ONE

WHOM WILL WE SERVE?

It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.

ROBERT K. GREENLEAF ,
THE SERVANT AS LEADER

I AM AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST, a certified member of the positive-thinking club.

When we were growing up, my mother woke my siblings and me by playing loud music on the stereo and saying, “Good morning! It’s a beautiful day. Rise and shine.” There was no opportunity for negativity. It was going to be a good day.

I continued this tradition with my children. The mantra of their childhood was “Your attitude is your altitude.” They still grimace when I say it, but the message is etched in their minds. Decide how you will approach this day—and that will determine your day.

The same is true in leadership: your attitude is your altitude.

When I joined Popeyes, the place needed an attitude adjustment. The problem? The people we were responsible for leading were viewed as “a pain in the neck.”

The franchise owners were “difficult.” The restaurant teams were “poor performers.” The guests were “impossible to please.” The board members were “challenging.” The investors were “not on our side.”

The first step in turning around your organization’s performance? Think positively about the people you lead. Your attitude will determine the altitude of your performance results.

DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #1 How do you think about the people you lead? Are they a “pain in the neck” or essential to the future success of the organization?

THE BUSINESS SITUATION

Popeyes’ performance in 2007 couldn’t have been much worse. Every data point that we measured was going the wrong way. Sales were declining. Guest satisfaction was worst-in-class. Restaurant profits were down in absolute dollars and in margin. Morale at the company was negative. Franchise owners were mad and “sick and tired” of bad results. Investors were disappointed in the stock performance and wanted answers. The board was tired of hearing promises that did not materialize.

In the following year, economic conditions would deteriorate as well. Lehman Brothers would disappear. The stock market would fall precipitously. The United States would head into a steep recession that contributed to the slowdown of the global economy. Times were not good.

The odds were stacked against a successful Popeyes turnaround.

What leadership approach would lead to success?

NOT LIKE THEM

Picture eight members of the Popeyes leadership team stuffed in a small conference room at an Atlanta facility called the Buckhead Club. Our job for the day? To make a conscious decision on how we would lead Popeyes to sustained success.

We started by making lists of the traits we admired in the best leaders of our careers. Interestingly, the conversation quickly turned to the traits that we wanted to avoid, traits that characterized the worst leaders we had met.

On the flip chart, we listed words like self-absorbed, arrogant, and condescending.

Before we knew it, we were telling one another stories about the difficult people we had worked for. It became a “can you top this?” contest.

That was a turning point in our leadership of Popeyes.

Our first decision: we did not want to lead like “them.”

We started talking about our favorite leadership philosophies. One person mentioned a book that had been influential in his life, Leadership Is an Art, by Max De Pree. Published in 1989 by the then-CEO of Herman Miller, the book put forth a novel idea—that leaders are stewards of the people and the organizations they lead. When leaders create environments where followers thrive, the business performs well.

Others brought up books that they liked—authored by Patrick Lencioni, Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, and more—and a theme emerged in the conversation. We wanted to be leaders who served well the people, brand, and organization we had been given. We didn’t want to fall prey to the self-focused leadership style we had observed in others. Our belief was that serving people well would generate better business results.

One member of the team said, “I think there is a name for this kind of leadership. Give me a minute to do a Web search.” He was the only one with an iPhone at the time, and he quickly came up with the answer. A man named Robert Greenleaf had written about a leadership approach called “servant leadership.” It was about serving the people well—above self-interest.

That’s it!

Serving others over self.

We quickly agreed that this servant leadership notion would guide us going forward.

DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #2 Think about difficult leaders you have worked for. Have you made a conscious decision to lead differently than “them”?

But there was one more thing. We believed that servant leadership would deliver superior results. The performance of the enterprise would be the evidence that we had served others well.

Before leaving the conference room that day, we had a draft of the Popeyes purpose and principles that would guide our leadership for years to come.

Our purpose: to inspire servant leaders to achieve superior results.

Our principles: six behaviors we saw as essential to serving the people well and delivering superior performance—passion, listening, planning, coaching, accountability, and humility.

We made a decision that day: we decided to serve.

Dare-to-Serve leaders begin by intentionally deciding on their attitude and leadership approach.

• Decide to think positively about the people you lead.

• Decide to be a leader who serves others over self-interest.

