Newman’s Legacy Leadership Blog

There are no Guarantees

When I signed up for all of this, being an entrepreneur that is, I thought most of what I was going to do would turn out pretty good and my rewards would be fairly satisfying. Expectations vs reality can often lead to shocking realizations. More than 10 years of business and it hasn’t gotten any easier nor has it resulted in the rewards I originally expected. Although I knew success was never guaranteed, I grossly misjudged what my rewards would be. In the beginning, I wholeheartedly believed that significant monetary rewards would come to our business. Today, I would not call our financial rewards significant; the word adequate seems to be a better descriptor.

What has been significant, however, has been the progress we’ve seen in our clients. We can honestly say that not a single client is in the same place today as they were when we began the journey. The movement they have experienced has been continuously toward a richer, more robust culture that values people first and foremost. This focus on the humanity of the organization has resulted in powerful relationships. These relationships have built a capacity for growth and development as well as a what-ever-it-takes attitude. It must be admitted, however, that although the graph of progress looks like a nice, steady upward trend, if you view the graph in detail, you’ll see it has ups and downs. But, the overall trend is upwards. I’ve discovered that this steady progress of our clients, and their amazing loyalty to us, is a reward that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

Our clients, like Five Star Food Services in Chattanooga, Tennessee, G and J Marketing and Sales in Palm Harbor, Florida, Newport Industries in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, CST Industries in St. Louis, Missouri, VVS Canteen in Cozad, Nebraska, and RS Electric of St. Joseph, Missouri, to name just a few, have put incredible faith in our ability to help them make better, more scientific people decisions. What could be more satisfying than to know that CEOs like Al Recher (Five Star), Greg Sidwell (G and J), Stef Lopata (Newport Industries), Tim Carpenter (CST Industries), Dick Davis (VVS Canteen), and Rick Schultz (RS Electric) have invested their time and money in the analysis and coaching we provide. Times are hard, but we have these wonderful companies and their hard working, dedicated leaders to consider as more than clients; they are our friends. No matter what tomorrow brings, we know we have people that depend on us and that fuels our drive forward.

There are no real guarantees in life other than the guarantees we, in our own personal integrity, offer to others. If we go through our lives expecting nothing more than what others are willing to give us in payment for what we do, we can reduce the chances that we will be disappointed and increase our chances that we will be pleased when others exceed our minimal expectations. We’ve experienced the pleasure of having fantastic relationships with our clients. I am so grateful for everything they have done to support us and we hope that others will consider them if the need ever arises. There are no guarantees, but connecting with great leaders, as far as I’m concerned, is better than a guarantee.

Playing by the Rules

Growing up, I always tried to play by the rules. I would try to figure out what the right way of doing things was and then I’d do my best to do things that way. As I got older, I began to realize that not everyone played by the same set of rules. In fact, some people just plain ignored the rules altogether. The older I’ve gotten, the more frustrated I’ve become, because way too often, the rule breakers seem to be rewarded more often than do the rule followers. So I have to ask, is this a reality or just my perception of reality?

I’ve held the belief that justice was blind, and that our system would function with equity and fairness as long as we all operated from a common foundation of values, principles, and rules. Today, I’m not so sure about this. It seems like things may be tilted towards some folks and away from others. Why do some people receive a favorable nod, while others, who’ve done better work, get ignored. If we are supposed to have systems that reward competence and dedication, why do the incompetent and lackadaisical sometimes rise above? If the system is not fair, what are we all to do? I think I have an answer. To make it work, people need to accept a new concept which is actually based on a very old concept.

