The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 526: Mark Miller (VP of Chick-fil-A High Performance Leaderships) - How Chick-fil-A Built A World Class Culture

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Mark Miller started his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly team member in 1977. Mark's cell phone number is 678-612-8441. He asked that you text him your thoughts on this episode. In 1978, he joined the corporate staff working in the warehouse and mailroom. Since that time, he has provided leadership for Corporate Communications, Field Operations, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Training and Development, and Leadership Development. During his tenure with Chick-fil-A, the company has grown from 75 restaurants to over 2,300 locations with annual sales approaching $10 billion. Mark began writing almost twenty years ago when he teamed up with Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, to write The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. He's now written 11 books that have sold over 1 million copies. His latest is called Culture Rules.  Notes:  "Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead." You must make the choice to be a learner... Let's start with a story told by the late philosopher, David Foster Wallace. He said, "There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, "Morning boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?" Mark Miller conducted research with more than 6,000 individuals from ten countries that revealed that 71% of U.S. leaders believe culture is their most powerful tool to drive performance. However, the study revealed that enhancing workplace culture ranked eleventh on the leader's priority list. "If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills." Your character, integrity, and care for others must be there to earn any type of followership. If your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills. The 3 culture rules are aspire, amplify, and adapt: Aspire - Share your hopes and dreams for the culture (Andrew Cathy, new CEO, said "Rooted in purpose, known for our care.") Amplify - Always be looking for ways to reinforce and amplify the aspiration for your culture. Adapt - Always look for ways to enhance your culture and be innovative. The Magic Circle: It dates back to 1938 when Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga wrote about the impact of play on culture… The "Must-Have" leadership qualities Character Competence Chemistry Mark has spent a lot of time with Navy SEALs to learn about culture... Key takeaways: Shoot Move Communicate Is focusing on culture a soft skill? The data suggests it is the #1 driver of performance. Storytelling - People remember the stories more than the stats. Don't just tell... Take people there.

Over 40 years ago, I had a supervisor who convinced me that my capacity to grow would determine my capacity to leave. If you want more influence, you want more opportunity, you want more impact over the long haul, there's only one path to lifelong learning. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week.

All right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader. text Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Mark Miller is Chick-fil-A's vice president of high-performance leadership. He began his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly employee in 1977. Shortly thereafter, he became the 16th, yes, 16th corporate employee working in the warehouse since that day he has worked all across the business ending up in leadership development. He's also written 11 bestselling books, including his most recent, which is called Culture Rules, the leader's guide to creating the ultimate competitive

advantage. During this conversation, we discussed the three must have qualities to get hired as a leader at Chick-fil-A, as well as a franchise owner. And that whole process was fascinating to learn about. Then the three culture rules and how to implement them in your business. and then Mark shares the right way to use storytelling with the people you're leading. We covered that and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Mark Miller. Mark, it's great to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show.

Welcome. Thank you, Ryan. Delighted to be with you. To start, I love that you told this story in your most recent book, cultural rules. I'm going to tee it up and I'm going to ask you to expand it. This is a story told by the late philosopher David Foster Wallace. He was giving a commencement speech and he said, quote, there are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish,

swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, morning boys, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on for a bit. And then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, what the hell is water? You put this story in your book. I'm curious, how does that? story about the fish relate to workplace culture? I think it encapsulates one of the challenges that

leaders face and I call it water blindness. The fish don't see the water. And unless leaders are very, very thoughtful, strategic and intentional, they can't see the water. Why is this such an issue, this lack of awareness of our surroundings, or in this case of using this story, the water? Well, the water for the fish sustains life. Yeah. And culture for an organization sustains vitality and performance. You've been doing this for a long time, right? Yes, sir.

Chick-fil-A for 44 years, starting as an hourly employee, and then eventually becoming employee, corporate employee number 16, which is wild to think about, man. 16, you're at literally the beginning of Chick-fil-A. Can you take me back to those earlier stages of your career, maybe some of your key learnings you picked up, and then as you grew with the company, and could you have ever envisioned it becoming what it has?

Okay, I heard several great questions there. Let me start with one of my earliest insights and maybe the biggest insight of my career. And I think given your bias and your background and your spirit, I think I think you'll like this. So over 40 years ago, I had a supervisor who convinced me, that my capacity to grow would determine my capacity to lead. He said, if you want more influence, you want more opportunity, you want more impact over the long haul, he said there's only one path to lifelong learning.

So I thought, huh, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. And so I was telling this story a few years back to a group. In fact, they had asked me the question, was there a defining moment in your career? And I think that was probably it. And I told that story. And the person said, well, that's probably easy for you. And I said, well, why would you say that? And they said, well, I bet you're a learner, which is obviously a reference to strength finders.

You know, learner is one of those things. And I said, you know, not really. I don't think learner is in my top 10. It may not be in my top 25. And they said, well, that's odd. I said, well, why is that odd? They said, well, you act like a learner. I said, well, thank you very much.

I made a strategic decision. I made a choice over 40 years ago that because I want more influence, because I want more opportunity, because I want more impact, I'm going to choose to pursue lifelong learning. And I'd much rather listen to the radio in the car than a podcast or a book on Audible. But do I want more influence?

