"Leadership vs. Management - They're Not The Same" by Scott Barnett

thanks Jeff my mother would blush at that introduction you know I am really pleased really proud to be here this is a really meaningful discussion for me and I'm very happy that with I'm competing with Goldman Sachs I was told for this audience today so I'm really pleased to see as many people here as are as a graduate of this school I'm very proud to be a graduate of this school I have numerous great memories of this place and I know all of you are developing those memories now I was driving down today from I'm staying up at the westward look and I was driving down Campbell and I as I walked as I drove by Campbell and Blackwood Blackledge I looked over and there's a Casa Molina restaurant and in one it is one of the countless jobs that I held while I was here at this school where I pulled rocks out of the Rideau River I worked at score datos and smugglers in and Casa Molina the bum steer down on stone where I was a bartender best left unsaid about that one but at Casa Molina I was a waiter there and I was one night I was walking by and let's face I mean Tucson is still pretty country in a lot of ways and a lot of the local residents here ranchers and people and we had a rancher used to come in and and eat at the restaurant all the time and as I walked by I looked over and he's got his hand up to his mouth like this and he's bleeding and I'm and the waiter standing next to him and and then what happened and I don't know if you've ever seen in a lettuce crate they have these tacks they're huge they're like this big and heard that deep and this guy had bitten into his chimichanga or whatever and got attacked through his upper lip and he was he was there I was watching and he just goes he pulls it out looks at it turns to the waiter and he goes what are you gonna do now reel me in and he go and then he just his wife went out to the car got something put it on him and stopped the bleeding he finished his meal got up and left and that was the last we heard about it today he don't the City of Tucson probably from the from the lawsuit today I'm going to talk to you about leadership and management and why I think they're not the same at all we have a lot of we have a lot of managers running around this country in the world we don't have a lot of leaders and it shows in business and if you don't believe me just ask the former CEO of Volkswagen who left unwillingly his post the other day because he created a culture where lying was okay he created a culture in business where lying and cheating was okay whether he knew or not is irrelevant as the leader he he had to go and I supported that right right off the bat but before we get into a discussion about some of those things I want to talk to you about two leaders that I know this is Max and Kona max is on the top he's a golden and Kona is an Aussie they were our dogs there's another couple of players in this their son they had a litter naturally and their son Oscar was a was a player and it was a cat named smokey Kona was a natural leader she was an alpha dog from the get-go she was hurting her the rest of her litter around she used to hurt max around she would bark at him whenever he got a line same with her with her pups and chased the cat around and tried to eat it for 11 years sadly Kona went to that big dog house in the sky and Max almost immediately changed his personality he went from being a very subservient very quiet easygoing dog to be in the big dog and in fact we started referred to him as the big dog and for the next three years he was the one who did the pushing and shoving he was the one who really ran the household and round them and I mean literally in our case he ran the household and for three years he was a tough guy he was a leader he went from being a follower to a leader and I remember distinctly one day driving into the the driveway and I saw max sleeping on the lawn and next to him was smokey the cat that would never have happened with Kona so there was a big difference in the relationship and so on and it didn't occur to me to be a very important at the time but as I look back on it now it really was about that leadership and it was really struck me maybe because it was so personal you know there's a lot of definitions of leadership I put three up here the only definition of a leader is someone who has followers that is Peter Drucker who is kind of the godfather of management gurus and some of you I'm sure have studied him in the last couple of years or will I can assure you the second one is leadership is the ability to translate vision into reality vision into reality that's Warren Bennis who wrote that definition he's a professor at was a professor at University of Southern California and kind of the expert on leadership as people know it the third definition is by a guy named Kevin Cruz you can read about him you can read him in Forbes his definition is leadership is a process of social influence maximizes the efforts of others towards the achievement of a goal I really like that definition because unlike Venice's which is translating vision or Drucker's which is do you have followers that covered a lot this covers a lot of ground it's got people it's got social influence it's got the maximization of a goal and those are things that are important in business and important to me managers have subordinates managers have subordinates leaders have followers so when we talk about leaders having followers that's what we mean and you can see I threw in a cartoon there if it was only this easy when I grew up I want to be a leader you want to follow me there's a lot of theory on leadership and I'm going to kind of talk a little bit about that even though it's kind of dry and it's in it's somewhat academic it's important to understand