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Leadership in Latte’s?

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I used to be a daily coffee drinker. It always smelled delicious, but one day I actually started paying attention to how it tasted…and my conclusion was that it didn’t really taste like anything! I don’t think it was a quality issue; I started with whole coffee beans, freshly ground, fresh water…mixed with a little ½ and ½ in the cup.

Yes, drinking it had become a habit; something I did on auto-pilot without thinking about it. So, I asked myself why I was drinking coffee every day. The answer: That it had become a habit, was not good enough. A few days later, when I’d used up all the coffee beans I had, I cleaned out the coffee maker and stored it away in the cupboard.

Having consumed coffee nearly daily since high school, it was surprisingly easy to quit my daily habit! But I confess, I haven’t given it up completely.

I treat myself to a caramel latte once every couple of weeks. Last week, my latte treat got me thinking about leadership. Here’s what happened.

I went to my favorite coffee shop in between meetings. As I approached the counter, I noticed the young man stepping up to serve me had a hand-written name badge; translation – new employee, still in training. I placed my order, he repeated it back to me. We concluded the transaction, and he stepped over to the machine to make my drink.

I waited, anticipating how delicious it was going to be. You know how that works, when you’ve been craving something for a while, and you imagine the flavors floating through your mouth and you can’t wait for it to actually happen?

He handed it to me across the counter, I left the shop, got back in my car and started on to my next meeting; because the coffee was hot, I waited about 10 minutes before taking a sip. It was a big disappointment! No caramel flavor! I was too far down the road to go back. But, I did spend the rest of my drive thinking about how this experience relates to leadership and three lessons come to mind: Situational Leadership, Intent does NOT Equal Impact, and Trust but verify!.

Are you familiar with the Situational Leadership model, developed by Hersey and Blanchard? There are four stages of development for any task, with a leadership style to accompany each stage. Simply put:

In Development Level 1 (D1), a person is often motivated to learn to do the task, so the leader needs to give explicit directions (step-by-step) but not a lot of encouragement or support.

In D2, the person has tried to do the task a time or two, realizes it’s going to be harder than it looks, and is quickly de-motivated and often frustrated. At this stage, the leader still needs to give explicit, step-by-step instructions and a lot of support and encouragement.

After a little practice, the person moves into D3, when he/she generally has the process down, but needs more encouragement and support at the progress made going through it.

Eventually, the person reaches D4, and has become a master at the task; at this stage, the leader doesn’t need to give direction, nor a lot of support or encouragement. Again, this is very simplified and is task-based.

While I thought the trainers at my favorite coffee shop would have gone through this process with new employees –testing the results along the way to ensure expected taste, quality, and presentation of the various items they serve – I now know they didn’t (at least with respect to the caramel latte!).

I’m certain it was not his intent to serve me a disappointing latte (intent does not equal impact), so I have a choice to make – consider myself a victim (didn’t get the treat I was anticipating) or a victor (recognize my role in the experience and adapt my behavior). Knowing the young man was new at his job, I should have tasted my coffee before I left, knowing that if I waited until I was a way down the road, it would be too late to correct the situation (add caramel to my coffee).

My lesson, trust but verify!

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W3, M11 — Initiative

Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader. Don’t fall victim to what I call the ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome. You mist be willing to fire. ~T. Boone Pickens

In the late 1980’s, Paul O’Neill became the first outsider to run Alcoa (aluminum manufacturing). When he took the helm of this highly cyclical manufacturing business, it was having significant difficulty weathering the troughs of its normal cycle.

O’Neill had spent his career up to that point largely as a government civil servant. When he stepped into the CEO role at Alcoa, he did something that seemed totally counterintuitive in business. Rather than focusing on production and finance, as many new CEO’s would do when needing to turn a company around, he focused on what was considered “soft issues”: safety and teamwork.

While Alcoa had the industry’s best safety record at the time, and had been making strides in reducing injury rates each year, O’Neill let his Safety Director know that the only acceptable injury rate was ZERO! His belief was that ”You can’t get safety unless you really understand your processes.” And by diving deep into the work processes in every aspect of the business, the company was able to shed light on all of the behaviors surrounding how people did their work…behaviors that led to high quality and poor quality, behaviors that lead to strong teamwork and no teamwork, behaviors that led to safe work practices and unsafe work practices.

In essence, he set his sights on the one thing that inarguably affected every single person in the operation, and around which everyone shared common ground: Every person should go home from work each night in at least as good of condition as when they arrived for the beginning of their shift. By focusing on this one aspect of their business, they were, in effect, focusing on all aspects of their business. And, by improving performance around safety, the company improved its quality, production times, loss due to waste, financial performance, and customer relations.

The point here is that O’Neill had a vision, strategies to support it, he identified common ground, rallied his employees around the goal, and took initiative not only to set it all in motion, but did it in a very unorthodox manner…and he started down this path on his very first day at work.

The story of Alcoa’s turnaround is used as a case study in many management programs. Here is just one article about it. It’s an interesting read if you have the time.

As we begin our third week of focus on taking initiative, it’s important that we understand this basic concept: Initiative allows a leader to uproot problems before they balloon into crises.* When you are proactive in the short-term, it allows you to also see the big picture.

Think about what’s going on within your team/organization right now. What issue could you deal with now, that will prevent having to put out fires later?

Once you’ve identified the issue(s), think through how you can best approach it, and schedule time to deal with it before it becomes something much bigger.

*From Intentional Leadership booklet, by Giant Impact.

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Intentional Leadership — D5, W2, M11 — Initiative

What are you discovering this month, with our focus on Initiative? Are you often the initiator or do you wait for others to take the lead?

Will you take initiative on something this weekend that you’ve been putting off?

What do you have planned for your weekend?

I’m looking forward to some rest, some reading, planning for the Igniting Souls Conference next week in Dublin, Ohio, and family time.

As you prepare for your weekend, consider these questions:

Who really need your attention this weekend? You? Family? Friends? People you’ve not yet met?

What really needs your attention this weekend? Is it projects, rest, relaxation…?

What is on your calendar in the coming weeks, and on your mind, that you need to prepare for, set aside time for, think about?

Set yourself up for success and plan for those things…otherwise, all those distractions (aka real life!) will take you off on some detours.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll “see” you Monday!

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