Do I want more opportunity? Do I want more impact? And so for me, I'm going to stay on that path until my last breath. because I really do believe your capacity to grow determines your capacity to leave. So let's go through that journey, hourly employee, employee number 16, working in the warehouse, Chick-fil-A becomes, I don't know what it was like at the beginning, right? I know what it's like now, right? It becomes what it becomes.

What are some steps along the way? That was an awesome moment, right? That piece of advice that is obviously transforming. your life and made you who you are right now. But what are some moments that led you to keep getting promoted and led the leaders in the family business really to say, yeah, we love Mark. We want him a part of this. We want him to be leading our leaders, which is, you know, what you do. Massive responsibility since Chick-fil-A, I believe, is viewed at as probably one of the best like leadership development companies in the world, even though you serve chicken, right? But that's,

It's almost like secondary to the fact that you develop people is what it feels like to me, especially when I go through the drive-through and see how awesome every person treats us. It's amazing. I'm curious how some of that happened, maybe some of the earlier days, some of those moments I'd love to learn. Okay. So you're an athlete, and I think you'll relate to this. Some people, probably you, had a lot of natural talent and a lot of ability. I was an athlete and I didn't have those natural talents and abilities.

So I decided as a kid, I'd just work hard. I just, you know, you talk about that intangible. I just work hard. And so early, early on, while I was still working in the warehouse, Dan Kathy, Truit's son, came to me and asked me if I could help him with a project. And I remember it vividly because I was new. I'd only been there. It feels like a few weeks.

And I knew who he was. Again, there are only 16 of us, right? And he's head of operations and other things at the time, right? He's wearing multiple hats. I think he may even have been doing some designing. He was doing all kind of stuff, but he wanted me to help him with the project. And I said, well, help me sort through this. I mean, I'm brand new and I'm just a kid.

I said, but I think I need. to fulfill these orders because the function of the warehouse at Chick-fil-A back then was we had the replacement parts. So if one of our pressure priors went out somewhere, they would call us and say, we need a part and we'd ship it to them. And so it was kind of important. And so I said, Dan, I'd like to help you, but I think I need to fulfill these orders. And he said, you're right, you're right.

He said, what are you doing at the end of the day? and I said, well, I'm going to school. I was going to school at night. And he said, what are you doing after you go to school? I said, well, I'm going home and going to bed. He said, well, what time would you get out of class? I said, about 10 o'clock. He said, I'll meet you back here at 10.30.

And so for weeks, I was helping him on a project at night after I worked. worked in the warehouse and went to school and I came back to help him. And that made perfect sense to me. It's an opportunity to add value. It's an opportunity to contribute. He wants me here at 10.30 at 9. I'll come back at 10.30 at night. I think the best I can discern, that was residual from my athletic days.

It's like you just work hard and you do what you need to do to win. You do what you need to do to succeed. and he needed my help on a project, and so I agreed to do that. And it was only six months later, they moved me out of the warehouse. And I have to believe that had something to do with it. So what are some of the jobs you've done over the course of 40 plus years at Chick-fil-A? Man, I don't know if we've got time to cover them all. I've had trouble holding down a job, actually.

So let me think about it. So I left the warehouse and started what is today our corporate communication. group. Okay. What else did I do? I started our quality and customer satisfaction group. Again, I don't think that had a lot to do with my talent necessarily. I think it was let the kid do it, let the kid do it. And again, at this, at some point I wasn't a kid anymore, but I would, I would, I would do whatever they wanted me to do. I led in field operations for a season. I led our training and development group for a season. I started our leadership development group. And then probably one of the more fun assignment, I started a group called Operation Services. And we used to say our

tagline was ambiguous by design. And our charter was to figure out what the business needs to move forward and get it done. And so I built a team of people and we'd sit around and say, what would make the business better and let's go see if we can get that done. It was that group that came up with the idea we probably need to get some customer data. And this was in the early 90s. But at that point, all we did was a telephone survey once a year, statistically valid random sample of Americans to get feedback. And my team said, hey, I think it'd be really good if we got customer data. And so we started collecting customer data in the restaurants. And today, I'm guessing we've got tens of millions of data points that we've collected since the early 90s.

Now, that changed our world because now we weren't just making up stuff to work on. We could look at the customer data for things that we needed to work on. And so that was a really fun season because we worked on a wide array of projects during that time. One of the elements of Chick-fil-A that is just different are the people and the way that people treat their customers and there are so many customers that it could be it would be completely understandable and usually they're like young kids at the drive-through it would be completely understandable if they were tired if they didn't smile if they didn't say my pleasure a million times a day but they do all those things they smile they have good body language they say my pleasure

they seem like they actually want to be there which i'll go to some other places to get a smoothie or go get some other food and it's like god get me out of here and all My wife and I say this all the time. How do they get their people to be so happy? How do they get these? And these are kids who, you know, moody and they're going through stuff. And so I got to ask you, man, I got you here now. I mean, what is it that you do that it seems like regardless of where you go?

