Free Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback by David Novak Page B

interact with on a regular basis and ask yourself:
  Who are three people I know who might have some knowledge that would help me execute my Big Goal?
  Seek them out and go get your know-how!
  What are two things you can start doing tomorrow that would help wipe out “not invented here” among your team?

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Unleash the Power of People
    I believe leadership is a privilege. I also believe deep down in my bones that all people, when given a choice, have an inherent desire to do the right thing, to contribute, and to make a positive difference through the work that they do. And I’m absolutely convinced that it’s crucial to have this mind-set in order to get the most out of the people you work with. As a matter of fact, I believe that there is potential in every person, and as the leader, it’s my job to unleash it.
    To put it another way, if there are distrust and bad feelings among the people you work with, is it any wonder that business suffers? I’ve often told the story about how, when I became president of KFC, I inherited not only a business in decline, but a system that was full of animosity. For a whole host of reasons (not the least of which was a pending contract dispute) the company’s leadership and the franchisees simply didn’t like or trust each other. I may have been new to KFC, but I understood right off that none of us was going to be successful in an environment like that.
    My first official act as president was to get together with my executive team and let them know things had to change. I told them that I understood how hard things had been. “But,” I said, “I want you to know something, I love working with franchisees. And from now on we’re going to trust our franchisees. Fighting isn’t doing either side any good. We might have some bad franchisees, but most of them put their blood, sweat, and tears into growing the KFC business, and one thingI know for sure is, they don’t like losing any more than we do. So I don’t want to hear anything bad about them.”
    Next I had to convince the franchisees that it was a new day, so I went out to all nine of their regional association meetings and asked what
they
would do if they were in charge. I broke them into groups, and each group had to come back and present its ideas. Then I just sat back and listened.
    That was the beginning of a new relationship. And I truly believe that if I hadn’t started things off this way, what came next would never have happened. The two things that are largely credited with turning around KFC during my time as president from 1994 to 1997 are the introductions of two popular new products: Crispy Strips and the Chicken Pot Pie. And both of these products came about only because we had a more open relationship with our franchisees. Crispy Strips started because a franchisee down in Arkansas created, on his own, a freshly prepared chicken strip that helped boost his business by 9 percent. When I heard about this, we took the first plane down to have a look. We not only loved his product, but he took us to his supplier, who worked with our R&D team to get enough supply so we could roll the product out across the United States.
    Our Chicken Pot Pie also was a result of working closely with franchisees. I created what I called our Chef Council, composed of franchisees who had a passion for making great food. We’d start taste-testing new recipes at 9:00 A.M. and eat so much some of us had to take a nap in the afternoon! One of the Chef Council members came up with a recipe for a pot pie that started the ball rolling for another big success.
    The thing is, this helped make my career. Crispy Strips and our Chicken Pot Pie hugely boosted sales and led to other new products that did the same. KFC started growing again and almost doubled profits in just three years. And I got the credit for turning around a brand that had been losing for a long time. That success earned me a reputation for leadership that put me in