that the study of leadership goes back hundreds of years and back in the in the early 19th century there was thing called the great man theory and the great man theory was just that great men women didn't qualify and it really grew out of the aristocracy of those years and it basically said that there were leaders they were they were there they were endowed by God with certain features and qualities and traits that made them incredibly effective as leaders and that's how you end up with the George Washington because he was out of the aristocracy clearly was a leader six foot four not too many people know that he could command tremendous respect he was the father of our country set the tone for how presidents acted for the for the next 250 years a very great man but I don't necessarily buy into that theory as time went by that that theory sort of morphed into what's called a traits theory and the traits theory says that you're given traits you have these qualities that are are natural and normal for leaders and they include things like ambition aggressiveness the ability to move people towards something that those traits exist in people leaders are born not made that's the theory there that morphed later into various behavioral theories because and those are the counterpoint those those theories are counterpoint to traits theory because what they say is the exact opposite leaders are made not born that you can you can acquire or learn or develop the qualities that you need in order to be an exceptional leader I into that somewhat to a certain degree on part I believe in that the contingency theory is one that says something even more complex it says that there's a bunch of factors that come together situations the personality of the individual the people involved who are going to be with this individual as elite as followers of this leader and that all that creates a kind of nexus of leadership and those contingent situations the various situations that you face along the way make difference maybe maybe there's there are certain styles that are associated with leadership to situational leadership was developed by a guy by the name of Ken Blanchard some of you may have heard of me we wrote the one minute manager another management guru pretty powerful guy good speaker gets $50,000 to give a speech develops this thing called situational leadership where it's really about what type of direction do you give people based on two things the level of their competence and the level of their commitment has anyone studied this or heard about this before it's a it's a pretty common thing and the classic example is you're talking to John sitting in the chair next to you and if John has no competence and he has no or very low commitment you say John please stand up get out of your chair walk over to that pencil pick it up go to the drawer open the drawer put it in the drawer come back and sit down in this chair highly directive right you're telling him exactly what you want done now Sally on the other hand may be highly committed and she may have a very high degree of commitment she knows what she's doing and she knows a whole lot about pencils so you might say to Sally hey Sally check out that pencil over there we'll probably oughta do something about it that's it you've highly supportive of her she goes and takes care of it she does it it's a very very small level of direction so it's situational depending on what level of commitment and competence the people have transactional leadership is when it's exactly what it says I'm the supplier of labor you're the buyer I supply it to you you pay me I do exactly what you say anybody know of an example of that really common example that yeah yeah yeah you know it's it's the the big example of course is the military you enlist in them in the army potatoes need peeling the sergeant comes to you and says go peel those potatoes get back to me what's done very transact it's a transaction transformational leadership is very different than transformational is what we all kind of think about when we think of leadership and the romance of it and the charisma of it right the transformational leader is somebody who has a vision and he's able to community if she is able to communicate that vision and they're able to motivate people to follow them if you link back to Cruz's definition we're going to influence behavior based on a vision that you might have with a goal in mind transformational leaders are in my mind some of the best leaders and if you think about the two classic examples of transformational leaders in the 20th century you would think in two presidents you think of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan both of them had a vision of what they wanted to do both of them wanted to deal with tremendous economic malaise want to depression the other one almost a depression one defeated fascism the other one defeated communism very transformational leaders have vision and they're able to develop a team around them if you think about what what Roosevelt's team was called the brain trust right and Reagan's team were top-notch people in industry and government they were able to achieve a tremendous amount of things transformational leadership but when you think about the pop culture and you think about what makes somebody a particularly strong leader you you oftentimes think of P of Star Trek and I'll explain why when I was at Paramount Pictures taking Forrest Gump and licensing it to the name Bubba Gump shrimp company they had one other property that was just a home run millions and millions of dollars of income and that was Star Trek so it's very deep in the pop culture and I thought it might be appropriate to talk about some of what makes it such unusual in Scenario you are looking at the homeless starving to death ever