And I live in Ohio, but I've been to Chick-fil-A everywhere. Regardless of where you go, the service is the same. The food's obviously the same, but I'm thinking more about the people. The people are the same as far as how they treat with respect and with a smile and with the my pleasure. They're grateful. How do you do that, man? I mean, everybody wants to know that. Well, first, let me say thank you.

We are working and have been for decades on making it better. And I'm in meetings almost every day on how to continue to raise the bar. So I'm thankful that you've had great experiences. We want to make it better. So just know what I'm about to say, we are not satisfied. And we are not nearly as good as we want to be. We'll talk about that maybe on a future. session about some of those things. But what we do, I would say at the risk of oversimplification,

I'll tell you the secret to what you just described. It won't get into all the granularity. But the operator, the man or woman that leads that restaurant is our secret sauce. And they are our competitive advantage. And they are the ones that create those experiences. Now, we, we, we cast vision and we provide resources and we provide encouragement and we do some measurement systems that we use corporately that they, you know, are part of so that they can get a scorecard on behaviors. But they lead those teams. Those restaurant operators are not our employees. They're independent business people and we select them very, very, very carefully. And when you get the right point leader, they tend to get the right team members.

I'll take it a step further. And I hope this never happens to you. But if you go into one of our restaurant and the people aren't sharp, if you meet the operator, he or she won't be sharp either. I mean, everything rises and falls on leadership. You know, I'm not the first guy to say that, but it's still true. And so I'll make the case often that that local operator is our competitive advantage. I know getting a franchise is super hard.

I think I read an article, it's easier to get into Harvard than it is to get one. I think much easier, in fact. And I have a friend actually who eventually got one. He had to move, though, in order to get one. They said, hey, you can get one, but you're going to have to move. And he did it. He took his whole family, and they moved out of state, and they did it, and now he's having a great time. So obviously, you're able, you have so many people who want to do it, that you're able to be very choosy.

This is a two-part, and I'll start with the first part. What are you looking for? What are the must-haves or what are the qualities of a person in order to be a franchise owner? Because that's the secret sauce. That's the straw who stirs the drink. My dad would always say that about our frontline managers. He led a thousand-person sales force. He's like, I want to be with our frontline managers all the time because they're the ones who are doing it.

Like, ah, good point. You're saying something similar here, the ones who are the franchisees, the ones who own those local businesses that now run, though, with your name, right? Chick-fil-A. What are you looking for? What are some of the must-haves in those people? people. Well, at the highest level, we're looking for character, competence, and chemistry. And we also talk quite a bit about entrepreneurial spirit. We really do want people who want to be in business for themselves, but not by themselves. Because, see, we put up not just the cash,

which we do. We build the building. We put in the equipment. We put in the equipment. We, put in the inventory because Truit had an insight early in his career actually in the mid-1960s when he set this agreement up. We've got the same agreement we've had since 1967. And he said, the way he said it, you need two things to build a successful business. You need capital and management. And his observation, and I would argue his insight is if you look for both of those in one person, the pool is very small.

Because, again, it was small then, but you think about how much money it takes today to buy or lease real estate, to build a multimillion dollar building, you know, own and own and own and own. If you've got men and women that kind of income, they may or may not want to be in the restaurant and actually run a restaurant. So he said if we'll put up the capital,

then the pool of talented people is enormous. So that is the way we think about it to this very day. How's it different from other people who are like the chick-fil-aes, but they franchise out? I'm not familiar with that world other than I... Yeah, they have to pay, again, it varies from franchise to franchise, but in many, many cases, they have to secure the real estate. They have to build the building.

They've got to put up all that capital. and then pay a huge fee for the rights. And so we just do it differently. Because, again, if somebody has the wealth to do it, they may or may not have the management leadership. And I would agree there are people out there like that. But as Truitt said, that pool gets really small. They've got an extremely high net worth and they want to run a restaurant and can do it well.

So what's the process then? Like what's the interview process like? I got to believe I'm curious to go inside of that of this one down the street in Center of Ohio, right? It's packed 24-7 other than Sundays, right? And I don't know who owns that. I don't know. I know it's run incredibly well.

But I wonder who that person is and how many people wanted that location that's absolutely crushing it like most of them do. what do they have to go through in order to earn that and who did they talk to? What questions do they have to answer? How are they selected over other people who wanted that exact same spot? Yeah, that's a big question. So a significant percentage these days come through the restaurants. And I don't know that number today. But the reason that number has increased is the volumes have gotten large enough in most of the restaurants, that the restaurant operator has attracted very high caliber people to work for them. And so many of them, after a period of time, whenever they decide or that

operator decides, hey, I think you're ready, they submit an application and begin the process. And then they, we talk to people. You know, people say, well, what do they take test and things of that nature. And we've experimented with all this stuff over the years, but we sort of do it the old fashion way and we talk with people. And we may talk with them a lot. And they may talk to a lot of our people. And it may take months. It's a pretty demanding, you know, process. But at the end of the day, we try to make a good decision that's going to create a win-win, you know, for us and the candidate over the long term. I want to dive back into your book, Culture Rules. And you write about the magic circle. And this is something that dates back to 1938 when Dutch historian, I'm not sure how to pronounce

the first name, Johann or Huazenga, maybe you can pronounce it for me, wrote about the impact of play on culture. What is the magic circle and what impact does it have on culture? Okay. So let me give just a word of context. We did a global study. You may be going there, but I want to use it to set this up. We always try to start. This is not our first project. We've done 11 of these projects over the last 25 years. And the starting point is always the same. We try to identify what is universally true about the topic. And then we move into a process of translation so that we can make it approachable and applicable. And of course, we want it to be something that's actually going to work.