It is both courageous and humbling to remove yourself from the spotlight and shift your focus and energy toward serving others well. This is how you create an environment for superior results.

THE MANY CHOICES

If we were going to serve people well at Popeyes, whom would we serve?

We listed all the possibilities on the conference room flip chart: the guests, the shareholders, the franchise owners, the team members, the board of directors, the regulators, the accountants. Had we missed anyone?

Someone said, “Don’t we have to serve all of those people?”

Hmm. Could be true. Let’s go through each possibility.

In restaurants, the ultimate goal is to serve your restaurant guest well. After all, guests buy the food; without them, there is no business. If they are not served well, they don’t come back.

Popeyes was a public company. Shareholders had invested in the business and expected a reasonable, preferably good, return on that investment. We were hired as their “stewards.” Without their investment, we were not funded for growth. If shareholders are not well served, they exit the stock—and the stock price falls—reducing access to capital and the value of the enterprise.

Popeyes licenses to franchise owners the rights to use the brand and the operating system. These owners borrow money and invest it in building Popeyes restaurants, hiring and training restaurant crews, and building relationships with the communities and guests we serve. Without franchisees, we do not have a global restaurant chain; they drive expansion. If they are not well served, they exit the brand—selling or closing restaurants— and reduce our ability to serve guests Popeyes’ famous Louisiana recipes.

DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #3 Who are the most important people you serve—the owner, the boss, the customer, the employees? Which one is your primary focus?

It takes about 60,000 team members to run the more than 2,600 restaurants around the globe. These team members get up every day, come to work, prepare the food, serve the guests, clean up the place, and close the doors. These team members feed and serve the guests. If the leadership does not serve the team members well, those team members go to work somewhere else. Without them, Popeyes is not open for business.

In business, we have many choices of people to serve; they are all important. Would we serve them equally or would we pick one as our primary focus?

THE CHOICE WE MADE

At Popeyes, we chose to serve the franchise owners well as our first priority.

In the franchising model, we make money in two basic ways: we collect royalties on restaurant sales and we collect franchise fees when a new restaurant is built. Those monies fund the infrastructure of the company so we can carry out the service obligations of the franchise contract: brand marketing, new product innovation, operating systems, quality assurance, and more.

We have long-term contracts with our franchise owners—typically twenty-year agreements with options to renew. Thus, we have long-term relationships with the owners who borrowed the money to build the restaurants and who hire the people who serve the guests. Franchise owners do the heavy lifting.

As we looked at our options for whom we would serve, we thought the franchise owners merited our immediate attention. They had made sizable investments and were committed by contract to operate our brand. If they did not prosper, there was no chance Popeyes sales would go up (generating royalties) or franchise fees would increase (from new openings). Either franchise owners would succeed or Popeyes would fail.

This decision was not typical in our industry. Franchisors and franchisees are constantly in conflict— arguing about the contract, the business strategy, the restaurant design, the promotion pricing, or the cost of the food. If the conflict gets particularly bad, threats of lawsuits quickly surface.

Soon after I joined Domino’s Pizza, in 1995, Domino’s franchisees sued the company in a class-action lawsuit. When I joined KFC, in February 2001, I learned of the long history of conflict between KFC franchisees and the franchisor, with a negotiated settlement in 1996. During my restaurant career, the media has reported on troubled franchisee/franchisor relationships at well-known brands such as Burger King and Quiznos, among others.

Interestingly, unresolved conflict with franchise owners never leads to operational excellence or superior sales and profit performance. Instead, franchise systems with high internal conflict have negative business results. It is predictable. Nonetheless, franchisees and franchisors typically don’t get along.

So we asked ourselves a few questions.

What if we dared to be different from our peers? What if we dared to serve the franchise owners well?

What would that look like?

We would have to work closely with the franchisees to choose the vital few initiatives that would improve performance. Once we were aligned on the right plan, the franchise owners would implement that plan in the restaurants. When the plan was executed well by the restaurants, performance results would improve. When sales and profits improved, franchisees would build more restaurants. New restaurant growth would create value for the shareholders.

This could work.

Our success would begin and end with the success of the Popeyes franchise owners.

LOVING THOSE YOU LEAD

Here’s a tough question. Do you love the people you’ve decided to serve?

It helps.