meet I don't believe it Kobayashi Maru scenario liquid matrix habit its students and equipment as I recall you took the test three times yourself your final solution what shall we say no one pass the test no one goes better seconds that will serve the community Rose will you tell me i reprogrammed the simulation shows injured and the successful rescue of the Kobayashi crew is underway sorry I have a Mac I can't it everything's different on PowerPoint with a Mac what makes what makes Captain Kirk topical for this discussion and something that that I wanted to talk about is that Kirk is what a literary a literature professor would call a Superman right whether it's played by Chris Pine or William Shatner he never loses he always wins he solves every problem he wins every situation he's Superman but Kurt's leadership style is what I would call very entrepreneurial because he sometimes transactional very often transformational he's clearly situational because he treats dr. McCoy very differently than he treats Scotty or Sulu or cheque of right he develops a lot of different management styles that he that he uses when he's dealing with those people at Bubba Gump shrimp company and what you're seeing here is the Monterey Bubba Gump who was we started that was our original restaurant opened when we convinced Paramount Pictures it was a good idea to to do this we really didn't know we really didn't know if it would work market research later bore out that there was an unforced translation from the movie to a restaurant it made sense that a restaurant would exist and I can't tell you how many times I had customers come up to me and say well I knew you had the shrimp company but I never knew you had the restaurant like no not really but we did we opened it thinking you would do three million dollars its first year it ended up doing six it was wildly successful went on to prove the concept out in a number of locations around the world Hong Kong London Tokyo New York and Times Square and so on and it was we were very fortunate why were we fortunate I had a superb team of people really good people and they were very motivated and very hard workers my management style with them was very supportive not very directive I'm a pretty participative collaborative manager I like to get a lot of ideas from people and I like to bring it all into a group where we can talk about it kind of ad nauseam and some people don't do well in that situation but once we decide on a course then that's our course and we stay on it and we follow the strategy or the direction using the tactics that we've described or that we've that we've come up with I think that we went on as time went on bitten by at bubba gump and we were able to create some of those kind of unique not unique as a restaurant per se really more unique as a management culture really more unique as a culture generally where people felt empowered to do what they wanted to do and I really was devoted to that idea I wanted people to feel empowered so my style was pretty entrepreneurial as well pretty much focused on making this thing a success not just for me or for my shareholders but also for the team that built it and that team was pretty big really big if there was a way of doing it I just put a few tenets on here I would always say this don't hire the best necessarily hire the best who can work together work as a team it's a big distinction and I really if there were people who wanted to fight turf wars or wanted it this is my department stay out of my stay out of my dish as they say we'd run them out because that's not the kind of group that I wanted I wanted people who work together as as President Reagan said it's amazing how much you can get accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit card culture to develop but if you can develop it then you've got some really powerful people you can be as I talked about be of many minds but ultimately of only one voice once you decide on a course you stay it and you take it and people get on board and move in that too action and you can have as much discussion ahead of that as you want but in the end you're on the way open your book to all I'm a very open book manager if I know what open book management means it means a lot of people get to see the P&L a lot of people get to see the balance sheet to get to see the strategic plan they don't get to get to see it they have to learn it they got to know it because that's how you get everybody pulling on you're in the same direction so you can get them to buy into it you can get them to believe in it then they're going to be people who want you to succeed and want to succeed themselves the last thing is and this was not added in the last two days don't lie ever don't ever lie there's a quote up here that I saw as I walked in make absolute integrity the compass that guides you and everything you do I've never met Carl eller although he lives about two miles from me but I can tell you that that that quote is something that could have been on the wall at Bubba Gump shrimp company - we believed in integrity and if if you couldn't if you couldn't live up to that you really didn't belong and you really felt it right away and you wanted to get out of it don't lie ever and it's not as easy as it sounds what I've learned over the years is this everybody has the capacity to be a leader everyone in this room and this is no pep talk I don't give pep talks everyone in this room has the capability of to be a leader it's a matter of learning the skills and doing the things that you need to do learning the knowledge learning the ability to influence people and having a vision that you can get people to buy into it's not as hard as it sounds if you're passionate about what you do if you believe in what you're doing what I really love about Arizona's