You’ve all heard of the golden rule, to treat others as you’d like to be treated. But what if someone doesn’t like what you like and wants something entirely different for their life? Some may have heard of the platinum rule, to treat others the way they want to be treated. But what if that person want something that really is harmful to them? Enter the Diamond Rule; treat others with kindness and mercy. If, in all of our dealings with others, we treat each and every person with kindness and mercy, what would the outcome be? Would it be possible to be unfair? Would it be possible to favor a less worthy person over the one who has proven to be more worthy? Would it be possible to discriminate based on unfounded biases and prejudices? Can we lie about someone and still treat them with kindness and mercy? Is kindness and mercy compatible with doing business? I’ve asked a lot of questions. I’d sure like to see the Diamond Rule applied so we can see what the real answers are. Now that’s a rule book I would love to see applied!

Finding Joy When It Looks so Bleak!

Business isn’t going so good. The news if full of Covid19. People are getting tired of being shut up in their houses. Money is tight. People who are used to being highly productive are watching reruns of Andy of Mayberry. What’s there to be joyful for?

As I write this, there have been 609,000+ confirmed cases of Covid19 in the US. If we figure we’ve only diagnosed a third of the actual cases, that would mean there have been 1,827,000+ people infected with the virus. That means 325,000,000 (approximately) people in the US have not gotten the virus so far! Yes, a lot of people have gotten sick, but a lot of us are as healthy as can be! It could get worse, if we don’t continue with “social distancing” and we stop our hygienic ways, but we can control the situation. If we use our God given intelligence and a modicum of common sense, we can stem the tide for good! This is something to celebrate! But, our celebrations need to recognize the narrow path we walk between health and disease. This is always the case, not just now during this Covid19 Pandemic.

Yes, we have millions of workers not working right now. But most of them want to work and hundreds of employers have gone further than I ever thought they would to take care of and protect their workers. When we get the chance to reboot, I’m betting that it will be business better than usual. Not necessarily more profits, but better processes and more caring for the human bottom line. We can do amazing things when we remember why we are in business. We might have thought it was to make money, but other people aren’t all that concerned about us making money. What we are really in business for is to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. When we do this well and do it in a way that says I really care about you; people are willing to pay for those goods and services. Part of our caring for our customers is making sure we always operate in the safest and healthiest ways possible. It’s simply not good business to cut corners when it comes to the health and safety of our people, our customers, or our communities.

This is how we will create joy in our new world. We will realize that the best way to be profitable, in the long run, is to be that company that operates from a set of values and principles that holds the health, safety, and wellbeing of employees, clients, customers, colleagues, and community members as essential. Our companies need to guarantee satisfaction on all these levels. When we do this, we will always operate in a way that prevents the spread of diseases, not just Covid19, but all diseases. And that will be something that we can all be joyful about.

Hanging on for Dear Life?

Sometimes we crawl out on a limb, and for the life of us, we just can’t figure out why we have found ourselves there? Most of us have had that experience. Now it’s not so much what we did to get there, it’s what we are going to do that’s important. Spending time trying to figure out how we got there can waste precious time, energy and strength. Figuring out what to do next gives us our best chance of survival. This is true whether we’re talking about a literal limb or a figurative limb.

What figurative limbs have you found yourself on? Have you told a little fib and now people are expecting you to perform based on what you said you’ve already done? Have you committed yourself to an outcome that requires more resources than you have at your disposal? Have you hidden a truth that now will come to light and undermine what you were trying to accomplish? Who has been hurt by your actions? You might think you’re the first person to have done these things, but the truth is many people do these things every day. So how do you get out of these difficult things? There’s an old saying that really applies here. If you find yourself in a deep, dark hole the first thing you need to do is stop digging!

Out on a limb; deep dark hole; these are just 2 ways that we let deceitfulness get the best of us. The only way out is to fess up. Yes, tell the truth. No matter how painful that is right now, it will save mountains of suffering later. Many people will recognize this from their own past. They will remember specific incidents when honesty would have served them better than the course they took but their immediate lack of courage resulted in unnecessary pain and suffering. The sad reality is that even if we stretch the truth a bit, we can fix it. In fact, the sooner we confess our dishonesty the better. Most people don’t want to lie but they just don’t know how to have the necessary conversation. So they obfuscate. They bend the truth, ever so slightly, and that little deviation from the true path can lead to missing the target by such a huge distance, it can be nearly impossible to get back on track.

