tell I was really getting quite excited at this point. He asked to speak with the manager. The server said, “He’s not here tonight.” In the restaurant business on a Friday night the manager is always there. He asked for the assistant manager. About six minutes later—instead of thirty seconds later—somebody walks in. The head of the restaurant division explains to him the lettuce on the floor, the hot food is not hot … and the assistant manager is looking off in space. It was awful. As we walked out the door I said, “You’ve always told me how responsive this business is to leadership; we’re going to come back in thirty days, and I want to see what you can do with this restaurant.”
We went back in twenty-eight days to give them a little surprise. We walked up to the door about 5:30 p.m.; the door flew open and somebody said, “Welcome to the Olive Garden.” The restaurant was full; the hot food was hot, the cold food was cold, and we had a fantastic experience.
After we finished, I called the new restaurant manager over and said, “My guess is you probably have about 120 employees in this restaurant.”
He said, “Yes, we have 125.”
“Out of that 125, how many of those employees did you have to fire to get this dramatic change in performance?” I asked.
Do you know what his answer was? One. All the rest was leadership. It wasn’t that the employees couldn’t do the job—the employees hadn’t been trained effectively or held accountable. We changed the manager, and because he was an effective leader he completely changed the restaurant’s performance. It was all a function of leadership.
PRINCIPLE 2: LEADERS FOCUS
My grandfather was one of the early druggists in the Salt Lake Valley. At times he would get a little bored being a druggist and thought if he could make some good investments he could live off his investment income.
One day a stock broker came to town with his portfolio. He said to my grandfather, “I have two stocks for you today, both companies are starting up in Atlanta, Georgia. One is called Coca-Cola and the other Wynola. Which would you like to buy?” Guess which one he bought. If he had made that single decision differently I’d have so much money I wouldn’t have to work. He never made a successful investment; thank heavens he was a good druggist. When I first went to Columbia, I thought I wanted to be a physicist. But, I found I didn’t have the aptitude to be a physicist—the math was too hard for me. If you want to be an effective leader you have to find out what you’re good at and do that, even if it’s not necessarily what you want to do.
Leaders also need to make sure their companies focus. When I was the chief financial officer at General Mills, we were in five different businesses: packaged food, restaurants, toys, specialty retailing, and fashion. The CEO wanted a sixth business to go into. We decided to analyze our businesses and screen about five thousand publicly traded companies to see who measured up to our criteria for performance. We wanted a return on equity of at least 19 percent; we wanted to grow our earnings at a compound rate of at least 10 percent; and the companies needed to be worth at least half a billion dollars. When we screened out those that didn’t meet our financial criteria, there were only one hundred publicly traded companies performing as well as we expected. There were about five companies that were in five or more business segments. However, most of the high-performing companies were in only one or two business segments. I went back to the CEO and said, “I’m not sure we want a sixth. Maybe we’ve got too many. After a series of discussions he agreed, and we decided to focus on packaged foods. The results at General Mills dramatically improved when we focused where we were best.
The 1990s was a period of companies making acquisitions. I think this decade will be just the opposite. A lot of the acquisitions that were made in the 1990s are starting to be undone. As a leader, you not only have to focus on what you do best, but your organization has to focus on what it does best.
PRINCIPLE 3: LEADERS SET HIGH STANDARDS
It is not a coincidence that the Savior said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” We look at that standard and say, “That’s impossible; we can’t do it, we fall so far short.” Some get discouraged. But others say, “If I am going to approach that goal I have to make some dramatic changes.”
For those of you who served missions, you understand the enormous change that takes place when somebody joins the Lord’s Church. That’s part of the power of setting high standards. If you set them high enough, you can no longer do things the way you’re now doing them. Therefore you have to create ways to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Before I left General Mills, one manager was responsible for all of our manufacturing plants. When we changed from one product or size to another on a production line, it took about three hours. When you multiply that by the number of line changes we would make during a year, it turned out to be a very large number. The manager went to his people and said the new standard would be ten minutes. He said, “I know you think I’m crazy, but you’re going to figure out how to do it.”