approach and LR particularly their approach is it's very entrepreneurial and this is one of the nationally ranked universities in entrepreneurism and there's a and it's a good reason for that and I believe in that I believe the best in business come as entrepreneurs I'm not a custodial manager you know what I mean by a custodial manager and that's somebody who's going to take over an existing company and then just administrate it and kind of run it that's not that's not in my wheelhouse my wheelhouse is in taking a bankrupt company like rusty Pelican and turning that around and then setting about looking for a growth vehicle like Bubba Gump shrimp company and then taking that into a into a growth situation and building it up that's what sets me on fire that's what really gets me going but as I developed people within my organization what I learned is all of them became leaders on their own and they all had groups of people that were following them and that's okay in fact it's good it's the right thing so everyone has the capability to be a leader one style loan doesn't work you have to be transactional as the CEO of a company if there are times along the way where you're going to say take that item off the menu take that item out of production off the off the assembly line fire that person that's here's my business card let me see yours okay you know fire them or not that's the kind of thing that's going to happen it has to happen that's what business is about that's tough decisions you have to be transformational you have to develop a vision and inspire people to follow you you have to get them on board and get them to believe in it and I hope I did that I pretty strongly believe I did and hopefully I'll do it again some other time but everybody in here can do it if they're following something they're passionate about sometimes your winning formula leadership style isn't going to work I could not run Chili's I can't run it it's not because they're a bad company they're good Brinker is a really good company but the division called Chili's is all about maintaining that particular brand not building it too fast building a couple of 1012 restaurants a year they've got 700 and just keep it on an even keel that's not Scott Burnett and I don't think that's what an entrepreneurial style manager does I don't think they want to do that they shouldn't so your winning formula leadership is not appropriate I'm not an appropriate leader for that division of Brinker now if it's somebody who's in trouble or if they're starting something up yeah sign me up and then you're the final thing I'd say on this is that your leadership style has to reflect who you are don't fake it don't try to be don't try to have the leadership style that Lee Iacocca had a Chrysler or that Steve Jobs had at Apple or that any of the great CEOs have be yourself and make the leadership style you have conformed to who you are don't know so many people are tempted to try to be something they're not and playing outside yourself is the yeah is the sports analogy play within yourself and if you do then you then you have the capability of being the leader you want to be I have to ask myself a lot of questions and I would I had a lot of obviously self-doubt along the way and all those things and you will too in whatever it is you do so ask yourselves those kinds of questions am I being myself am I being an appropriate leader do I have the integrity all those things that I've talked about that's the best advice I can give you that's the best advice and if all else fails ask yourself what would max do that's what I do okay we have some questions I have some books up here and the first ten people ask a question each one gets a free copy of my book signed by me so any questions yeah you pass that back to when I was I was in high school graduate from high school and I was working at in a gas station in Palm Desert California saving up money my parents couldn't really help me out on school so saving up money to go to school and I ended up borrowing a friend's motorcycle and put it down in a gravel road and broke my ankle so I had to put off school and when I came back to work I couldn't work at the gas station anymore so I got a job as a valet parking attendant at a restaurant and one night a hostess came out and said you're going to wait tables tonight I know you're in a bus tables tonight so I did and I went in and I kind of caught the bug and after that I worked here in this this town in numerous restaurants as a cook bartender or whatever got involved with a company called rusty pelic and I knew that the guy who owned it his name was Pete siracusa he was a surfer I was a surfer and he talked me into being a manager and seven years later I was running it that's how it happened yeah Recruiting's a 50/50 game okay you can it's a it's you could get good ones you can give bad ones the only way you're going to know is by doing it you can get a feel for it because I mean I had a very diverse group and I also had most of my senior management were women which is it's unusual in the restaurant business all the time it was really unusual ten years ago and it did what mattered to me was could you work together and if they couldn't work together became very evident very quick then they had to go so that I got very transactional that one yes in order to encourage communication between within large groups a couple of things and then and that's a really good question by the way because we had five I had five thousand employees I first of all I'm a huge believer in repetition huge I can't tell you how we had five goals we said every year every meeting every group meeting every and every time I went to a restaurant I talked about those goals and I repeated them over and over again I can tell you what they are right now for the