and so for this project we did a global study ended up talking to over 6,000 either talked to surveyed focus group one-on-one interview over 6,000 people in 10 countries and over 70% globally 72% in the U.S. said that culture is the most powerful tool at their disposal to drive performance which is one reason there's not much in the book because about why you should work on culture. We got some obligatory stats because the stats are prevalent and they're everywhere. But we said seven out of ten leaders already believe this is important. That was not the insight. The troubling insight was when we asked those leaders to rank their priorities. And in the U.S., creating and maintaining culture came in at number 12. So our team set out to try and close that

knowing doing gap. And we were quite frustrated, confused. It was like, this is a complicated topic with many drivers and many dependencies. So we were struggling. And we came across a story from the Navy Seals. And we have had the privilege to talk to those folks for years, pretty much anything we're studying, and we're going to talk to the Seals. And a few years back, they were going to document their mantra.

And the first thing they wrote down was shoot, move, communicate. And we found that inspiring, challenging, and liberating. Now, that's not all you need to know to be a seal, but that's what you need to survive and fight another day. That's the first thing they wrote down. So we said, what's the equivalent of shoot, move, communicate for culture? Because we believe one reason that gap exists is that there are far too many leaders. They don't know what to do. But could we figure out shoot, move, and communicate?

So, leading to your question, when we were working on this, a member of the team asked me if I knew about the circle. And I said, no, I don't know anything about it. And they said, well, it's one of the predominant theories in game design. I said, tell me more. I said, well, you know, in a game, you're trying to create an environment that people will willingly enter into, suspend judgment, at least in part. You think about monopoly.

The person that the banker probably is not qualified to be the vice. anger, but you go along anyway. So when you come into an organization, you're going to suspend judgment because you're not sure about some of the things they say, some of the things they believe, some of the things they do. But there's a context. There's an environment that's been created

by the game designers. You come in, you suspend judgment as necessary, you engage fully, you invest discretionary time, you think about all the things you do in a game. And if it's a well-designed game, you have fun and you will return to that space.

So we said, let's think about culture building as the game. What are the rules? And that's how we came up with the three culture rules. What are the three culture rules? The three culture rules. Number one is aspire. You must share your hopes and dreams for your organization's culture. Now, you and some of your listeners are going, well, that's a blinding flash of the obvious.

You know, it may be we felt compelled to list that first because we encountered so many leaders that cannot, could not, and cannot to this day articulate their, hopes and dreams for their culture. Again, that may sound crazy to you, but there's so many that can't. And some will say, well, it's in my head, it's in my heart. I said, it can start there, but it can't stay there. Because you can set the aspiration, but you can't achieve it by yourself. You've got to get other people on board to help you turn that into reality. You've got to be able to share it. And we say a test is, is it clear? Is it simple? And is it repeatable? If you can't tell people the hopes and dreams of your culture such that it's clear, simple, and repeatable, you don't have it yet. And I found, and I don't, I'm this, I found this after I wrote the book.

I don't think this is in the book. You've read it since I have. Tell me if it's in there. Peter Drucker went to ask about creating a mission statement, which is one mechanism at a leader's disposal to articulate your hopes and dreams. Drucker said if you can't put it on a t-shirt, you don't have it yet. And so we felt like that first rule aspired feels obvious. But if you want to check on how you're doing, just start asking the people around you about your cultural aspiration. the people on your team, the people in your organization.

And maybe you got that nailed. If you do, congratulations. If you don't, you got work to do. So after you understand rule one, rule two is to amplify. Amplify. You've got to always be looking for ways to amplify and the aspiration. because there's so much noise in the world, you've got to reinforce the aspiration constantly.

And there are any number of ways to do that. If you want to come back, we can talk about that. But let me offer a cautionary note and then share the third rule. Here's the truth. If you have a clear aspiration and you amplify it well, the culture will move toward the aspiration. and I've been hanging around leaders my whole life and I know something about leaders,

we love to get things done and we love to check things off. We love accomplishment. The risk here is that if you have an aspiration, you amplify it, you see the culture moving that you can declare victory and want to check it off.

Worse than just checking it off, you actually move into a protection mindset. And the way I'm talking about it these days is if you shrink wrap your culture or wrap it and bubble wrap, you'll suffocate it. You'll actually kill it. The third rule is to adapt. You've got to constantly be looking for ways to enhance your culture. Now, just a quick word on enhancement and we'll go anywhere you want to go in this conversation. In the book, we talk about identifying and eliminating toxins. Patterns of unhealthy and unproductive behavior. And yes, you need to eradicate toxins anytime you see them. But I have since had enough conversations with leaders. This happens

every time I write a book. I keep learning on the topic. And leaders literally said to me, okay, I got the whole toxin thing, but we don't have any toxins right now, at least that I can discern that are at a significant enough level that I need to do something. They said, so do I have to adapt? And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The toxins, that's only one way to adapt. A second way you can adapt and enhance your culture is to double down on your strengths. So let's say things are good in your culture.