One thing they did was visit a NASCAR racing track. Have you ever seen what happens when the cars come into the pits? The wheels come off, the gas goes in, and the wheels go on—all within thirty seconds. They recorded what happens in a NASCAR pit and asked, “What’s going on there that we can learn from?” By the time I left General Mills, the changeover on the first line was completed in eleven minutes. It went from three hours to eleven minutes because they completely rethought what they were going to do and did it differently.
When I was in Los Angeles at Times Mirror, we put together a reading program. If kids don’t learn how to read by the third grade they basically never catch up. They are much more likely to go on drugs, much more likely to go to prison, and are not going to get a good job. A huge percentage of the students in the greater Los Angeles area were not reading at grade level. We saw a disaster coming.
As part of that reading program, I visited a school in Los Angeles that was so poor that the school provides lunch for most students. English was a second language for 85 percent of the children. But not only were they reading at grade level, most of them were reading at grade level in at least two languages, and some were reading at grade level in three languages. It was an outlier from all of the other schools.
I spent one morning there, talking with the principal. I asked, “How do you do this?” He said, “Before the school year starts we bring all of the parents in and we sit them down. I stand up on the stage and say, ‘You’re special. I know you’re special because you had the courage to leave your home country and come to a place where you didn’t speak the language, where you didn’t have a job, where you knew you would be a stranger because you wanted to provide greater opportunities for your children. You have courage and strength. I admire you. Because I know you’re special, I know your children are special and that means the standards for your children are high. If your children don’t perform up to this level, we’re going to call you and have you help us help them do what they need to do to be good students.’”
That’s exactly what happened. The standard was so high he had to do things differently than everybody else, and it worked. It was a miracle. If you set the standards high enough, it forces you to find a creative way to accomplish them.
PRINCIPLE 4: LEADERS EMPOWER OTHERS
Nobody is smart enough or has enough time to do everything by themselves. No matter the organization’s size, you have to find a way to empower others to help you accomplish your objectives. It’s amazing how many organizations have policies or practices that get in the way of people doing the very best they could.
The best story I ever heard on that was from a European businessman. He said that when he was in East Germany attending a dinner, one of the East German officials came two hours late. The official was perspiring; he’d obviously had a very frustrating day and was asked what was wrong. He said, “In East Germany we decided some years ago that decisions about energy were too important to be left to ordinary people, so we centralized every decision we could. For example, if we would build a new apartment complex there would be one power plant and one thermostat or one control in that power plant. In your own apartment you had no control over whether you were hot or cold. When the wall came down, people started leaving, including engineers. In one very large housing complex where they had one control for the heat, the engineer had left. Everything was fine when it was cold, but it was getting very warm and nobody knew how to turn off the heat.” The official had spent a frustrating day trying to find someone who could turn the heat down in this complex.
My European business associate heard that story and said, “How silly. What a stupid thing to do.” And then he said, “I wonder how many policies in my own organization are just as stupid? How many times have we said, ‘That decision is too important to leave to somebody else?’” He found his company was full of policies, procedures, and practices that kept people from making responsible and responsive decisions. Look at your organization; look at your own environment. I guarantee you’ll find some areas where you can empower others.
PRINCIPLE 5: LEADERS KINDLE PASSION
People will work for money, but they’ll die for a cause. Organizations are most effective when they get people to believe equally and emotionally in their causes. Why is it that around the world we have fifty thousand people who have left friends and family to serve missions? They do it because they believe deeply. Why will journalists risk their lives to get a story? Why will they go into war zones and run all the risk they do? Because they believe in the cause.
During World War II there was a shipyard in California called the Keiser Shipyard. When the war started it took six months to build a ship. Employees saw their friends, neighbors, and family members dying in the war and decided to do better. It was not the management—it was the employees who figured out how to do it. By the end of the war, a ship was rolling off the line every six days. You’re never going to be as great as you can possibly be unless you find a way to help those involved feel deeply for what you are doing.