Let me use a simple graph to show what happens when we do one little stretching of the truth. Let’s just say the dark line is the truth and the dotted line is a minor alteration of that truth. Immediately after we set off on down the path of the little white lie, we really aren’t very far away from the path of truth. But, the longer we hold onto that little white lie, the further we keep moving away from the path of truth. If we would have quickly returned to the path of truth with an immediate confession of guilt things would have been easier. But, the longer we wait, the more difficult our road back becomes. Eventually, the only way back to the line of truth is to stop moving all together, completely change direction, and follow a new and different path that leads back to the path of truth. By this time trust has been broken. Jobs may be lost. Marriages may fall apart. The hurt may run so deep, they may be very difficult to mend.

How any one person makes this corrective journey will be unique to that person. Each story I hear has one of two endings. One ending is an ending of tragedy and heartbreak. The other ending is an ending of redemption and recovery. Both endings are painful, but only redemption leads to life. I am acutely aware of many examples of both stories, and on this day, the most unusual Easter of the 70 I have experienced, it is quite fitting to ask all my readers to reflect on their own paths, as I do my own. How closely are we walking to the path of truth? How much course correction is needed? What are the consequences of not correcting our course? What are the rewards for getting back on the path.? The choice is ours! We’ve been given the power to choose. I hope we all choose wisely because, “this is the day of new beginnings!” Happy Easter everyone!

Really Caring for One Another!

In today’s business world, there have been so many rough roads to traverse. It may be that a larger proportion of employers have laid off or furloughed employees than ever before in our Nation’s history. The pain and suffering has been incredible. It’s not just the disease that is taking a toll, it’s every aspect of our lives. Fear has ruled the day and because of that fear, our society has been incapacitated. What can we possibly do? How can we get past this? Fortunately, we have some fabulous examples of what some people have done to restore hope and inject life back into our world.

This picture of the Covid19 virus makes it look very large, but it is actually quite tiny. This tiny little virus, so small it can pass through most of the masks people are wearing these days, is one of the nastiest respiratory viruses we’ve ever encountered, but we have figured out how to defeat the virus. And not just the physical virus, but the emotional and psychological virus as well. We now know that social distancing, soap, disinfectant cleaners, and alcohol based hand sanitizers will keep the virus from spreading. We also know that starting to create plans for how we will get back to business gives people hope. On top of all of this we’ve realized that the real heroes are the people who cared so much that they put themselves in harm’s way for us!

In my conversations with our clients, I have been continuously impressed by how much those clients have cared about me, my family, and my colleagues. I reach out to them to make sure they are alright and they beat me to it by caring about me. The old saying is “behind every dark cloud there is a silver lining.” For me that silver lining is all the people I’ve had the privilege to build a relationship with. Some are clients, some are colleagues, some are friends, and then there is my family. These precious people give me hope! Proverbs 29:18 tells us “where there is no vision, the people perish!” With all the protecting maneuvers from so many officials, what they have failed to do is lay out a vision. This focus on the disease is important but, “We the People” need a vision, or we will perish.

I’m very encouraged by people like my client Jeff Parks. He gets it. He understands that failing to have his people focus on a vision for a brighter future would result so much pain and darkness, they may not emotionally survive. By directing his people to start planning for the business restart, rather than focusing on everything that’s gone wrong, he has infused hope into a seemingly hopeless world. And Jeff is not the only leader to have done this. There are dozens of them out there. Now is the time for our community, county, state, and national leaders to start sowing the seeds of hope. Give us a vision to rally around, not a disease. WWII’s vision was a world without tyranny. 9/11’s vision was a world without terror. I’m waiting for the Covid19 vision. Let’s make it bigger than this disease. Let’s make a vision of inclusion, caring, and reconciliation. Time to put our differences aside and to unite around those things we all hold dear. Perhaps our Founders said it best: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness!