Well, then what could you focus on to strengthen your culture even more? And we maybe could say, I don't want to go out on a limb, but you know, you were complimenting us on our execution. We think it's not good enough, but we're doubling down. We're going to make it even better. When we make it better, we will be enhancing our culture. So you can enhance your culture. The third option for enhancing a culture is to add new capabilities.

And a lot of leaders don't think about this, or at least not consciously. maybe you don't have any toxins. Maybe there's no strength that you want to double down on right now, but maybe you see something that if you could add it to your culture, it'd be a really good thing. And so my example is about 15 years ago, we decided we wanted to be more innovative as a culture. Now, we're no strangers to innovation.

I mean, Truitt Kathy invented a chicken sandwich. I mean, we understand innovation. But if you look at our history of innovation, it was sporadic and it was not across the board, right? You tended to lean on certain people or certain teams or certain departments to do the innovation. And so senior leadership about 15 years ago, really in the spirit of adding new capability, wanted to make our entire culture more innovative. So in essence, they modified the aspiration to include innovation, and we began doing the thing to amplify that. And here we are 15 years later, and I would argue that we are much more innovative as a culture, as a people, than we were back then. So that's part of the aspiration.

I am curious, what are the documented hopes and dreams of Chick-fil-A as an organization? Well, Andrew Kathy, Truitt Kathy's grandson is our new CEO. And the content that you and I are talking about is what we built our annual meeting around this year. So this content was shared with all the chicken people 60 days ago or so. And at that meeting, Andrew said that his cultural aspiration for us as a whole is, to be rooted in purpose and known for our care. Rooted in purpose and known for our care. Now, you can unpack that and you can talk about the corporate purpose.

You can talk about some values and you can talk about other things. That just gives more clarity and definition to it. But I thought that was a really powerful way for him to encapsulate who we're trying to become and how we want to show up in the world. I think it's pretty rare to have a member of the team who outwardly has, in your case, I'm talking about the rarity of you, that you're a national best-selling author, 10-plus books. They've helped millions of leaders all over the world. You work inside the company.

You work at a company, but not only are you helping people at the company. So it's an amazing resource for the leadership team to have because it feels like you do still spend. time out in the world learning constantly, right? That's been the key to your entire career of being a learning leader, right, to use my language. I love your language. Yeah, thank you. And because of that, though, I feel like Andrew Kathy, this new CEO, I got to imagine he's leaning on you. He's got to be like, hey, okay, I got to nail this first talk here. I'm the new CEO. This is important. How does that go? What's your relationship like with your internal leaders, leaders helping them with their communication, with their messaging, with their storytelling,

because that's such a big part of culture, right, is how you amplify that, how you tell that story. How do those relationships go? Well, I have the privilege of longevity. I mean, I've grown up with these people. I mean, I knew Andrew when he was a child. I mean, I served his father before he was born. You kind of got to get your head around that, right? Andrew was not born when I was serving his father and his grandmother. father. So I think longevity helps. But let me, let me say a word about the content and the messaging and kind of the essence of your question. I am out in the world. My team is out in the world, but we're trying to be very thoughtful and very strategic. And let me just tell you a little bit of how

that unfolds. We try to look at emerging issues, emerging threats. sometimes we'll be so bold as we'll try to look just over the horizon. And we identify these issues usually three to five years in advance and say, we want a point of view on that because we think it will serve our leaders. And we think it will serve leaders at large. Quick backstory on how I became an author. I'm an accidental author. We had done some work 25 years ago on how to accelerate leadership.

development here at the chicken. And again, I'll give you the short version of the story. You call it the chicken. I call it the chicken. That's just what I call it. It's the chicken. I tell people, what do I do for a living? I sell chicken. So we had done this work. We'd work for a long time on this because we didn't know Jack about leadership development. I mean, back in the early days, our process was immersion and osmosis. And at a certain scope and scale, if you've got the right influences. I learned a lot of leadership because I sat around the table. We had lunch together every day with our senior leaders. And I'm the kid that went to the, went and picked up lunch and brought it in for everybody to eat. We ate at one conference table. So yeah, when you're

tiny, you can learn. If you've got good leaders around you and you're paying attention, you can learn leadership that way. But there reached a point when we had thousands of employees, you know, well, at that point, probably a thousand employees. And of course, we had all of our restaurants and all of their employees. And that immersion in an osmosis was not keeping up. And so our executive committee asked me to figure out how to accelerate leadership development. And so I put together a team, really smart people. We went to work, did all the stuff you would expect, and reached some conclusions,

and then had what I call a crisis of confidence. We said, what if this isn't right? Like, we don't know anything about, I mean, we've worked hard, we've studied, and we've read a couple hundred books on leadership and done all these interviews, but what if it's not right? And I said, well, I'm going to be with Ken Blanchard tomorrow. Would you guys like me to run this by him? Now, many of your listeners don't know Ken.