One Popeyes leader said it this way: “If you are in the franchising business, you should love the franchisees.”

To love franchisees, you have to love entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are passionate. They take risks. They invest for the future. They are ambitious. They are definitely not corporate bureaucrats. They do not have much patience with people holding MBA degrees or offering up expensive, harebrained ideas. What if the most important people in your business are entrepreneurs? You must decide to love them.

As a side note, I can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t love franchise owners. I’m biased by my worldview. I believe that democratic capitalism creates conditions for entrepreneurs to invest and grow small businesses. The entrepreneurs are pursuing a dream, and owning a small business is their path to that dream. In the United States, we call this the “American Dream.” People come to this country just for the chance to build their own business.

These are the people we were honored to serve at Popeyes. The Popeyes franchise owners decided to take the risk and invest sweat equity and financial capital in building and operating Popeyes restaurants. They are amazing people with equally amazing life stories.

Here are just a few examples of the many franchise owners in the Popeyes system whom I loved.

Lal Sultanzada is a Popeyes franchisee in New York City. Lal moved to this country from Afghanistan. His first job was working in a chicken restaurant in Harlem. Eventually he saved enough money to buy that restaurant and became a Popeyes franchise owner. Today, Lal has dozens of restaurants operating to the highest of standards. His restaurant leaders win many Popeyes awards. I love that Lal has sent his children to college so that they can follow in his footsteps and run this highly successful family restaurant business.

Mack Wilbourn operates three Popeyes restaurants at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Two of them have the largest sales volume in the system. Mack hires people who take fabulous care of the guests. You will often hear the restaurant manager, Edith, say, “Honey, you are looking good today! What can I get you for dinner?” I love the warmth and positive energy that Mack’s teams bring to guests. They set the standard for service excellence.

John Broderson is a Popeyes franchisee who owns urban restaurants in Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, and Puerto Rico. His career began in a troubled Popeyes restaurant in Chicago that his father had purchased. Over time, John developed a talented team of restaurant leaders who routinely won awards in the system. Several years ago, John went back to Chicago to seek out that first Popeyes restaurant he worked in—and he bought it. I love the fact that John invests in urban neighborhoods, providing career opportunities to many.

Harry Stafford invested in the restaurant business after a successful career in law and Texas oil. His organization owns and operates more than a dozen Popeyes restaurants with excellence. Now in his seventies, Harry remains one of the most forward-looking entrepreneurs, buying property and expanding his Popeyes network in the Houston area. I love that Harry leads with integrity and has invested his time serving as a leader in the Popeyes system.

Amin Dhanani is the sixth son of a family that immigrated to the United States to be entrepreneurs. His family is one of the largest operators of Burger King restaurants, as well as Popeyes. This owner is one of the boldest and fastest-expanding operators in the system, owning and operating Popeyes in multiple states. I love Amin’s daring aspiration for expanding Popeyes across the nation as fast as possible.

Guillermo Perales owns Popeyes restaurants in Texas and Florida. Beyond Popeyes, he is the largest Hispanic franchisee in America, owning multiple retail businesses. When Guillermo saw the turnaround of Popeyes performance results, he decided to become one of the fastest-growing developers. I love that he is willing to invest in Popeyes’ future.

Danny Gililland operates Popeyes in Little Rock, Arkansas. Danny loves restaurant operating systems, and his wife, Lynda, loves training restaurant teams. The Gilillands volunteer to test just about every piece of restaurant equipment or new training process that the team comes up with. I love that Danny and Lynda never tire of debugging these inventions, and their enthusiastic efforts help us make better decisions for the system.

Nareg Amirian is a second-generation Popeyes franchisee, following his successful father, Bobken Amirian, an Armenian who emigrated from Iran. Nareg combines his experience in the family business with an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and runs restaurants in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. I love that Nareg has courageously stepped forward to run the family business for the next generation.

Now I have to pause and apologize to every Popeyes franchisee whom I did not mention. Please know that I love you, too!

DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #4 What are the specific qualities you love in the people you lead?

We had more than three hundred franchise owners at Popeyes—and I loved them all. These were hardworking people who took bold risks to grow Popeyes and to serve our guests well. They are inspiring people, people to be admired. They deserve to be loved. They deserve to be served.

