EntreLeadership - #234: Mark Miller—Building Leaders Like Chick-fil-A

Episode Date: November 27, 2017

According to Chick-fil-A Vice President of High Performance Leadership and best-selling author Mark Miller, less is definitely not more when it comes to the number of leaders in your organization. In order to effectively manage ever-changing opportunities and growth—not to mention unforeseen problems—the best strategy is to routinely and systematically raise up new leaders to actually create a surplus of them. Hope is not an adequate strategy for building a business, Mark explains, but creating a leadership culture is. We couldn’t agree more. Tune in to learn Mark’s five-step process for creating a leadership culture in your own organization. Also joining us is Dan Ralphs, who holds the unique position of Dream Manager at Infusionsoft. He explains how helping his team members achieve their own personal goals makes them infinitely more engaged in the workplace. entreleadership.com/podcast Leadership Growth Assessment Harness Your Inner Genius: How to Dream Big and Grow Your Business eBook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Today, we're going to be talking about raising leaders in our feature conversation with a guy by the name of Mark Miller.

Mark is the vice president of high performance leadership at Chick-Fillard. author of several books. His new book is Leaders Made Here, Building a Leadership Culture. And then Dan Rouse, who is the dream manager at Infusion Soft Stops by. This is a really unique role, and we wanted to spotlight it. And don't forget, we're going to have some great free resources for you as well. Let's get right to it. As I said, Mark Miller is our feature conversation. This is really fun. You'll hear Mark share that he was the 16th team member hired by Truitt Cathy at Chick-fil-A, and he's had a remarkable run for 20 years. Mark has been 100% focused on developing leaders and their culture. Here is my conversation with Mark Miller.

Well, this is exciting. My dear friend, Mark Miller, have known each other for over a decade. You're at Chick-fil-A World Headquarters right now. You've got a new book out, Leaders Made Here. This is a lot of fun in the new studio. So thanks for being with us. Well, thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, man. So I love when you write books, because I know there's a lot of There's a lot of thought and research and there's a spark. And this is called Leaders Made Here. I love the book cover.

It's got a ruler on it. We've got some type of scary pliers. We've got vice grips. There's a reason why you went with that imagery. And I love that kind of stuff. So before we dive into the book, what's going on with this title and why that imagery? Well, the title is, I believe, the aspiration of most progressive thriving growing organizations. They want to say leaders made here. They want it to be part of their value

proposition in part because that's going to help them attract top talent, but the pragmatic side, it's going to help them prepare for the future. You know, great organizations always build the bench. Well, this is a book on how to build the bench. The reason we use the tool motif is you got to get in there with your hands and there are things you have to do. It's not something you can hope You know, it's been said over and over and over again. Hope is not a strategy. It's a wonderful thing, but it's not a strategy. And you're going to have to engage. You're going to have to pick up the tools and you're going to have to go to work. The good news, though, it is doable. You can build a leadership culture. So what's the spark behind this book? What happened? When did it happen when

you started going, I think this is a book? Well, I'm the accidental author. So I never start out thinking there's a book here, but the spark was about 20 years ago, believe it or not. When here at Chick-fil-A, we realized we needed more leaders faster. Again, I don't know if you or any of your listeners have been there. I'm assuming some of them have. When you look over your shoulder, you need somebody. You've got a real opportunity to be seized or a problem to be solved. You look over your shoulder at your leadership bench and say, who are we going to put in?

and you don't have anybody. And we found ourselves saying, well, I think this person will be a leader someday. Maybe this person will be ready in a year or two, but we had current opportunities and current problems, and we realized we didn't have a sufficient bench. So we started this journey. The book really outlines the journey we've been on

trying to figure out how to create a leadership culture. And so it started about 20 years ago. Let's walk through that. What does the book do? because I love that it's a bit of a parable, and we've got a story there. And so I want you to set the story up, the characters, and then we can dive into those parts of the journey. The story is built to be every man's story, every woman's story, every leader's story. People always ask me, who is this person? Who is this character?

And I say, it's all of us. Each of us, as leaders, have played each of the roles in the story. We've been the leader that saw the need. We've been the leader that was reluctant. to change. We've been the leader who got caught in the transition and didn't know to move right or to move left. We're the leaders that struggle with various parts of the change initiative. So the story is our story. And it basically takes the reader through a journey. Once you have the realization that you need a leadership culture, here's a strategy that you can deploy to help your organization, create that type of culture. It's a parable for a couple of reasons. I tell people I couldn't write a real book, but I can tell a story. And an interesting thing has happened,

Ken Blanchard, one of my mentors, he and I co-authored a book almost 20 years ago, and it's kind of launched my writing career. And of course, he's the master of that genre. But he said, the objective is not to be wise. The objective is not to be insightful as much as the objective is to have impact. And if a story will connect with people. And if a story will make the content approachable, then you do a story. And so, again, the fact that that actually works in today's world plays with my giftedness. Again, I admire people who can write real books, but let me just tell you a story, but it's a story based on truth. And that's the approach we've tried to take on all my books. I love that. So let's connect some of the characters to some of our listeners, because I think

this is so great for them to kind of get a sense of the story you're weaving here. So where does it get started with these characters and how do they connect with our listeners? Well, Blake is the new CEO. And he has had a successful career previously. You can actually follow him from the very first book. He's the son of Jeff from the book that Ken and I did called The Secret. Wow. And so he goes through this realization that he needs to learn to lead. This is in previous books, and he learns the skills in the book Great Leaders Grow. And then he realizes that nobody wants to follow him. And that's the book, The Heart of Leadership, because it's built on the idea if your heart is right, nobody cares about your skills. So in that book, he learns about leadership character. And then he actually

takes the opportunity of a lifetime to lead a small but growing organization, becomes the CEO and through a mentor relationship, decides that he needs to build a high-performance organization, which is the book Chestnut Checkers. And so as his story has progressed through these books, he's a new CEO and he meets with tragedy. I won't give too much of the story away, but again, one of the things I've been encouraged by my readers and my editors

is don't forget there's got to be a real story here, not just a travelogue. And so I've tried to learn to tell a better story. So there is a tragedy. I think the term might be inciting incident where he tries to figure out what's wrong with this organization. What's wrong with it? I mean, he's new, but you know, you're in an assessment mode anyway if you're a new leader. And so he just happens to be the CEO.