He was arguably the thought leader in the leadership space. He's been on, 25 years ago. Yeah, I had him on. I love Ken Blancher. At one point. at one point he had three books on the bestseller list at one time. It's awesome. I don't think anybody's ever done that again.

So I was going to be with Ken the next day. He's a friend of mine. And I said, would you like me to share this with Ken? And they said, man, that'd be great. And so I shared, I had a single page, some bullet points on it. I was going to share it with Ken. I said, okay, we've been working on how to accelerate leadership development. I'd love you to take a look at this.

Tell me, do you think it's, true? Do you think it's valid? Do you think it'll stand the test of time? And did we miss anything? And he looked at it and he said, this has got to be a book. And I said, okay, you don't understand. You don't understand. I mean, everything looks like a book to him, which is why he sold 50 million books, right? And he said, no, you're the one that you don't understand. I said, okay, tell me what I don't understand. He said, 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. Now, the reason I'm telling you this story,

is back to my relationship with our executive committee, I went to them and I said, Ken Blanchard has this crazy idea about us writing a book. Now, keep in mind, this was a concept at this point. We hadn't done anything with it. It was just the culmination of our work. And they said, well, let us talk about it. Like, we don't know if we ought to do this or not.

We don't know if you ought to do this or not. So they debated it for a while and they came back and here's what they said. They said, we think you should write this. book with Ken because maybe it will serve the world. I think that is the perfect example of an abundance mentality. Now catch this. None of us knew had no clue that book's in 25 languages today. It actually has served the world. And so the relationship that we have with our leaders is we would love to see a world well led. And we're delighted. to share the stuff that we're learning.

I love the idea of an abundance mindset. The actual practice of getting the thoughts out of your head onto the page, you're rounding up all the things you're learning and trying to be as concise as possible and put it into this artifact, right? I know that feeling and how hard that is. Doing it with Ken multiple times, I know you have, has to have been just, what a joy, I would bet. But how much do you learn through the process? of getting those thoughts out onto the page, of actually writing a book.

Because I found teaching, which I think writing a book is, to be maybe the greatest tool for learning that there is. How has it been for you? Well, I have learned so much on every project. Remember, I want to just refer to something I said earlier. We typically were for several years trying to figure out what's our point of view. It's like, what's truth? How do we translate it?

How do we make it approachable? How do we make it applicable? And on several of the projects, we will then take what we've created into restaurants and run a pilot. Sometimes that pilot is six months, nine months, 12 months on one project. We ran a pilot and we weren't actually getting the traction that we wanted, but we were convinced we had truth. So we said, we need to change the way we communicate it. we ran a second pilot, all this before I wrote the book.

Wow. And so, I mean, it's impossible to quantify how much I learned because it's immeasurable. I mean, whatever our topic is, I'm going to be immersed in it for years. And then at some point, I do have the opportunity to write it all down. I will say this, the writing has become more difficult for me because the first several books, first eight or nine books, were parables. And I kind of figured out, you know, once you know what you believe about something, you've got a point of view, I could write a story about it.

Well, I've changed publishers and the world has moved on in some respects, and my publisher just challenged me to write a traditional book. And so I published two of those, including culture rules as my second. I've got two more in the works. And I have found that much more difficult because somebody said, well, how do you figure out what the characters are going to say in a parable? I said, do they say whatever you want them to say? Whatever you need them to say, right?

And if you need somebody to say something, you introduce a new character on the next page to say that, right? Now, there's still so much rigor. It's still true, but it's so. storytelling. I found that easier than a traditional book where you've got to have an illustration, a case study, you got to have some stats, some third party data, some of your own data. It's just been more challenging for me. So that's the journey I'm on. I'm learning something new. I'm learning to write a different kind of book. You brought up storytelling. And this is something you're really good at. You've injected a few already into this conversation. It feels like that's just

naturally the way you are, probably through a lot of practice. From a leadership perspective, how important is storytelling in order to be an effective communicator? I want to be careful not to stereotype or pigeonhole good communicator because different men and women have different styles and different approaches. But from what I've experienced over four decades. What I've observed and what I've read is people remember the stories far longer than they remember the stats.

Now, not to say the stats aren't important, because for some people, I think the stats are the key that unlocks their head and their heart. Even when I was doing parables, there were always people in Q&A would say, I need to hear the data. Not that they're dismissing the story.

The fact that you can validate what you've written gives them permission to engage. And so I'm not anti-stat. I'm not anti-facts and anti-logic. But if people remember the stories, then they can extract meaning themselves. And so a story well told has a shelf life in my experience. that far exceeds any facts or stats that you may have told. I tell those and I use those as entry points for people that care about those things.

And I don't usually do too much of that because a lot of people don't work that. I mean, I've still gotten some grief for switching to a more traditional book as people are going, man, I just missed the stories. Well, I've tried to put stories in it, But remember, the old books were all stories. And so that's kind of the journey I'm on.