Creating a Better Post-Covid19 World!

As I’ve watched the Covid19 Crisis evolve, I have been amazed by the lack of preparedness on the part of our Federal, State, County, and Local “Communities!” I bet you thought I was going to say governments. Well, governments are only part of our communities. If we begin at the very local level, and work our way out to the counties, states, and finally federal governments, we will see in each and every case, when we expect the government to handle each crisis as it comes along, we will find ourselves unprepared to handle any of them. The diagram above is a representation of a process that can be used on the local level, to help people create a viable and powerful system for dealing with everything that comes at them. Whether the problem is economic, public and/or individual physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health, education and training, recreation, environment, housing, safety or the welfare of our people, a Community Development Process and System can prepare everyone for whatever challenges are faced. If we do this on a local level, and then the county and state levels, we will create a system that works for everyone. I will admit, this process being implemented at the federal level looks like a very daunting task and some states may not have the level of cooperation and collaboration needed to make it function smoothly, but we can very plainly see that failure to have such a system in place has cost us many thousands of lives and trillions of dollars as a nation.

Our response to Covid19 is a classic example of what happens when we do not take the time to learn how to cooperate and collaborate well in advance of the first inkling that a crisis might even arise. One of the hallmarks of American society has been how we respond to a crisis. We all band together and forget our differences and then we try to figure out what to do. This actually didn’t work too badly until we made our world smaller through mass transportation and mass communication. Now when everybody can come in contact with one another through planes and huge cruise ships and we can all communicate with the world with a few key strokes on a computer or thumb strokes on a smart phone, the old wait for something to happen strategy is just plain dumb. We are smarter than that. We can do better.

Back in 1999 I had the great pleasure of meeting Vaughn Grisham, who was the director of the McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Grisham was, and continues to be, an advocate for building more resilient communities through a systematic community development processes similar to the one outlined above in the graphic I’ve shared. When personal agendas are left behind and a common goal of “Creating the most inclusive, effective, and efficient community possible” is adopted, communities are transformed. When the community collaboration team has representation from governmental bodies, economic development councils, chambers of commerce, the healthcare/medical community, public health and mental health agencies, public and private preschool through grade 12 and post-secondary education, human service agencies, law enforcement, judiciary, agriculture, non-profits, racial and ethnic sub-populations, and faith-based organizations, everyone can contribute to the greater good of the community. Without this collaborative body, individual entities will create their own system for dealing with issues that arise. This invariably results in inefficiencies, duplication, waste, and some people being left out of the loop.

Although these collaborative bodies seem to be unwieldy, the alternative to having everyone working together from a common playbook is exactly what we have seen. Each interest group vies for decisions that favor their interest at the expense of other interest groups. When decisions are made based on only part of the entire picture, the result is, most often, harmful even to the interest group that has driven the thinking that led to the decision. Our lack of broad based and collaborative planning for events like Covid19 has impacted every aspect of our society. There is no group that has been unharmed by this crisis. The economy has taken a huge hit. Education has taken a big hit. Healthcare has taken a big hit. The military has taken a big hit. Agriculture has taken a big hit; many farmers don’t have workers to harvest their crops in Florida and California and other parts of the world and the market for milk products has plummeted with the closure of schools for millions upon millions of children. Transportation has taken a big hit. Communication systems have been overloaded and crashed. Minority populations have suffered huge losses in some communities. Governmental bodies, on all levels, will not come out of this unscathed! Preparedness requires that every angle be examined. That cannot happen if we are not inclusive of every organization and population that make up our communities.