THE DIFFICULTY OF SERVING

If you choose to be a Dare-to-Serve leader, you’ll have one very big obstacle to overcome.

Yourself.

It is easy to say that you want to serve others well, but it is much harder to do so in daily life.

This topic is seldom discussed out in the open. It would not be seen as admirable to admit that your leadership approach is aimed at serving yourself well. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone actually say this out loud.

Interestingly, I have heard many followers tell me that their leader was self-absorbed. It turns out that the people know your motive, whether you know it or not.

They know if you are making a decision to make yourself look good. They know if you are angling to get promoted. They know if you are hoping for a raise to buy a new house. They know your motives by your actions, not your words.

No one is unscathed by this truth. I am as guilty as anyone else. And you?

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?

Even leaders who say they want to be Dare-to-Serve leaders have this question in their own head: What’s in it for me? How will I benefit?

You’re not a bad person for considering this question. You’re just like everybody else; you think of yourself first. So let’s tackle this question before going further.

Here are the five benefits to you of becoming a Dare-to-Serve leader.

Benefit to You No. 1 People will tell you the stuff you need to know. Self-centered leaders don’t invest time in getting to know their people. When the people don’t know you well, they won’t tell you what is going on in the organization. You miss out on mission-critical facts that you need to make decisions. Serving the people well requires that you spend time knowing the people well.

Benefit to You No. 2 People will be more likely to follow your bold vision. As the leader, you are expected to create the vision for the organization. No one will debate that. But you don’t actually implement the vision; you need followers who believe in your vision and are motivated to do the work. To be highly motivated, the people need to know that you have their best interests at heart. Serving the people well requires that you take their interests into account as you lead the organization.

Benefit to You No. 3 People will actually do the stuff you need to get done without a lot of reminding. Self-centered leaders who insist on making all the decisions make the people “leader dependent.” Unable to perform on their own, the followers wait for the leader to tell them what to do. They do the minimum, unless you follow up repeatedly. Serving the people well requires that you empower the team, let them make decisions, and let them lead.

Benefit to You No. 4 People will perform better. Self-centered leaders create anxious, unsafe work environments where people see no apparent benefit in taking risks or growing in capability. The environment is governed by threats and fear; a scarcity mentality prevails. When work is all about the leader’s own ambitions, there is no good reason to give one’s best performance. In contrast, if you serve the people well, you will provide a safe environment focused on personal growth, promotion opportunities, and the fun of “winning” together. This leads to winning results.

Benefit to You No. 5 People will watch out for you and protect you from yourself. Self-centered leaders create the conditions for a lapse in personal integrity. The leader who receives little feedback from the team becomes overconfident, without checks and balances. The leader’s compass becomes “do the right thing, as long as it advances my career.” This blind spot causes the leader to miss the truly moral decisions that are right for the people and the enterprise, regardless of cost to self. The leader who serves the people well finds that the people protect you from yourself; they have your back.

WHAT MIND-SET TRAPS LIE AHEAD?

If you and your team commit to becoming Dare-to-Serve leaders, certain mind-sets will trip you up on a regular basis. Here are just a few of the mind-set traps our team experienced at Popeyes.

Mind-Set Trap No. 1: “But I am right.” It is difficult to stay in a mind-set of serving others when they do not agree with you. Your first inclination is to think, But I am right, and they are wrong.

In leadership, and certainly in the franchising business, this happens often—we disagree with one another—but we must work together to move the business forward. We found that acting in unison as a restaurant chain always worked better than acting in disunity. Nonetheless, it was frustrating when we failed to gain alignment with the franchise owners, particularly when the facts were on our side. Our impatient “self” wished we could make the decision “solo.” While that might be efficient, it would not serve franchise owners well.

In the nine years we led Popeyes, this situation occurred multiple times. We recommended a business plan that probably was sound and probably would have worked just fine. The franchise owners did not agree. We slowed down, swallowed our pride, and prioritized the relationship with the franchise owners over being right. We may have lost some momentum in the short term, but we gained alignment that led to a well-executed plan in the marketplace. Sometimes you must go slow to go fast.

Mind-Set Trap No. 2: “What’s wrong with these followers?” One of the big challenges of leadership is getting the followers to go with you on the journey. This can be exhausting—a constant need to persuade and re-persuade the followers. It makes you wonder Why don’t they see the bold vision? Why don’t they see the opportunities ahead?