How does a leader who self-identifies as a below-average storyteller as of this moment become a great storyteller? What are some of the things they can do? You can watch great storytellers. You can read great stories. You can hire a coach, a public speaking coach. I've had some great coaches over the years. One of my coaches, her name is Victoria LaBombe. She's amazing.

She's been all over me over the years about various things. So in one particular session I had with her, I mentioned a box. And she says, well, show it to me. So I did like this. And so I'm talking and I dropped my hand. She said, oh, you drop the box. What do you mean? She said, well, you're holding the box.

I said, what do I do with the box? She said, well, put it somewhere. So I put it on the floor. And she said, okay, for the rest of your talk, you've got to walk around the box. You can't walk through the box. And then later, because she's messing with me, she's trying to teach me something. She said, hey, pick up that box. And so I reached down and I picked it up and I did this.

She said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not the same box. I said, what do you mean? She said, when you put it down, it was this big and now it's this bit. She said, that's storytelling. She also told me, and this would be a tip I would share with somebody who wants to be a better storyteller because she's been hammering me for decades on this. and I still work on it.

She said, don't tell stories. The first time she told me that, it freaked me out. I said, okay, what do you mean? Don't tell stories. And she said, take people there. She said, if you'll shift that in your head and in your heart, your pace will change, your tone will change, your level of detail will change, your language will change.

You're literally trying to take them to that place. and I still, that's not my natural bias. I still work on that. But that's been really good coaching for me. So those are a few thoughts. The last one I'll say is videotape or audio tape yourself. Videotap's better and then make yourself watch it. And if you're focused on storytelling, the question you're asking is, how could I have told that story better?

And those four or five, six tactics over. over time, if you commit, you can become a better storyteller. How do you take somebody somewhere? When she says take them there, how do you do that? How do you take a person to that place? Yeah. More detail, more intentionality, pace, tone, communicate more emotion with both your your voice, your spirit, your language. So one very tacky, tactical example, I was doing something one day and I said, and the man came to the door and I kind of kept moving.

And she said, whoa, stop, stop, stop. And I said, okay, what am I stopping for it? She said, the man. I said, what about the man? She said, was he tall? Was he short? Was he old? Was he black?

Was he white? What was he wearing? She said, take me there. Tell me that an old man in a tattered sweater wearing Ben Franklin. Franklin glasses came to the door. He looked like he had just gotten up from a nap. That's how you take somebody there. I love it.

I think that part is so, you mentioned Andrew Kathy, right, that was a big part of, I would imagine when you guys all met together was how he both showed the vision, what you're aspiring for, and then added some flavor and some color

to take people there. Do you recall? Yeah, he talked. Yeah, he used the metaphor we had two large trees on stage, and one was leafless and lifeless, and one was flourishing. And he said, the difference in these two trees

is this one has been deprived of water. And he said, we need to ensure that we hydrate our culture so that it can look like this and not we wake up one day and it look like this. Do you ever meet with leaders who say,

Mark sounds great, man. This book, cultural rules, you know, which awesome looking book and it's awesome, even better on the inside, by the way.

But they say, this is kind of the fluffy stuff. That's nice to have. We're about getting results. Whatever it takes to get the results, like we're hard charging, we go. That stuff's nice.

And we'll talk about. about it some of the time, right? But that's the soft skills, the soft stuff. What are you thinking when you encounter a leader like that? Well, I'm thinking a lot of stuff. I'm not sure what I'm going to say next necessarily. Context would matter a lot. Yeah.

But seven out of ten leaders understand that that soft stuff you're talking about is the number one driver of performance. And the data supports that. Like every leader should believe that. So I would say a leader who can't come around to that has chosen to suboptimized performance. Now, there could be any number of reasons. Maybe they're tired. Maybe they're scared.

Maybe they're lazy. Maybe, I mean, maybe they're incompetent. I mean, there are a bunch of reasons. But for a leader to say, okay, I know what's going to drive performance and it's culture. And we're not going to work on it. And we're not going to focus on it. It's actually not squishy. It's strategic.

And it's the most strategic thing a leader can work on. It's not soft. It's essential. I mean, they're just essential skills. Absolutely. It's an essential part of building anything, any team, any organization, any business. It's the number one essential part that I've been in those rooms that were been criticized where I was bringing up stuff.

when I'm like more of a mid-level manager, you know, and you're with the people above you, and there's maybe a few of your peers, and you start talking about it, and you get some of the eye rolls. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I'm about results, too, man. Don't get me wrong.

I'm about performance, high performance, for sure. This is the way. And so it still is surprising to see some of that out there where I think the great companies get it, but not all of them think like, oh, the guys are going to talk about the soft stuff, the squishy stuff. Like, whatever, man.