last year I ran the company you know increasing same-store sales always the number one goal at Bubba Gump in terms of its strategy I'd say that's one two we we had employee roundtables where I went around at where I or two other senior people within the company went around and held meetings with the people in in those restaurants employees without managers present and we would talk about what the goals were but we also got feedback from them about what was good what was bad and what they thought could be done to make the process or the restaurant better so we listened and if you don't become a listener in that and if you don't believe that some of your lowest level people can come up with the best ideas you're crazy they can they really can yes Chili's right right yes yeah the the Hagen example you use I know it really well because there's a hug and actually an Albertsons it's now a huggin about a mile from my house and its closing and what happened just for those who don't know Hodgins is a leave our Seattle based grocery chain that decided they were going to expand very rapidly they bought hundreds of stores not just Albertsons by the way but others they bit off way more than they can chew they didn't have the capability the infrastructure either financial or operational to be able to take on all that and there and there now and eleven I think if you don't have the team of people and you don't have the financial backing and you don't have the organizational infrastructure if you will then it's a fool's errand to try to expand at that level and anyone who tries to go I mean the road is littered with companies both in the restaurant industry and in every other industry with people who tried to double triple in size in a year or two you have to remember what I said earlier about playing within yourself if if another example is Northwest Airlines back years ago Northwest Airlines had this supposedly great management team and they were acquiring they were going to acquire a much larger airline in I believe was Delta and so this great management team was going to do well they turned out to be not so great and Delta winning as they all do all the airline's do they went into bankruptcy but the other examples are you know there's a countless ones of companies that have grown successfully and quickly because they hit right on the business cycle curve or they had the right team and they had the right financial backing and all the rest Chili's the example I used was really about for me the kind of growth pattern that they had it's not for me I can't triple a company in size in one year unless I have a super team not just a good team a super team and I can't do it alone it's got to be all group effort yes yes increasing same-store sales making budgeted profit building a bench which means building a bench means getting enough people's that you can expand and have the team to grow on the on the basis of the of your growth pattern reduce costs of construction for new restaurants because our our restaurants were costing four and a half million apiece we need to get that down to three and a half create an environment where people can become champions those were the five goals the question was is there a make-it-or-break-it point in every business where you either get through it or you don't and it can I guess destroy the company as well you're really saying you know that's gota like the great man theory I'm kind of not a believer in that I think that you you you plan you make the plan and you work the plan and if your plan and if you follow your plan and you're doing it intelligently then you're not going to reach those points where it's a make-or-break but I mean you know I guess there's always the situation where I mean I used to say that the thing that kept me awake most at night was that my entire economic future was in the hands of a dishwasher in Miami if he didn't wash his hands after using the restaurant it's a true story I mean you give you give hepatitis to 50 people with a name like Bubba Gump shrimp company it's national news even though we're not that big of a company we were only 250 million but if you gives Bubba Gump gives hepatitis to 50 people forget it you're done stick a fork in it it's it's that kind of thing yeah I agree that can happen yes up there yeah does it change my leadership style trying to create an atmosphere where people can become winners no no I mean in the sense that if they if they're low competence and low commitment they need a more directive support and I believe in that if they're very competent and they're very committed then no I'm very supportive on that so I wouldn't you you you change you change your management style based on what those levels are and also you're trying to stay consistent with the vision that you've established and that you're trying to articulate to them on a daily or weekly or monthly basis that's how you stay with it I don't know if I'm answering your question as well as you would like but here's another one Sally and John Salley might be very committed and highly competent when it comes to pencils but when it comes to changing out the toner and the coffee machine she doesn't know anything she needs to be very you need to be highly directive with her on that so she's getting directive behavior and she's getting highly supportive John may not know anything about pencils but he may be a darn good busboy so he doesn't need to be told what to how to clean a table so it varies not just on the person but on the task how good are they at what they do and you just I mean I guess the answer to your question is you have to be an artist in that regard you have to figure out along the way what's best and you're going to make mistakes all the time yes just your leadership style I think your leadership style is it's based on