And so faced with this tragedy, he says, we got a leadership problem here. I love that. So we're not going to give away the story because it's a great read. But let's go back into. So now we have context for this book. And I love that it really began 20 years ago. I love the osmosis here. I want you for folks who may not know you to describe your role. I think you have a really unique role. I think it's an awesome role at Chick-fil-A. So in describing the

role and what you do day to day, I'd also like you to take us back. How has that role, you know, kind of developed over time? Okay. Well, first let's start with my role. I do anything they ask me too. And I serve at the pleasure of the organization. And I have my entire career. And I will continue to do that as long as I let me hang around here. But my Chick-fil-A career began about 40 years ago. I was a team member in a restaurant. Wow. And I was awful. I mean, I was just awful. I was my operator's worst nightmare. And I actually escaped there without being terminated. I mean, it was pretty touching go. I mean, I actually know he was contemplating fire. me because I was so bad.

So bad. What role were you in there 40 years ago? So that makes you, I'm going to put some age on you now. How old were you and what were you doing that you were like hanging by a thread? What was I doing? I was 18 years old, 17 years, 17 years old. I got it. Yeah.

Well, I don't know if it explains all of it, but I've never been good with my hands. And they do things in our restaurants with your hands, right? I mean, they make things and they filet chicken and they squeeze lemons. and I was, I was, I was just awful. That's awful. So I escaped. I escaped without being fired. And I actually came to the home office.

Now, this is no reflection on the other men and women who work at the corporate headquarters, but I couldn't do what they do in the restaurant. So I said, hey, maybe I can work at the home office. Yeah. So, you know, crazy logic of a kid. It makes total sense. It makes a lot of sense. So I walked in and I told them I wanted a job working in their warehouse.

So just a moment later, this was the receptionist. was talking to. Just a moment later, Truitt Kathy came and took me into his office. Now, some folks know the name Truitt Kathy. He's the founder of Shickfellon. And you're sitting here going, okay, why was Truitt interviewing a punk to work in the warehouse? Well, the short answer, I learned that I was interviewing to be the 16th corporate employee. Wow. So he was not the leader of a multi-billion dollar organization 40 years ago. He had 15 employees. So if you have an organization with 15 employees, you're probably doing the interviewing, right? That's right. And so, Trueet gave me a job working in the warehouse. I asked him for a job in the warehouse. And he said,

sure. He said, somebody quit yesterday. I guess you can have the job. And I'm thinking, I'm glad he didn't ask a lot of hard questions because I didn't have any skills. I didn't have any qualifications. And so I learned that I got to also work in the mail room because, you know, there weren't many of us. And if you worked in the warehouse, you got to work in the mail room. And that's where I started. And then to fast forward, I've had so many. many opportunities. I think part of it was we were so small. And it was let the kid do it, let the kid do it. So when we had new opportunities, I inherited many of those. And I was quick to raise my hand and said, I'll do it, I'll do it. I didn't know what I was doing, but, you know, I'll do it. And so I started our communications group. I started our quality and customer satisfaction group,

led our training and development group for more than a decade. I started our leadership development group. I started our organizational effectiveness group, and there have been three or four others along the way. The truth is, I've had trouble holding down a job. I mean, that's kind of the bottom line. It's been a fantastic ride. And even though my roles have changed with some frequency, it was about 20 years ago that I was asked to step in and help solve this leadership culture challenge. So even as my roles have continued to change, I was even Director of Field Operations working with, restaurants. I had about half the chain that was, you know, my P&L accountability for half the

chain for several years. But during that season, I was being challenged to spend more and more time thinking about leadership, thinking about creating this leadership culture. And so probably 75% of my time for the last 20 years, independent of my role, has focused on how do we grow organizational capacity and leadership capacity? And that's still the journey we're on today. I love that you just detailed that journey because there's so much to learn here. It squares so much with the book. And I'm curious, as you just rattled off about six or seven roles over that time period,

who was leading you? Because they were thinking, Mark needs to be doing this, and Mark needs to be doing this, and Mark needs to be doing this, and they're thinking there's a need here, and Mark can help us fill that need. That's what I love. At some point, or not at some point, many points along your journey at Chick-fil-A, you've had leaders above you, say, we've got a challenge here to develop leaders, to grow leaders, and they developed and grew you as well. Speak to that.

Well, I think that's a great observation on your part. We have more than our share of world-class leaders in this place, and God's just been good, and we're blessed, and we've got a lot of great leaders. I have worked for really two or three leaders over about 40 years, so I reported directly to Dan, Kathy, who's now our chairman, CEO, Truit's oldest son, I reported to Dan for at least 20 years, even as those roles were changing. I reported to Temptosoplas, who's now our president, chief operating officer. I reported to him for probably 15 years. And there was about five years in there. I don't know who I reported to, which is another story for another day. Didn't matter to me. I mean, there's nobody going to set higher standards for me than me. Yes.