Like, let's focus on results. here. Yeah. And I'm saying you let two leaders who both want results, one focus on culture and one not, and the one who doesn't is going to have, they're going to win. Now, they may not win next week, but I'm playing a long game. I mean, you can get a lot with a stick, right, for a short period of time, for a short period of time. That's not the way you create a high performance culture. So, Mark, you've been doing this 44 years. What's next for you? Well, I'm going to try to figure out how to serve 100 million leaders in the next seven years. Whoa. Now, my team is telling me that I'm thinking way too small because you probably serve that

many people every month. But I said, let's call it a milestone. And let's figure out how to take the content that we've created over the last 25 years and see if we can get it. it out to the world. So I'm going to see what I can do. How long do you want to stay at Chick-fil-A? I'm going to be here until June 30th. Really? And then what? I'm going to do what we just talked about. I'm going to try to figure out how to serve a hundred million leaders. But separate from the company, not within? That's correct. Do you have a, so do you have like your own business outside of Chick-fil-A or you're going to create one? I will. Wow. That's exciting, man. That's pretty,

It's the next chapter. It's the next chapter. I got to believe you'll miss, though, being inside the company, or were you still work with the company, but maybe in a different capacity? You know, I will miss the people, for sure, and there may be opportunities for partnership in the future, but I'm thinking about what's next.

That's really cool, man. I have one more question. Let's say you're with somebody who is a recent college graduate, it early 20s. They love your stuff. They want to do good in the world. They want to leave a positive dent. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to that person? Well, one, I'll repeat what I said a moment ago. Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to leave. Now, I have had people say, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, are you saying if I grow, I'll get a promotion? I said, no, that's not what I'm saying.

I said, we control our readiness. The organization controls our opportunity. Back to your sporting days. If you're on the bench, you probably never were. But if I'm on the bench, I want the coach to put me in. If the coach doesn't think I'm ready, they're not going to put me in unless there's a disaster, right? So I want to be that leader that's perceived as ready for the next opportunity. We even talk about leaders that way.

who's ready for their next opportunity. So we control our readiness. The organization controls our opportunity. Now, I've met a lot of young people that don't like that. And I said, well, that's fine. You can go to another company, but you do not get to pick your role and your level of responsibility.

And you can pick a different company because maybe they're going to give you a different role or a different, but even then, when you want the next spot, if they won't give it to you, you do have the option of moving. But what enables your continued progression inside or outside your current company is how much you can grow. Your capacity to grow, determine your capacity to leave.

That's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I would say, and these are really companion ideas, I'm glad you asked the question, is that if your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills. There are people at all levels in organizations. I know you said this was to a young leader, There are people at all levels in an organization that have the skills to lead and people don't want to follow them because they don't trust their heart. They think they're self-serving.

They think that they're going to place blame when something goes wrong. They think about themselves first. Got ego issues. We just did a global study. My next book is called Uncommon Greatness. And we just did a global study about what makes a leader effective and what impedes their effectiveness. The number one thing we found globally that impedes leadership effectiveness is ego. That may not be a surprise to you.

We asked Ken Blanchard, before that research came back, we said, Ken, what's the number one impediment to effective leadership? He said, ego. So now we've got data to support what Ken's learned over the last 60 years. So my point is, if you're that kind of leader, people aren't going to follow you. So if your heart's not right, nobody cares about your skills. Wow. God, dude, this is awesome, man. I had really high expectations and you just kill it.

And I highly recommend all your books, the ones written with Ken and certainly most recent cultural rules, the leader's guide to creating the ultimate competitive advantage by Mark, looks really sweet too, man. Great job with the cover. Thank you. But I really appreciate how much enthusiasm, effort, and care you put into this conversation. It means a lot to me. And I'm pumped to see what you do next and all the impact that you're going to have.

Obviously, you've already impacted so many. But the fact that you're so juiced up to do it more is inspiring, man. So I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both of us. This has been so much fun. Let's stay in touch. Love it. Love it. All right.

Thanks so much, Mark. It's the end of the podcast club and I asked Mark for something special to give to members of the end of the podcast club. And he said, give them my cell phone number. I'm dead serious. And he told me to give out his cell phone number. So if you're part of the end of the podcast club, send Mark a text message and tell him that you are. Hey, I'm a part of the end of the podcast club with The Learning Leader Show. And I just heard you on Ryan's podcast.

And I loved what you had to say. His cell phone. This is his real cell phone number. 678, 612, 8441. That's 678, 612, 8441. Tell Mark, you're part of the end of the podcast club with The Learning Leaders Show and you just heard him and you love them. A few takeaways from my notes, your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead. That is so good.

It's a great piece of ice. Mark received early in his career and still lives by it today. Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead. if your heart is not right, no one cares about your skills. Your character, integrity, and care for others must be there, non-negotiable, must be there to earn any type of followership if your heart is not right. No one cares about your skills. And then the three culture rules.

Aspire, amplify and adapt, aspire, share your hopes and dreams for the culture. Sounds obvious. It's not. It's not always done. Andrew Kathy, the new CEO of Chick-fil-A just did this and he said, rooted in purpose known for our care. Then amplify. Always be looking for ways to reinforce and amplify the aspiration for your culture.

And then adapt. Always look for ways to enhance your culture and be innovative. Aspire, amplify, and adapt. Remember send Mark a text message. I want to blow us phone up after this podcast comes out. 678-612-8441. I want to say thank you again so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Mark Miller.

I think it will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and then you go to Ryanhawk.net, which launches you into Apple Podcasts. And once you're there, you write a thoughtful review and you rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing that, you are continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.