being genuine honest and take a good integrity and tremendous amount of vision I think my point was for leadership for a leader to to be effective I can tell that no matter how good I guess I am my dealership successful success is going to depend on how I make my people feel that's right and your leadership success will be dependent on how you make them feel about what they're doing and they have to feel like they're winning and they have to feel like they're part of something important and it doesn't matter whether you're pump you're it's all three of the people who are filling the bagging groceries or it's the or it's the three top people at Apple then they have to feel like they're doing something important and they feel good about it yeah next click yes it depends on the job yeah I mean it if I'm hiring a vice president of operations then I want somebody who is relentlessly on top of operations management systems systemized approaches understand service at the same time and understand there's a science and an art to operations in the restaurant business and you got to be able to do both if you're hiring a food server at bubbagump we we hired for attitude and trained for technique we didn't care if you had experience and a lot of places won't hire an experienced food service we actually liked that because we could train you in the way we wanted you what we were looking for was an entertaining personality who could make a friend for 45 minutes as a server put it to me one time at a round table and I didn't care we had a guy in Maui we've gone sweaty boy and sweaty boy was just that he used to perspire a lot but the guy was the most entertaining server you could possibly want and he the guy didn't follow any of the rules not that we had many anyway because for servers and you can't really have a lot of rules but sweaty boy I had people coming back for six months later they'd come back to Maui and they wanted him as their waiter only him and we went that's what we wanted we wanted personalities trim to hire for attitude and train for technique so depended on the job and what you were looking for really up way up there in the blue up there on the top if I was rebranding it we don't have enough time for all the mistakes that I made can you pass that up Thanks you know we were lucky we hit on what Norman Brinker who's a real very famous old restaurant guy passed away a few years ago he used to have an expression you say for you to be successful as a restaurant you've got to really hit right on the lifestyle curve now what's the lifestyle curve you know well it's a combination of population demographics income what's hot what's not I mean what's on what's on who hits on the lives who used to hit on the lifestyle curve every single time he introduced a product anyone Steve Jobs exactly he knew exactly where he was on the lifestyle curve so it did I would I rebrand bubbagump know what are you rebranded Apple no I don't think you I mean he did but he did when he came back to fix it and Bubba Gump's not broken it's still not broken five years later it's doing okay okay that way up at the very top it's not an either/or it's both you you you cannot it's it's it's not an either/or I'm really glad you asked that question because I used to say this to people all the time you know is the customer always right no do we want to make him think they're always right yes you know I mean it's it's they're not I mean some of these people are really crummy people right and they're there to get a free meal let's face it but you can't treat them like that can't treat anyone like that so you want to have a you want to have people and employees and a team of people in a restaurant and in an office or in a warehouse or in a factory where they can create an atmosphere in Bubba Gump's case of fun and excitement but you can create an atmosphere that fits with the strategic goal and the and the style of the company so we wanted people who could create an atmosphere of fun and excitement we wanted I used to say I don't want managers to run these restaurants I want leaders running them the person who runs the New York bubbagump is running a 24 and a half million dollar business one restaurant 20 24 and a half million dollars last year she has an assistant general manager five floor managers a chef two sous chefs a retail manager and assistant retail manager two sales managers and one other a safety manager she is it she has 13 direct reports she's exceptionally competent and a really good leader good manager excellent leader so create an atmosphere of fun and excitement are the employees more important no the customer is more important now they're both important if they're having a good time the customer will - yes in the white up there yeah yeah with the restaurant business or risky business there is no I I mean that in the the commonly held belief is is that 90% of all restaurants fail in our first year it's totally it's crap it's not true the real the real number is about 65% of restaurants fail within three years just so you know 65% of drycleaners fail in the first three years 65% of used car dealers fail in the first everybody fails it's not the failure rate in restaurants is not that high what's the problem in restaurants is the profit margin for them for the not so good performers is like that it's nothing so you can still stay in business and a lot of the I mean you can go into any city in America and see a lot of these mom-and-pop one-off stores that are probably skimming there a third of the business in order to not pay taxes and be able to stay in business but so it's only that but it's very few that break through and make the kinds of profits that you would all like to make and that's going to excite private equity or venture capital and that type of thing very risky in that regard