Let’s make sure that the lessons being taught to us all by this Covid19 crisis are really learned. Let us not go back to business the way we conducted it prior to Covid19. Let us start really cooperating and collaborating with one another. Let us put our petty, personal agendas aside in favor of strategies and processes that say “we all matter.” The economy is not more important than the health and welfare of the people. For the economy to be robust and healthy, it requires a robust and healthy population. The economy and the welfare of all of us is not more important than our faith, whether that faith is in God or in the fellowship of man. For our health and welfare is dependent upon a viable and thriving economy and the connection between it all requires a good amount of faith. Let us build more resilient and responsible communities through collaborative economies codified through communities of faith.

How do you like the help our government is providing?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve discovered that the SBA loans designed to help small businesses weather this Covid19 storm, are not only difficult to apply for, but have been more frustrating than anything I’ve ever dealt with. It might just be my experience but if others are feeling half the frustration I’ve felt, then there must be millions of very frustrated and angry people out there. Having to face the monumental down fall of our economy, the plummeting revenues of our little company was hard enough, but then to be given hope only to have that hope get swallowed up by application systems that no one understands. Who do we turn to when the experts have no answer, only platitudes?

I was told by numerous people who’ve been in business much longer than I, “don’t count on the government to really help, They’ll find a way to foul it up!” Foul is the derogatory term I used in place of the term my long time friends in business used when they told me don’t count on seeing any of that 350 billion in the CARES act that were set aside for small businesses. After 3 days of trying to navigate the PPP application process and being no closer to a submission of our application, I’m beginning to believe my friends. Only having our business in operation for 10 years and never having asked the government for anything, I might have been a little naive.

What I would hope for is a system that works. I am sad that the old joke of “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” is as alive as ever. In this situation, the applications are so simple, I am amazed. After nearly 40 years in public education, I can say there was never a simple federal application or report. The amount of paperwork and documentation required for everything was so voluminous that everyone cringed when grant season rolled around. And annual reports were a nightmare.

So filling out 3 or 4 pages of information for a loan that could be forgiven if you just follow the rules! I found that to be incredible. But then there was the hours and hours of trying to electronically submit the applications. And the continuous rejection because the system believes you didn’t fill the form out correctly. It believes I didn’t electronically initial all the right spots and/or sign my form. So you make a phone call and are on hold for 90 minutes because thousands of others are having the same problem. You talk to a nice man who suggests you do a couple things, you thank him, hang up, and implement his suggestions. Then you try to upload your forms again but realize you have to recreate them because while you were on the phone, your account was inactive and you were signed out and there is no way to save what you’ve done. Ok, so the information was not that hard to put into the system, so you redo everything and try what was suggested that you do. Now, thank goodness, 3 of the 4 items I needed to upload, uploaded without a hitch. Unfortunately, the big kahuna, the application form, continues to be a problem. No matter what I do, I get the same messages. Please ensure that all the required initials and signature are on your documents.

So, 4 hours into the process, I’m back on the phone, on hold seeking help. Another hour of waiting and I’m told to clear the cookies, cache, history, and other such things from my computer and I’m reminded to use the Chrome Browser, which I was. Now clearing all that history from my computer sends me back to the beginning of the process, once again. Time to fill in all the information for the third time, which I do. After re-entering all the required information, I try to upload everything again. Once again, 3 out 4 documents upload without difficulty. The application however, will still not go. So back to the phone and another hour of being on hold. That’s 3 and a half hours of listening to fuzzy, garbled, mind-numbing Muzak!

My third expert, a very nice young lady has obviously been talking to a number of fairly angry, impatient, frustrated business people. She’s on the verge of tears, as am I. Her advice to me is just keep trying. The system is overloaded and just can’t handle the demand. I tell her that I understand that thousands of small businesses are fighting for their lives and I know this because we are one of those businesses that are wrestling a grizzly bear and just don’t see how we can win. We thought the EIDL and PPP might be the answer but when the only help we get is keep trying! Well, forgive me if I just don’t have any faith in the system. I want to believe but history is not very good at building a case for trust. So, I get back to entering all the info for a fourth, then a fifth, then a sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth time. With continuous attempts to upload the application. Now after almost 20 hours of trying, I’m about to give up. I may try again another time. I don’t know. I’m depressed, disgusted, disappointed, and just don’t know if I can continue down this path.