And I figured if I'm doing something wrong, somebody will tell me. And I was just trying to lead and just trying to steward what had been entrusted to me. So, again, I've just had the privilege to work for a lot of great leaders. Now, in recent years, we're experiencing such great growth right now. We've done reorganizations probably four in the last five years. So I've had three new leaders in the last four or five years. So we're still trying to get our footing on what the future looks like. But clearly, I was marked by 20 years.

working directly with Dan Kathy in 15 years working with Tempheus. Those guys just marked me in a profound way. Yeah, I want to stay here because I want to know from your perspective, so leaders can hear this. What did Dan and Tim do specifically that built into you, maybe pushed you into some spaces? I don't know what the experience was, but what did they do right to keep moving you into these more influential,

roles? Well, I think there were probably a couple of things that they did, maybe three that come to mind. One is they weren't looking at me first. They were looking at the needs of the organization. And I think leaders can get in a trap. I know we want to serve our people and I know we want to help them grow and be fulfilled. But I wasn't creating roles. They weren't creating roles for me. They were looking at needs of the business and then trying to match it with my talents, gifts, skills, and experience. So I think they looked at what the business needed. They looked at what they felt were my capabilities. And they were courageous. Now, they might not say it that way, but they gave me jobs I was not qualified for. They gave me career changes.

I mean, when you're working in the warehouse and you start leading corporate communications, I didn't know what that was. I started that department. When I started the quality group, There's a whole discipline. There's a language. That's a thing, right? And I knew nothing about it. When I moved into restaurant operations, as a director of field operations, I had never been a consultant. So the path had historically been.

Our consultants would grow up and become directors. They brought me in having not done that. I mean, I could go on and on. When I moved into training and development, I had no training and development background. That was a career shift. So I think one thing they did right is they were. willing to take some risk. Now, I think they were willing to take those risks because of my track record and because of the things that they saw in me that I was willing to learn. I was willing to ask questions.

I was willing to change. I was willing to challenge. I mean, I don't even know what that list is if they were giving it to you. But that's what I brought to each of those roles. An open-mindedness, are willing to change, to ask questions. And so those are some of the things I think they did right. Yeah, that's so good to hear. All right. So the book is about leaders are made here. We've got leaders that are listening and watching us, Mark, and they're going, oh, I need this. But Mark, if I'm honest, I don't know where to start. I know I need to develop leaders. I know I need to look for potential leaders. How do I get started? Well, the good news is there is a starting point. Now, there are several pieces of this strategy, and we can discuss them or not, but I want to

tell you, if you miss the first step, you don't even need to do the others. I mean, there is a starting place to create a leadership culture. So thank you for asking that question. It's the question I answer most often, and you have to have a point of view on leadership. Now, let me take that a step further. You have to have a working definition for your organization. Because here's what I know. If you passed out three by five cards in any organization in America and said, write down a definition of leadership. Virtually everyone in the American workplace could write down a definition. I also know that unless an organization has done the hard work to forge a consensus, and I use that word intentionally. Think of the metaphor of forging, right? The hard work, the pounding it

out of saying, here's our definition of leadership. If you haven't done that, everybody's going to have a different definition. Well, that's where we found ourselves 20 years ago. We were having trouble accelerating leadership development, and in part because everybody defined leadership differently. So you can imagine some of the unintended consequences if you've got, let's just take your senior leaders as a case study. You've got six or eight senior leaders, and we lived through this, and they had different working definitions. Well, it affects who you recruit, who you select, how you train, who you recognize, who you reward. We had situations where one department had a leader, another department had a shortage, needed a leader, and they wouldn't let them transfer

because they didn't think they had a leadership bone in their body. How does that happen? Well, because they had a fundamentally different definition of leadership. And of course, there's a long list of unintended negative consequences if you don't agree, right? And so we were living that. And so we stumbled upon the revelation that we have got to have a common agreed upon working definition of leadership if we have any hopes of creating a leadership culture. Well, I love that as the first step. And hey, man, you just take us down as many steps as you want because I think it's just huge. But I have a follow up here. Okay.

How painful was that process of collectively going, all right, we've got to sit down and go for Chick-fil-A, this is how we define leadership, because I know people are going, all right, that's probably us, if we're honest. Is that a painful process? And if it is painful, is it worth it? I think I know the answer to that. Okay. Painful might not be the way I would describe it. Challenging, arduous, time-consuming. Is it necessary? Only if you want to create a leadership culture. Only if you want to accelerate leadership development. if you want to deal with that lengthy list of negative consequences, we discovered there at the time, this was 20 years ago, there were over 6,000 published definitions of leadership.

Wow. So who knows how many there are today. And so it is to be expected that people are going to have different working definitions, sometimes different paradigms around what leadership is. And so you actually have to do that work. Now, in our case, it took a while. because we sell chicken, right? This was not in our sweet spot, but we knew we had to do it. So I put together a team of really smart people and said, okay, we get to figure out what's our

point of view. And we did all the stuff you would expect. We did benchmarking. We did interviews. We read a couple hundred books on leadership. We're trying to figure out, okay, what is it that we believe? Now, the last thing I'll say about that is it painful. It requires leaders at multiple levels, but particularly senior leaders to think of the greater good. Yes. So I'll give you a quick story. When we were doing our very first training session, this is after we had done the work that I just described.

And our executive committee knew that we were going to do this. It's really more of an orientation for some of our new leaders, and we were going to share our point of view. And they said, we're going to send somebody in from the executive committee to encourage the group over lunch. And I'm going fantastic. So we have a member of our executive. committee show up. They had been unable to attend the morning session, but they knew what we had been

talking about. And so this gentleman stood up and says, I understand that you've been learning about the serve model this morning. I'm thinking, at least he knows what we were doing this morning. That's all good. And he said, I just want you to know that if you surveyed the members of the executive committee, we do not all agree that that's the best definition of leadership. And of course, my heart just stopped. And I'm thinking, I can't imagine. how I'm going to try to fix this, but thankfully that was a comma, not a period. Maybe it was a semicolon. He said, however, even though some of us prefer John Maxwell's point of view and some of us prefer Andy Stanley's point of view and, you know, he named several other leadership thinkers,