yes next question yes right here well we had annual goals which we set by my management team and I getting together in strategic planning every year and came up with the following year's goals and that was done during the budget process so we were budgeting starting the budget process in September we'd work all the way through December till we got a final budget submitted to the board we got approved at the same time we would also do our we do our goal-setting now we also had quarterly goals which we set and those were set from operations down through the mat the restaurants so it was a bottom up and top down absolutely I mean it it is I've used this expression already once day it's a fool's errand to try to create goals from the top down only you're an idiot if you do that let me put it bluntly you're a screaming idiot if you try to do it that way because if you don't have buy-in from the bottom up you're going to fail it's just it's an axiom it really is the case yes yeah the question is was it beneficial to have so many jobs and would it have been better to have just one in today's world where everything is so specialized and you know in when I when I when I went to school at University of Arizona you just applied you were accepted you said you declared your major you went into that school that was that in today's world you've got to get into this school right and you got to stay in and you got to get a certain GPA and you get it so you got to be more specialized you've got to be more and it would be very helpful I think if you were working in a business that is something that is going to be applicable down the line it just so happens I end up in the restaurant business and I've worked in restaurants that works out great right but but I mean if you're working in a bunch of restaurants and you're going to end up in systems technology probably a good idea to try to look for a company not that you're going to find many sadly and Tucson but but by the way I want to add something on that I was astounded stunned over the last couple of times Jeff I've talked about this with you about how little has changed here over the last thirty years since I went to school here and it's it's really amazing because there were a lot of people in my in my generation who wanted to stay they wanted to be in Tucson they liked it's not a bad place to live it's really it's beautiful the weather is great there's a lot to do they've got the mountains you guys Mexico down the way I mean there's a lot to do but it's it's there aren't a lot of opportunities here and I think that's really unfortunate and I mean I'm I won't get started on politicians but it's it's people's jobs in politics to get to make opportunities for everybody and there should be a lot more opportunities for people at the U in every field but particularly in business because I mean I'm I'm really kind of disappointed what I've been seeing the last few visits here it's like there's two cities here you know if you live north of to a river that's one city if you live south of Reid or River that's another and it's except for the you and there's pockets like El Encanto and that kind of thing but I mean I'm surprised that the Phoenix has gone off like a rocket it's a mini LA lots of opportunities lots of growth lots of lots of chances for people and here it's just kind of still the same just kind of toggles along this university ever closed down a guide you just close down the city and it's really astounding other questions yes we did not have a mission statement she asked me the question was when you were creating your mission statement what are the what are the key things I is fine that's another one I'm glad you asked because I didn't believe in that we should have a mission statement I wanted it to be organic and part of the culture and one of the culture to be ever changing ever growing ever different look I'm a rule breaker I really am I mean I mean if it's not evident by now you never will be I I break rules sometimes just because I like it so it's not it's not like I'm your typical textbook kind of CEO in a lot of ways and Jeff and by the way let me just say one thing about Josh that's where he and his predecessor were very helpful in making this book if you like anything you read in this book you can thank these guys because they made it really much better than it could have been but he knows I mean I'm a rule breaker right and I I'll do things differently just because I want to and that that kind of thing about a mission statement it's appropriate for a lot of companies it's the right thing and I believe in that but for a company that I'm involved with probably best that we let that grow over time and become easily recognized hard to describe other questions yes up there white shirt that's you yep do I play a lot of golf as a matter of fact I do yet Tory finds yeah I play a Tory and I also play it Antoninus Ranch and a couple of other places yeah I do interesting question yes the question is if someone's not doing their part how do you get them to to start and and my answer that would be if you're if you're a good leader you're going to motivate people you give people every opportunity every tool every opportunity to try to to make them better and make them be better than they think they can be if at some point you just can't get there then it's probably time to part ways and that's when you get transactional okay we have time for two more questions sorry yes right here buying the camera yeah every day I write a to-do list every day not not on Sunday but actually I write one Sunday night for the whole week but but I write a to-do list when I get up I am I work out a lot I like to stay in good physical shape and I think that's important for leaders and she stay physically sound and in good shape I spend about 15 this