I don’t expect that anyone in a position of authority will read what I’ve written tonight but I had to vent. I’m not sure what will happen over the next 6 months. I don’t know if Culture By Choice, or any of the thousands of other very small businesses, will still exist. If we’re still in business, it will be because of the will of the four of us, the continued support of our clients, and by the grace of God. I would hope that the people from the banks and the SBA, who are trying to help, will figure out how to make it work. I’m not counting on it. I will put my faith in God and my colleagues, and thousands of little giants that are the true backbone of this country.

Safer at Home?

Is the baseball season gone? It probably won’t start until at least May. But, will it ever start. I spend my winter months in Sarasota, Florida and today is the first day of our statewide safer at home order. Being able to see Tuttle Ave from my house, I can tell you there’s no difference in traffic today from yesterday. Safer at Home was supposed to mean stay at home, except for essential trips. There’s a golf course across Tuttle, and I was amazed to see it was open and people were playing golf. Now I understand that exercise is an essential activity but if you’re young and healthy, riding a golf cart to play golf eliminates most of the exercise. Baseball may never start. Too many people just aren’t taking this Covid19 thing seriously enough.

If the baseball season is gone, dog gone, will the NFL season happen? I’m a huge Chicago Bears fan! I can’t imagine a fall without football. And Tom Brady in Tampa? Come on Florida. Get with the program. We’re not that far away from preventing “Tampa Tom” from being able to bring a playoff to the Bucks! This is serious stuff. The economy is suffering, people are dying, we’ve missed a week of MLB, and we stand to lose the NFL and NCAA Football seasons. I know some Michigan fans that might not survive without being able to yell “GoBlue!” And what about War Eagles, Crimson Tide, Buckeyes, Trojans, Happy Valley!!!!!!! Arrrrrrgggghhhh! Come on people, for the sanity of our Nation, let’s be Safer at Home!

Hey everybody! It’s time to really get serious here. It’s not just baseball. football, golf, the Olympics, and all those other sports that we love to watch. It’s the lives of our loved ones. I’m almost 70 years old (less than 2 months to my birthday). My brother will soon be 71. I’ve got so many friends that are in their 70s and 80s. But it’s not just me and them! It’s our entire society. We need everyone to stop thinking about themselves and to start thinking about our society as a whole. It’s time to get serious. it;s time for all of us to think about the bigger picture. God loves us all! Each and everyone of us! God didn’t make any junk! We all matter. Please, Please, Please, for the love of God, let’s all agree to do whatever it takes to end this Pandemic. We have the power to do it. It is up to us! And, as soon as we take this seriously enough, we can make this all go away. If we choose to ignore the science, we can cause this to go on indefinitely.

We can be victorious. I expect us to win this war. But to do so, we must put self behind the greater good. As long as we continue to worry about how we look, how we feel, how we want things to be, what we want to do, I just want to have my fun, as opposed to what we need to be doing in the interest of all mankind, we will not win. The virus will win. It will be evolution at its best. Survival of the fittest. Are we willing to say, you, the weak, the old, the sick; you lose; you die! I believe that we are better than that. I believe that some people have just not thought of the consequences of the totality of their actions. We can do this! Yes we can! Yes You Can!

Time to Create a New Normal!

Covid19 has us rethinking a lot of what we do and how we do it. But it’s too bad that we waited for this crisis to begin changing our behaviors. This year’s Flu season is not the worst ever, but it has been very serious. So far this flue season, over 17 million people have visited their healthcare professional due to the Flu and there have been 370,000 hospitalizations. It is estimated that between 30 and 40 million people in the US have been infected by the Flu and somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 people have died of the Flu. Yes, Covid19 is nasty and it is causing horrible conditions for many, many people, but each year the economic and health impact of the Flu is huge as well. If we would take what we’ve learned from Covid19 and apply to our daily lives next Flu season, think of the lives that would be saved, the hospitalizations that would be avoided, and days that would not be lost at work and school.