we decided that it would be best for the organization to adopt one point of view and what you've heard this morning is that point of view. So he even acknowledged the double diplomacy, the statesmanship, if you will, that senior leaders had to say, you know, I may have a way that I like to talk about vision that's different than this. Or I may think, you know, this is an important piece or element. But for the greater good, if we're going to get this organization aligned, we're going to come together around a common language and a common point of view. And so we made that decision almost 20 years ago, and we've been in deployment mode ever since. Boy, that is so good. All right. Now, you cut it

tease us, there's so many steps. I'm going to turn you loose. Do you want to roll through some of those and just give us a little quick. Again, we didn't know what we were doing. So I want to be really clear. This was not some grand strategic plan. We had a felt need to accelerate leadership development. We discovered the first hurdle is we don't even agree on what it is. So when we articulated our point of view, which by the way, I know that's not what we're talking about today, but that's what Ken and I wrote about in the secret. He found out about the work we had done. And he found out, and he challenged me, that's got to be a book. And I said, Ken, we don't want to write a book. I said, in fact, everything looks like a book to you, which is why he sold 70 million books, right?

And he said, no, no, no, no, you were trying to articulate what great leaders do at Chick-fil-A. He said, what you've done is you've articulated what great leaders have done throughout history. And it's got to be a book. And so he and I did that. And so that's the book called The Secret. So that's our point of view. Well, here's what we thought. We were naive. We thought we were finished. It's like, okay, good. We can go back to doing real work. We can go back to selling chicken now because we've just told everybody,

here's our point of view on leadership. We literally thought we were done. And then the phone call started coming in. Inside the organization and outside, people now were reading the book that Ken and I had done, and they started calling me saying, what's next? And I went, I don't know what's next. I didn't even know there wasn't next.

But we're getting the same calls internally. And we realized that as critical, and as essential as having a leadership point of view is, that working definition, it's just the beginning. It's just the beginning. So we began to strategize, what do you need to do? And here was maybe the insight, and then I'll quickly run through the steps for you. There is something that every organization needs more than leadership.

They need a leadership culture. And here's my working definition. They need a place that routinely and systematically raises up leaders and creates a surplus. See, the surplus is the indicator that your process is actually working. This is how you build the bench. This is when you have that problem to be solved or that opportunity to be seized, you've got another leader ready. And we said, okay, if we're going to do that, we need more than a deaf.

We do need a definition. We need to know what it is we're trying to build. What is it we're trying to create? We're trying to create leaders who can do these things. And he said, what do we need to do? Well, the second part of this journey is that you have to teach it and the skills that are required to execute against it. I can tell you that one thing you need to do as a leader is engage people. And in fact, that's in our definition. That doesn't mean you know how to do that. In fact, most of the people. people would look at that and go, huh, what does that mean? Or they would say, yes, but how. We think yes, but how is the most common ask question in the world. So not only do you have to define it, you have to define leadership, you've got to teach it. And that all forms, all fashions, mentoring, formal, informal classes, resources, you know, books, videos, I mean, everything you can imagine. How are you going to teach it? And how are you going to teach it at various levels? You just have to help people go beyond, I know what it is to, okay, I think I know how to do it now. Next, you actually have to practice it. The research on this is staggering. And we didn't do this research, but it's out there.

You Google it. It's all over the internet. I had heard this over and over and over again. If you survey leaders on how they learned to lead, there are multiple inputs, but about 70% of a leaders' competence they attribute to actually leading. They still need the knowledge, they still need the training, but they learn it by their own admission when they actually leave. So just a quick example of that. You can use a baseball analogy. If you're the manager and you have the opportunity late in the game to put in a pinch

hitter and you look at your bench and you've got a 300 hitter and a 100 hitter, there are a lot of situations when you're going to put in the 300 hitter. And sometimes that is absolutely appropriate. But there may be times when you want to put in the 100 hitter to give him the opportunity, to give him the experience, to help him feel the pressure to display your confidence in him because you're going to need him later in the season. And what we found is our natural tendency,

and I think this is true of leaders almost universally, when we have a problem to be solved or an opportunity to be seized, we tend to put the best leader we've got on. But that doesn't help younger, emerging leaders, developing leaders. That doesn't help them practice. That doesn't help them get in the game. One example of that, we were in a meeting. This was a while back, we had an opportunity that we needed to seize. And somebody jumped up to the flip chart, and they said, who could lead this? And after they wrote six names, I said, time out. I said, none of those are younger leaders. None of those are emerging leaders. Those are all leaders who we know could do this

with three hands tied behind their back. This is not a stretch. It's not a challenge. It's not developmental. Are there any leaders that need this opportunity to grow and to develop and to practice their leadership? And we ended up giving it to someone who had actually never led a team before because we believed in that person's potential. Sometimes you're going to put your big dog leaders on those big problems and big opportunities. I understand that completely. We're just, trying to develop the discipline of hitting the pause button and saying, is this problem or opportunity a situation where we could have a leader practice what they're going to need to develop over time? Yeah, and that to me is so important, Mark. I love the sports analogy of the

bench. My favorite bench story of all time is Kurt Warner, who just recently was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. And here's a guy that was on his last chance. by his own admission in his Hall of Fame speech. And he's on the bench. He's been practicing. He's been developing. He gets an opportunity where there's a horrific injury. But he has to go in the game and try to save the game.

He doesn't just save the game. He leads him to a Super Bowl championship. That's what you're doing. That's what you've just described. You've got to put some people in there, give them some game time experience, not just practice time, but give them some game time experience.

I love that. That is so rich because we know this. In corporate America, and small business, they're going to be injuries. They may look like someone moving away or maybe a baby comes along or some other kind of crisis where they just say, I'm out. I've got another opportunity. And if you don't have somebody on the bench that can step in, it can really hurt you.