is going to sound kind of odd but I spend about 15 to 20 minutes a day I live on the water in San Diego and I I go down to the to the beach and I sit on the beach and I'll meditate and do deep breathing yoga breathing for about 15 or 20 minutes that's very good that really clears me and helps me think think think things through in a more clear fashion now those are some habits last question way up at the top with the Arizona shirt well if if you're doing your job then you've come up with a strategic plan that is sound so you likely hopefully don't have to change it the answer to when you change it as as soon as you know as soon as you know it's going the wrong way and you move decisively to do it and I can give you a mundane example of it I had people we used to serve strawberry lemonade at the Bubba Gump sounds kind of like a okay yes so does everybody else well ours has made with fresh lemon juice and we made fresh lemonade we use real strawberries and I really like the product and we ended up selling it for like 395 and we didn't give free refills and overtime everybody on my team was telling me we got to start giving free refills we gotta start giving free refills and I would I would resist and resist and finally they cornered me down in Florida one times that we're getting all these comment cards we've got to do it I go okay fine let's give them the free refills so we do and then I had the Director of Finance run a spreadsheet on it turned out that single one decision cost the company four hundred thousand dollars in a year one little decision like that seemingly small decision and we had to go back change the recipe go to lemonade off the gun instead of the fresh lemonade we had to use you know strawberry syrup instead of fresh strawberries then we had to charge a dollar for a refill it was a disaster so seemingly small decisions when you see him going wrong fix it right away on a much larger scale much larger scale we started a concept called Rusty's American cafe anybody ever heard of it probably not because it was a complete failure right we we went out we were trying to do rusty Pelican light rusty Pelican was a seafood dinner house very upscale 35 today it would be about a forty five dollar average check and we tried to do a small easy fast cheaper version of it customer didn't get it didn't understand it we don't think we understood it it was bad it was a failure cut it off right at the knees got as soon as you know gotta go yes sir right now I was I just finished this gig as a as a interim CEO and that came out of a consulting arrangement I'm currently consulting with a company called Lowery's the prime rib and seasonings company and I just just signed that deal so I'm doing that I don't think there's another book for a long while and and of course I'm doing this and talking and all that but I I'm not sure yet I've never had a really this mission statement question you asked was kind of indicative of my personality I've never really had a long-range plan for myself it's just as things come along grab at what you can that you think is good for you and good for others and where you can make a difference so I don't know yet we'll see listen I really am sorry that this went on for an hour and I don't know if it was supposed to but I really enjoyed it I can't tell you whatever you get out of this I got more trust me and I've give you with one last piece of advice I'll tell you about my son my son is a really smart guy very smart he got 1550 on his SATs 4.6 GPA he's painfully he used to be painfully shy and he was he went he went to school back east and he was getting his normal good grades but he wasn't getting his great grades and was because of his class participation and and all the rest of it and he called me up one day very upset he was saying you know I don't know what I have to do I don't know what I can do they're just not you know I'm not able to make this work you know in a public setting and I said to him you know what why don't you next semester take an acting class this is a guy whose economics major he's very smart works at a hedge fund now and he says in acting class and I'm like yeah let's take an acting class so he did and they took another and last year I was at his it was it was announcing his engagement he's getting married he got married this summer and and he and we were walking back to hotel he's dropped me off and in Boston and and he turned to me and he said you know that advice you gave me about taking an acting class and I said yeah I guess how's the best advice she gave me all through college and the reason I bring this up is is that being adept at social media does not make you socially adept and this this this world today is not it's there aren't many new things word-of-mouth advertising was was what it was 50 100 years ago today it's Yelp or its OpenTable in my in my business it's still word-of-mouth whether or not it came out of your mouth or not it's still a personal recommendation by somebody so it's not new but what is new is the social interaction between people think back to Cruz's definition so it's a socially influence people that's really counts if you can articulate a vision and you can talk to people back in or and you know how to present and you know how to like what we're looking what I'm doing right now if you can do that you're lightyears ahead of others take an acting class thanks everybody

Channel: Eller College of Management

Views: 63,125

Rating: 4.788991 out of 5

Keywords: Leadership (Quotation Subject), Management (Field Of Study), University of Arizona, Eller College Of Management (College/University), Scott Barnett, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company (Restaurant), Brian Maki

Id: fKPUY1XzhUE

Length: 56min 54sec (3414 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2015