I’m a scientist by training, having a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Chemistry, and a Masters that concentrated on the Biological Sciences. This scientific training has me constantly looking for the supporting data and statistics for what we say and the decisions we make. When I look at the data for both Covid19 and the Flu, and when I listen to what researchers are discovering, I see the application of the Covid19 recommendations for every year’s Flu season. Research indicates that the Covid19 virus can be spread simply by breathing and talking to one another. We need to avoid close contact with others during this outbreak. Wearing a face-mask can reduce the chances that we share our virus with others and keep our distance will help as well. A mask may not keep me from getting it from the viruses I touch in my environment, but if I practice good, safe hygiene I may not get the virus, and a mask may keep me from being the “Typhoid Mary” of the next Flu season. And how about making sure we all get immunized if we can. Let’s all stay home when we get sick and if employers would demand that sick people stay home, plus provide ways for employees to continue to be productive but not in an environment that endangers others, think how that would help reduce the transmission of disease while maintaining a healthy economy. And washing our hands! My goodness, if we just washed our hands after coming in contact with any potential contaminant. Hand washing in public restrooms trigger a vision in anyone’s mind? I can’t believe the number of times I see men use the restroom and leave without washing their hands.

We can do this people. We can take these CDC/NIH recommendations and apply them to all disease situations. It’s not necessary that 30,000 to 60,000 people die of the Flu each year. If we emerge from this crisis and we don’t learn something important, shame on us. Let’s become better for the experience. Let’s not return to business as usual; let’s move up to a new normal. That’s what has happened after every major catastrophe in history. But sometimes that new normal has not moved as far as it could have. This time, I’m hoping that our new normal will include the behavioral changes that will help us not just protect ourselves and others for each flu season but also prepare us for the next pandemic. We can do this people! It’s up to us! We cannot rely on anyone else to do it. If each of us would adopt the simple saying, “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me!” What a wonderful New Normal we can have.

Courageous Leadership in Times of Panic

So many businesses are in free fall because of the Coronavirus. Many leaders have just shut their doors and called it quits. Others have laid off most of their workforce. The courageous have done everything they can to take care of their employees and customers as best as they possibly can. We have the distinct pleasure of working with one of these courageous leaders, Al Recher, CEO of Five Star Food Service of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Five Star has branches in Nashville, Knoxville, and Atlanta, Georgia as well as several other locations throughout the Southeast. It has done approximately $500 million in business each year but is looking at significant reductions this year because their customers are in dire straits.

Amidst all of this turmoil, Al has insisted that people be taken care of. When suggestions are made that could do more harm to people than the economy is already doing, he won’t stand for it. No one is being laid off, although many have been furloughed, Al’s intent is that everyone will keep their health benefits. All of the leadership team has taken a 50% pay cut for the duration of the crisis. And Al communicates with everyone, every single day. He’s not just concerned about his business, he’s concerned about the impact of this crisis on the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual health of every member of the Five Star Family.

Some leaders would make sure we all know about the wonderful things they are doing during times of crisis. Al wants us all to know about the amazing things that all his people are doing. He has lavished praise on those who’ve risen above the fray to help people both inside and outside the company. He notes that he sees the hand of God at work wherever he looks and is thankful for how his team has responded.

Imagine what our world would be like if more leaders were like Al. Our hope is to help more people view the world through a lens that says people first. We understand that profit is always a product of the actions of people. We also know that short-term profits don’t always translate to long-term profits. However, short-term caring for people can easily be translated into long term relationships which can make a business much more profitable in the long run. I salute you, Al Recher, for the commitment you’ve made not just to the people of Five Star Foods, but to your community, all the communities Five Star touches, and to the world beyond.