Sure. And let me put one little twist on that. Certainly we won't leaders ready in those catastrophic, unpredictable circumstances. Absolutely. I'm saying if you're creating a leadership culture, you're more proactive. You're more strategic. You're trying to do this when you don't have a tragedy, when you don't have a catastrophe so that you will be ready in the event you do. But sometimes you need more leaders not because of a tragedy. You need more leaders because of growth. You need more leaders because of opportunity. All right. So, Mark, we've got define leadership, teach leadership, practice leadership. What's next? Well, this is the most challenging, this next piece of the puzzle. And that is you have to make.

measure it. You've got to measure leadership. And I get so many questions. People understand immediately how hard this is. So I got a couple of quick tips for you. Number one, quit looking for a perfect metric. I spent way too much time trying to look for a perfect metric. You're looking for indicators. Some would call them health indicators of your leadership culture. But just you're not looking for a perfect metric. Second, you're not looking for a single metric. I spent a lot of time and our team spent a lot of time trying to figure out, okay, it may not be perfect, but what's the single metric? It's probably a family of measures. I would encourage organizations to create a leadership scorecard with multiple measures. And then third, I would say, I believe it should be

dynamic over time. Let me give you a quick example. If you have a newly minted leadership point of view, then on your scorecard, you will probably want to track how many leaders within our organization have been trained on our leadership point of view. And in the beginning, that number will be zero. And then it will climb. And at some point, it'll be 100%. At the same time, you've built that training into your process for new leaders. So there's no need for that to stay on your scorecard indefinitely. So I think it needs to be a dynamic scorecard. I think those tips may help you. But it's critical. It's critical to measure your progress and know what's working, what's not, where are your gaps. And then one more thing, as far as the outcome, some people

go, yeah, but what are the outcome measures? I mean, you can measure how many people go through training, but yeah, does that really matter? Well, it's probably a prerequisite to outcome measures, but any number of ways you can do that. One I like is Federal Express has done. They've created a leadership index. The last time I checked, they had pulled seven questions off of their corporate engagement survey and created an index. So they cheated. They have one number, but it's really got seven numbers rolled up into it.

And they picked things that are the direct reflection of leadership behavior. As an example, an employee would be asked to rate their agreement with a statement, I fully understand the mission and vision of the organization. Well, if somebody says no, that's a reflection on their leader. And so they create an index so that they can help their leaders grow on those critical behaviors. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it, you can measure how many leaders are ready now for their next opportunity. We do an annual leadership talent review, and many other organizations do this as well.

And one of the things we're trying to judge is someone's readiness for their next opportunity. You can put that on your scorecard and say, this year we have six. 6% of our leaders that are ready for their next opportunity, what's the goal? And there are any number of ways. Organizations all over the planet have figured out how to measure the health of their leadership culture. Nothing improves without measurement. And so that is a critical step of this bigger play to create a leadership culture.

All right, this is a master class, folks, in making leaders. All right, so we're going to review and finish with this last step. You've got to define leadership. You've got to teach leadership. You've got to practice leadership. you've got to measure leadership. What's next, Mark? Well, it's the most personal step in the journey,

and that is you have to model it. Existing leaders have to be in the game trying to live out the leadership definition that you've articulated. Now, at the highest level, I'll give you a really simple example. Maybe this is too simple, but I like simple. if your organization says we are advocates and proponents and practitioners of servant leadership. And you have existing leaders that go, not me, that's not my jam. It's a command of control, my way the highway, you know, you're here to serve me.

I'm not here to serve you any number of ways, either overtly or subconsciously. if that's the behavior that is tolerated among existing leaders, you've got no shot of creating a leadership culture. Here's the deal. People always watch the leader, whether we want them to or not. And they're trying to figure out, are you trustworthy? And by the way, they're also trying to figure out what's important to you because most people want to please their leader. But you have to model it. And again, they don't expect perfection. People do not expect perfection. certainly expect effort from their leaders. There it is, folks. That right there is not just a couple of ideas that have just popped up in Mark's head after bad pizza. By the way, do Chick-fil-A people eat pizza? Are you allowed to eat other things? There's a lot of rumors out there about that.

We do eat other things, but it's always under the heading of research and development. Oh, I love it, folks. Well, as I was saying, Mark has really thought through this, the leadership at Chick-fil-A has thought through this, and they've modeled it. Everything you've just heard actually works. That's what's fun about this. The book is Leaders Made Here Building a Leadership Culture. He is Mark Miller, long-time friend. He's the real deal.

I can say that. He stands there in Chick-Fleigh World Headquarters in Atlanta, and I've been there as well, and I've got to say this. I don't think I've ever publicly said this. I've had the opportunity to be there several times and eat in the cafeteria. It is the greatest cafeteria. I have ever been in in my life. If I were to take my kids there, they would literally, their heads would spin off their shoulders.

It's more Chick-fil-A food than you can ever imagine. Well, and there's free ice cream. That's what the kids like. How often do you sample the free ice cream mark? Because you look pretty fit. You know, I'm working hard to lay off the ice cream right now. All right, good deal. Hey, man, we'd love to have you back.

Anytime you do a book, you're welcome here at Entree Leadership because we're always better for a conversation with Mark Miller. So thank you, pal. Thanks, Ken. Big thanks to Mark. A reminder of the name of his book is Leaders Made Here, Building a Leadership Culture. I can tell you, I vouched for Mark because I've known him a long time, a very intentional leader. And Chick-fil-A is a very intentional company as it relates to everything they do, but certainly around training, growing, developing leaders.

Speaking of Growing Leaders, the Entree resource for you this episode is our Leadership Growth Assessment. How to develop leaders within your team. This is the perfect tool for you after listening to Mark Miller. Your team members are either producers, influencers, or leaders. How do you know? We have four attributes that are going to help you begin to assess your team. The four attributes are rapport, credibility, trust, and influence. This is a phenomenal resource, and as always, it's free.

