lieve leadership starts with your brain
and mindset. I try to lead by example
with the energy, work ethic, service, and
hard work I bring each day and to truly
try and help paint a picture for others
of where we are headed. I’m not sure
there is a classical term for this. I have
a degree in operations, but I believe I
learned how to lead from working on
my visionary master’s, I guess. Part of
leadership is having an understanding
that you are never “there”—you never
arrive as a leader—you must commit to
working at it daily.
What has inspired your leadership
style? I have had a lot of positive influ-
ences in my life, starting with the work
ethic instilled by my parents from a very
young age. I have also had great mentors from the family of Two Men and
a Truck as I started here as an intern at
MSU. They were instrumental in developing me as both a business person
and family man.
What is your biggest leadership challenge? My biggest challenge is to help
grow our brand while still maintaining
the agility and flexibility to adapt to our
ever-changing world. We must all work
toward becoming comfortable being
uncomfortable with the world we live in
today. My challenge is to maintain our
vision and course in uncharted waters
ahead—an exciting challenge for sure!
How do you transmit your culture from
your office to front-line employees?
It starts with our core purpose, mission
statement, and core values. Clarity, communication, and consistency in actions
help synthesize our culture organizationwide. Since day one we have focused on
customer service; this is the foundation
for all our decisions relative to how it
affects the customer. We are also very
transparent and share many key metrics
across the franchise system. This transparency from day one has helped instill
a culture of openness, as well.
Where is the best place to prepare for
leadership: an MBA school or OTJ?
I do not have an MBA so I can’t speak
directly to that experience. I started as
an intern and grew with the organization, so I definitely see where on-thejob experience is key—particularly in
operations. I am always learning and
reading, so I think you need a good
balance of academia and experience
to prepare you to lead. In my opinion,
leadership is a mindset that starts with
the individual making the choice first
then selecting the avenues to get there.
Are tough decisions best taken by one
person? I believe there should be an
owner for every decision made. That is
leadership, but we have a saying around
here that our founder Mary Ellen Sheets
coined: “All of us are smarter than one
of us.” I firmly believe in obtaining input
from key subject matter experts before
making a tough call.
How do you make tough decisions?
Being an engineer by education, I always
try to review each decision objectively.
For tough decisions, I seek to involve
key people from the organization for
their input and expertise, look at factual
information surrounding the system, and
at the end of the day I look at the pros
and cons and consider the worst-case
outcome as the result of this decision.
Beginning with the end in mind sometimes makes it easier to figure out how
to respond in a tough situation.
Do you want to be liked or respected?
I think human nature tends to drive
people toward wanting to be liked, but
I believe that, from a business perspective, Bill Cosby is right on with the
quote, “I don’ B