Persuading more than three hundred Popeyes franchise owners to agree on a decision was exhausting work, and when it isn’t going well, your self-talk begins to say, What is wrong with these people? The franchising contract gave the company the right to make certain decisions; we could simply say, “It’s in the contract.”

That is tempting, but it is not serving. We reminded ourselves that influencing and persuading others is ultimately more effective than exercising authority over them. At Popeyes, we had a contract if we needed it, but we wanted to use it only as a last resort.

One tactic we used effectively to manage ourselves in this circumstance was this: when one of the senior leaders got “exhausted” with the process of bringing the franchisees into agreement with us, we let someone else take over who was fresh and more objective about the matter. This gave the one leader a rest and a chance to recover positive energy, while the pinch hitter led the decision to closure.

Our franchisees came to appreciate this behavior of the team. It gave them confidence that someone would always stay in the room with them to hear their input, even when one of us got tired of the topic. In fact, after many years of practice, our franchisees often requested that another leader get involved in a matter if there was difficulty getting to alignment.

Mind-Set Trap No. 3: “We wish they trusted us.” Everyone knows that trust is essential to high-performing teams, but it isn’t easy to attain. Once you get to trust, it can disappear in a moment’s time. Why is this trust thing so difficult?

Stephen Covey taught that human beings have emotional bank accounts. If you make positive deposits over time, trust builds in the relationship. If you make negative withdrawals over time, trust erodes.

At the outset, we believed this to be true in the franchising business. Our leadership team invested in making lots of positive deposits in the trust bank account of our owners. We envisioned that each shared “win” would be a deposit that would build a high-trust partnership. Arguably, the performance results of the company alone should have built immense trust with the franchise owners.

Yet we discovered that trust does not accumulate between a franchisor and a franchisee. Trust is built for one decision, but it seldom carries forward to the next one.

At first we were discouraged by learning this—it seemed unfair and unreasonable. Our franchisees constantly reminded us of past decisions that had broken trust—there are many in a forty-three-year company history. Those memories are elephant-sized and they don’t go away.

Bemoaning this lack of deserved trust is a self-serving mind-set. Instead, we encouraged one another to “be the adult.” Another way to say this: we modeled what trust looks like and behaved accordingly. The Popeyes leadership team had strong emotional bank accounts with one another, and that provided the high-trust work environment we needed to be effective leaders.

I’ve come to understand the similarity between working with franchise owners and parenting an adopted child. Because of a history of distrust in their early life, they may never trust you, but you can still lead them, love them, and serve them well.

WHOM WILL WE SERVE?—THE PERFORMANCE RESULTS

To measure how well we kept our promise to serve the franchise owners, we conducted a survey every summer to get feedback from them. This was our report card on how we served our most important customer. Each year, the survey provided us with insight into areas of opportunity for future improvements. This feedback loop was essential to maintaining our commitment to serving the franchisees well.

Table 1 shows how we transformed the relationship with the franchise owners in the first five years of the turnaround. The overall rating of the quality of the Popeyes system remained at 94 or 95 percent satisfaction through 2016.

TABLE 1: Popeyes Franchise Owner Survey Results
Percent of franchisees rating Popeyes good, very good, or excellent

DARE-TO-SERVE REFLECTION #5 How do you gain meaningful feedback from those you serve?

THE DECISION TO SERVE

The first decision of a Dare-to-Serve leader? You decide to serve the people well.

This decision has many benefits. Perhaps the most important is this: People who are well served are more likely to give their best to the organization. That gives you the best prospect of getting superior performance results.

Consciously decide whom you will serve.

Don’t leave this to chance.

At the outset, I suggest that you focus on serving one specific group of people. You will be more intentional in your decisions to serve them well. You will be more likely to notice the challenges of serving and to make adjustments in your approach. You will be more likely to experience the benefits of superior performance.

At Popeyes, we discovered the performance power of serving others by focusing first on our franchise owners. This success gave us conviction about the importance of serving every constituent in the company well—the restaurant manager, the employee, the guest, the vendor partner, the investor, the board.

Dare-to-Serve leadership is a mind-set for approaching every constituent.

Bring your team together today—and decide to serve.