You can get it two ways. One, you can text the phrase leader growth. That's one word, leader growth. You text that to 3344. That's 33-444. Or you can get the link in the show notes at Entreeleadership.com. Click on podcast. Go to this episode. Well, this is really fun. We love the folks in InfusionSoft, great friends of our organization. And when the team told me that Dan Rouse was the dream manager in Infusionsoft, I perked up, wanted to know more about the role. And you will be glad that we're telling you about the role. This is a great way to get creative.

with developing your team, with communicating your team, and so much more. Here is my conversation with Dan Rouse. Well, this is a great treat. Our great friends at InfusionSoft have allowed Dan Rouse to hang out with us for a little bit. I know you got a lot going on there, but this is a fun conversation because I want you to describe your title and then pause for a little bit and let people, you know, kind of soak on that and then tell us what that role looks like. Yeah, you bet. So my title is I'm a dream manager, which you probably should pause on because there aren't very many of us in the world. It's very akin to a corporate fairy godmother where my job is to help our employees to articulate, identify, and accomplish their personal, their individual

dreams. Now, this is fascinating to me because, you know, there's a lot going on in the office. You know, people, their big goals. You've got division goals. You've got division goals. You've at company-wide goals, what have you. Yeah. And to be focused on helping employees or team members, as we call them at Ramsey Solutions, realize their dreams. Why is that so vital? Why has InfusionSoft gotten very intentional around this?

So in every office, no matter how cool your culture is, there are going to be people who become stagnant and stuck, right? It's the people who they quit but stay, right? And especially in an honestly, any kind of business, we have that problem. And so at InfusionSoft, not only do we believe in entrepreneurs, but we also believe in our employees, and we believe if we can turn on kind of what we call the dreaming power, the power of dreaming within an individual, that that transcends into their work, transcends into their life, and they're more likely to be confident, creative owners within the work that they're doing here at Infusion Soft.

Well, so let's talk about that. So give me an example, without revealing maybe some personal details. Give me an example of how you have walked alongside a team member as they've realized. a dream and then what does it translate to? What does it really look like during the regular week? So for example, we oftentimes will gather people in because here's the thing. Everybody's in a little bit of a rut. We all get stuck in a rut. Like the deer wandering down to water to get a drink of water wandering back. We all have that tendency. And if it doesn't die on the path, which path does the deer take the next time? It's going to take the same path again and again and

again until we get in a little bit of a predictability in our lives. And so we gather teams together. And let's say it's just a team meeting. We say, hey, team, come prepared to share a dream or two, something you could accomplish for the next 12, 18 months. We had one individual in particular came and he said, you know, my dream is to own an Xbox one. Wow.

Now, I didn't feel, maybe you feel inspired by that dream, like you're about to put it on Facebook or something. But I maybe didn't feel quite as inspired about a married man. whose dream was to have an Xbox. But again, it's not my place to judge. My job is to help people to accomplish a dream because the whole idea is if it's outside of my default future and it's something I'm going to have to become ambitious and I'm going to have to get engaged in my life in a bigger way to go accomplish.

We're interested in that. And so we sat down together, took three or four weeks, and he was able to accomplish this dream of having his Xbox one. We all cheered. And the next time we met one-on-one, I turned to him and I said, now, I think you're underestimating the power of our ability. to go accomplish big things. And I want you to choose a dream that would scare you a little,

that might take a little bit of a miracle to happen, because what we're trying to do in the dream management process, we're trying to turn on their belief in themselves and their ability to create and do in the world. And so I turned to him and I said, what's a dream that would really inspire you? And he said, you know, and he got a little bit more serious this time. And he said, you know, my wife and I've been thinking about having kids.

And to be quite honest, I would love it if I could turn to my wife. and I could say, sweetheart, if you want to stay home for as long as you want, you can stay home while I become the breadwinner. And I said, how much? How much do you need? And he said, oh, I don't know. Double.

And I said, now, I'm the dream manager. That's how much you need. How much do you want? Let's dream about this for a minute. He said, triple. And I said, you want to triple your income? By when? He said, this year.

And so because we're dreaming, we're kind of thrown out. this situation that seems, I mean, if he keeps going to his life, the way he's going at it, it's never going to happen. But we throw this dream out there that seems almost fiction, and we just put together a plan and we started working on it. A year later, we sat down together and do you think he'd made his dream, Ken? This is a tough one. I don't know what role he is in, but I'll say, I'll say, no, he did not. Oh, you're absolutely right. He did not make it. He was $100 short per month. Oh, my gosh. That's a great. achieving tripless income. Now, what happened in the meantime? He'd gotten two promotions at work.

So he'd figured out a way, he'd engage in a bigger way in his role. He'd showed up more powerfully in his life. He'd started a little side business. He started doing some, like he added income to his world to make that happen. I'm happy to announce that they now have two kids, his wives at home, doing great things. And what was funny is right after that, he turned to me and he said, you know, you know, Dan, I don't play the Xbox very much anymore. Yeah, I'll bet. Because he's like, I've got a lot going on in my life. And that's the kind of transformation that we see happen when people begin to identify a dream are willing to go after that dream.