PRINCIPLE 6: IN MATTERS OF ETHICS, LITTLE THINGS MATTER A LOT
One of the most disappointing things to me has been the rash of stories of unethical management. It is astounding how many business leaders are going, or ought to be going, to prison. It is a black mark on capitalism. Now I know you’re sitting there saying, “I wouldn’t do it. I’d never steal; I’d never lie on a financial statement.” Can I tell you one little story as a caution to be careful?
After working at the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia for two weeks, I met an FBI agent who said he believed somebody was stealing money from my vault. I didn’t even know where the vault was at that point. I called in the vice president, who claimed it could not happen.
Two weeks later that same FBI agent walked out of our office to the federal courthouse with ten of our employees who had stolen $1.7 million in cash. All but one of those arrested were between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six. They were clean-cut and came from good families. They looked like they would never take a nickel, but collectively they had stolen $1.7 million.
It started as a lark. Two of these kids worked in the vault where they used a machine to count coins; the coins would be placed on a scale to make sure they were within a certain tolerance. One day they said to themselves, “I wonder how accurate that scale is. I wonder if we could take one quarter and not have it miss.” They ran the mechanical count, slipped one quarter out, put the bag on the scale, and the bag weighed within tolerance. They stitched up the bag and said, “If we take one more quarter we can have ice cream for lunch.” So they took 50 cents, bought ice cream, and thought it was really funny. The problem, however, was someone saw them; he was older, and he did not have a good heart. He went to them and said, “I saw what you did, and if you don’t cooperate with me I’m going to turn you in. You’re going to lose your job and reputation.” Reluctantly they agreed. Before they knew it, they were sucked in so far that they were marched over to the jailhouse, and it all started with a quarter.
In ethics, if a leader is to retain the moral capacity to lead, he or she can never compromise, even on the small things, because small things have a way of becoming very large.
PRINCIPLE 7: ALWAYS GIVE MORE THAN EXPECTED
Think about it. If you tell your spouse you’ll be home in fifteen minutes and you get home in ten, he or she is very happily surprised. But if you tell your spouse you’ll be home in fifteen minutes and you get home in thirty, he or she is steaming. If you promise the delivery of a product in four days and it gets there in three, you have a very happy customer; if you promise delivery in four days and it gets there in seven, they’re very unhappy. In a restaurant if you promised that there will be bread on the table within five minutes and it’s there on time, they feel like they’ve had a wonderful experience. If it takes seven minutes, only two minutes longer, it’s one of the most agonizing experiences. It makes a difference if you can exceed expectations.
The best way I know how to consistently exceed expectations for your customers, employees, or investors is to do the things I’ve talked about. Lead, stay focused on what you and your organization do best, set high standards, empower others, give others a reason to believe deeply in what you and they are doing, never compromise your standards, and give more than expected. I have great confidence that you can do it.
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Speech given by Mark H. Willes
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Mark H. Willes earned his AB degree from Columbia College, New York City, and his PhD from the Columbia Graduate School of Business. Willes presided over the Hawaii Honolulu Mission from 2001 to 2004. He serves on BYU’s Executive Committee of the President’s Leadership Council and is a member of the Marriott School’s National Advisory Council. He serves as chairman of the board for the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, Hawaii, and as chairman of the President’s Leadership Council Hawaii for the PCC and BYU–Hawaii. He is also a director of Black & Decker Corporation.
Willes retired as chairman, president, and CEO of the Times Mirror Company in April 2000. Prior to joining Times Mirror, Willes was vice chairman of General Mills, Inc. A fifteen-year veteran of the company, he served as president and chief operating officer from 1985 to 1992. He also was first vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia from 1971 to 1977 and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1977 to 1980.
This article is adapted from Willes’ speech given at the Marriott School Management Conference 23 June 2005.