And we're interested in Fusionsoft of having the employee who's been through that process. We find them to be much better employees, much more engaged, confident employees, employees who are owning their work in a different way. And so we're very intentional about saying, hey, we're going to encourage that as a process that we do here. How often do you see this clarity on dreams lead to someone leaving you? Great question. It's not often, but it's also not unheard of, right? As people begin to identify and recognize their ability to go create, especially at a company where we help small businesses every day be successful. You know, we have this guy making $60,000 a year coaching and mentoring somebody's

making a million or two million a year. And eventually they kind of go, you know what, I think I might be able to go do something on my own. So it's definitely something that happens, but we're okay with that because we're interested in having people fully lit up, fully alive, fully engaged. We'd rather have that person for two years than the person who's kind of going through the motions for five years, right? Yeah. So we're okay with a little bit of that kind of turnover if it means we have fully engaged employees. Yeah. Now, most companies that may be listening in may not be able to give full-time resources to a dream manager, but that's not what you're suggesting. This is not say, hey, everybody's got to have a full-time dream manager, but what you are a believer in and what

you are suggesting is that the leadership of the company, no matter how small, needs to be engaging in this concept, if you will, and actively engaging on dream managing. So how do they go about doing that if they don't have you, Dan? Well, if they don't have me, they're probably really good alternatives. But let me give you an example. So we work with an event facility company called Venue at the Grove here in Phoenix. Probably about a $2 million company. They employ probably about 25 employees. And the owners at Abigail, they got together and they said, we are interested in our employees' dreams. We see what you're doing in Infusionsoft. We want to be better at it in our company. Now, obviously, they couldn't afford a full-time dream manager, but what did they do?

well, they put up a wall in their offices. And on the wall, it said, what are your dreams? And they had people write down their dreams on the wall. They said to their employees, hey, we're interested in not only helping you get a paycheck, but we're interested in making sure the work that you're doing here is preparing you for whatever future you have. And again, these are people working in the kitchen. They're busing tables.

You know, they're not necessarily lifers in this business. And as they do that, everyone on the team understands that this becomes, you know, people talk about having their employees feel like a family, but it comes a little bit more like a family as those leaders take interest in their dream. So first step is to take interest. Once those leaders are taking interest on those folks, we encourage them to consistently or regularly check in, whether it's on a team basis or on a one-on-one basis with those dreamers. And it can look as simple as your team huddle and say, hey, everyone, we're interested. Do you have any dream updates? Anyone want to share a dream update? Someone might say,

hey, you know what, actually, you'll never believe what happened. Turns out we found the puppy that we are so excited about. We bought our new puppy. That was our dream is to get this dog and took a little planning, but we made it. And it's in that process, again, that we're encouraging people to get outside of their routine and to go after something that's new and different. And there's power in that that is hard to describe. Yeah, it really.

Well, what does it look like when there's a culture of this? So we've talked about some of the results of an individual. They're engaged. They're working harder maybe than they've ever worked. They're on mission. But when you see this begin to happen throughout InfusionSoft in multiple areas because the leaders are engaging in this. What is the collective result? You know, and it's funny because people will come in our offices and they're like,

they can't quite describe it. There's a buzz, there's an energy, there's a vibe in your building that seems. different than other buildings I walk into, and I think dreaming has a part of that. Now, I'm going to answer in a little bit of a different way, but I used to be a history teacher. One of the things I love studying is I love studying the early American founding, because I feel like there's something magical that happened in that early American founding, and I'll simply say this. When Thomas Jefferson wrote, All Men Are Created Equal, it turned on something in the world. And what it was was people started believing that there was something possible for them that otherwise they couldn't.

Before it was a king and a surf, if I'm a surf, I have my station and I stay in that station. But when that turned on and people said, oh my goodness, what if I could be king? What if I could do something great in the world? When that turned on for them, man, it changed the whole world, right? We went from plows to iPhones in the blink of a historical eye. And in a similar way, right? Obviously not to that extent. And when they turned on that American dream, they turned on a power that's really tangible.

It makes the difference. It increases innovation. It increases ownership. It increases engagement. And that's kind of what we see at InfusionSoft for those people who are involved in the dreaming process, whether it's a personal or professional dream. And that lights them up. And they're like, man, I'm going to go get something with my life. I'm going to go do something big with my life.

The discretionary effort and their willingness to be full-hearted in the work changes significantly. Now, how does this work within the leadership? So leaders are encouraged and you're not doing it all yourself. You don't have time to go around to everybody. So you've deputized these leaders. So I've got a two-part question. That's the first part. So how do you, for lack of a better phrase, deputize and train the actual leaders of the organization

to engage on this conversation? So one of the things I realized early on is I couldn't manage all of the dreams of our about 500 employees, right? I couldn't do that. And everyone would come up to me and they'd say, say, Dan, I wish I had your job because I think I'm like a Disneyland character or something. And I realized very quickly that the best way that this could work in our organization, because our size would be to give away my job to as many of our leaders as possible.

The way we did that is we just put together a simple training where I took all the learnings that I've collected over the years of doing dream management. I packaged it up about a day-long training, and I'd bring them in. I'd say, hey, listen, I want to teach you what it means to be a dream manager and why you should believe that helping your employees to dream and to go after things, even if there may be personal things, will benefit the company in the long run. So we put them in this program, we teach them some basic coaching skills, and then we kind of help them to organize that in a very subtle way, right? Because dreaming is not the whole pie. It's just a seasoning. And we teach

them to kind of integrate that in a subtle way, whether it's a line item on a one-on-one conversation where every fourth one-on-one, we sit down and I say, hey, how's that dream coming? How's your work? that house or whatever that might be, or whether it's in a team, you know, we have one team that every third Friday they meet and have breakfast and they check it on their dreams. And it's just simple, subtle things that helps remind the employees, one, that we care about them and not just because they can contribute something to our company. We care about them because they're human beings and we love them and we care about them. And two, it helps those employees never feel stagnant in their lives. I always feel like they're moving forward in their lives. And again, we get some cool

benefits out of that as well. All right. Now, how do you engage with the leaders on this? So they're not just helping this, but now you've got, you've got how many people in a leadership position at Infusion Soft, ballpark? We have a little under 100 that are in some kind of people leadership position. We check in with them as kind of a regular cadence where, you know, I'll meet with them in team meetings or I'll work one on one with them. And in that process, right, we're helping them just to keep that, the energy moving forward in their teams. Yeah, but what I mean is, is are you sitting down with those leaders as well going, hey, what's your dream? Yeah. Who's playing that role? Yeah. So our CEO, Clayton Mask, I think he's been on the podcast

before, you know, he came in and did his dream coach certification and then he's working with his leaders on their dreams, right? And those leaders are working with their leaders and on down the pipeline, right? So it's not, I'm certainly working with one-on-one with our executive leaders and helping them to dream a little bit bigger, both internally and externally. But our expectation is that they're working with those people that they lead. We kind of turn it in dreaming and dream management, dream coaching, turn that into a function of leadership. That's part of your, kind of a, it's not an obligation, but it's a privilege to be able to help someone to accomplish a dream. Yeah, I love that. All right. So people are listening or they're watching this and they're

going, all right, this is awesome. I'm in. How do we get this thing started? A couple of recommendations. This concept came from a man by the name of Matthew Kelly. And Matthew Kelly wrote a book called the Dream Manager several years ago. That's a great place to start. Pick up that book and read through that book would be a good place to start. Second thing you can do, we have a e-book that we're going to share with you. I think it's atfusionsoft.com forward slash inner genius that you can learn more about how to kind of bring these dreaming concepts into your organization. And more than that, a really simple exercise if you wanted to start tomorrow, but just be to take your team, whoever you lead and say in your next team meeting, say,

hey, listen, I'd like to just talk to you about your dreams. So the next time we meet, come with a list of a few dreams. We encourage people to make a list of 100 dreams, and then choose one that they could work on within the next 12 to 18 months. So it's not anything too complex, but it's something where we're going to begin to engage our employees and ask them what those dreams might be and how we might be able to support them in the work. Yeah, I'm really curious. What have you done if you've had an example where initially when you started this conversation with somebody and they just went, I just, I don't know what my dreams are. And they just kind of punted the ball. I think there's a bigger problem behind that, but I'm just curious

what your experience is with that. I mean, it's not, and I hardly blame them. I mean, think about when in our educational process, is there a moment where someone goes, oh, do you know what, we're going to teach you how to dream? Yeah. That doesn't happen. In fact, I might argue that there's a little bit of the opposite happening where people are saying, hey, sit down, shut up and learn to do what you're told rather than learn how to be, that's one of the reasons I love hanging out with entrepreneurs is because they have a little spirit in them that says, no, I'm going to go create something in the world. And I'm not just going to go follow the pre-described path that everyone's on. So I don't blame people when they come to me and they say, hey, I can't figure out my

dream. But the reality is that when that happens, we'd simply go to the fundamental, like, if we could remove constraint, so if there wasn't a money constraint, there wasn't a time constraint, everyone can begin to kind of open up and recognize that if we took away some of the constraints, there would be a possibility that we would get excited about. There's no one that I've ever met, at least so far, that when I showed up and I said, so what do you want out of life? If I, if I gave you a million dollars, how would you spend it? I'd say, you know what? I'd probably wouldn't.

I'd just hang out with me and my dog, right? There's no one that really does that or says that. Everyone believes that there's some things. And so even if we can start really small, simple things like an Xbox to get them to open up about what might be possible if I really started thinking about what I wanted. So we'll start small. And then as they begin to choose and accomplish some of those dreams, you'll come to find their hearts start opening up when they recognize that things may be

are possible for them they otherwise didn't consider. Yeah, it brings up an interesting point, you know, not that you're suppressing anyone's dreams, but the medium-sized to small-sized dream seems to create some real momentum. Yeah. And really retraining the way we think, to your point, we beat out the dream muscle out of kids in our Western education. It's all about don't daydream. Daydream would get you in trouble in class because you've got to prepare to take the test.

Absolutely. And there would be moments, right? I used to, before I did this, I used to be a high school teacher. And, you know, I would, for example, one of the ways I would start teaching my students to dream, they would come up, I would say, all right, the assignment is to write a paper. And the student in the front row would say, well, how long should it be? Well, however long you think it needs to be. And they would feel incredibly uncomfortable with ambiguity. When I gave them control of how to evaluate what they wanted and what would be worthwhile to them.

to themselves, right? They were stuck, right? They would feel really uncomfortable with that. After years of everyone articulating this is what we should value and how we should value it. And so, yeah, we're trying to get that spirit back into our employees in a way that I think is really powerful and unique. Yeah, good stuff. Well, before we let you go one more time, just tell us what we're going to learn in this e-book, this idea of harnessing your energy, how to dream big and grow your business. This is really for the entrepreneur who's saying, feel like I have to learn how to dream before I can help anyone else do it. And the reality is dreaming is two parts. It's imagination and execution. And when you look at the great dreamers of our

day, people like Elon Musk who are just moving mountains, it seems like, on a regular basis, they have those two characteristics. They imagine. They know how to execute. And here's where I can share some of the things we've learned from working with people on their dreams. We're going to teach you some of those things. So again, it's infusionsoft.com. or slash inner genius if you want to get access to that. Yeah, good stuff. He is Dan Rouse and a big part of what InfusionSoft is doing. And InfusionSoft are great friends of ours here at Entree Leadership,

so I know you've got a lot going on. Man, that's pressure, buddy. Every day you're coming in and you're managing dreams. You just have to be exhausted at the end of the day. Yeah, well, it's actually really exhilarating, but you're right, right? No pressure. We're just trying to make your dreams come true. Yeah, I love that, actually.

Good stuff. It is exhilarating. That is a great, great role. And really thank you for hanging out with us today. We're better for it. It's fantastic. I really appreciate what you do. All right, you heard Dan talk about the e-book.

This is a great resource. You can get it at infusionsoft.com slash inner genius. Again, the e-book is harness your inner genius, how to dream big and grow your business. Go get it at infusionsoft.com slash energy genius. That's infusionsoft.com slash inner genius. or you can get the link in this episode show notes at entreleadership.com. Well, folks, that's going to do it.

But before we take off, I want to say a big thanks on behalf of Eric the producer, engineers Will Rutter, and Jim Bab, and the entire Entree Leadership team. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We appreciate you listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.