Dare To Serve | Book Review

Dare to Serve: How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others

By Cheryl Bachelder

OVERVIEW

Cheryl Bachelder joined the Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen restaurant chain as CEO in 2007, when the restaurant chains performance was in freefall, internal morale was extremely negative and customer satisfaction was at an all time low. Cheryl and the leadership team had their work cut out for them - they needed to implement a total corporate turnaround. To do this, they collaboratively created a new style of leadership, reassessed their stakeholders and committed to serving them to deliver mutual benefits.

Their new style of leadership is based on the premise that as leaders, they are there to SERVE. This means to empower, to love, to celebrate and to respect their stakeholders and teams around them.

FAVOURITE INSIGHTS

• I love the concept of Servant Leaders and the comparison to Spotlight Leaders. Spotlight Leaders like to be at the forefront, and want to be the star of the show. Servant Leaders collaborate, shun the spotlight and share the credit.

• Dare To Serve leaders have “Daring Destinations” - goals validated by business cases, with clear action plans to achieve them. They take a strengths-based approach to managing people empower employees to contribute and collaborate to deliver the goals.

• The Daring Destinations that Popeyes put together was four simple goals (Build a distinctive brand, run great restaurants, grow restaurant profits and accelerate quality openings). Clearly worded and easily linked to commercial success. This also allowed the leadership team to reassess all the projects and 'business as usual’ that was happening at the time, if anything didn’t serve the four goals then it was cancelled. This is a great approach for teams, because it asks you to challenge everything you’re doing for a purpose and relevance.

• Dare to Serve Leadership has three guiding principles: Human Dignity, Personal Responsibility, Humility.

FAVOURITE QUOTE

“The daring leader helps people see a future state that is greater than their own imagination and worthy of pursuit.”  CHERYL BACHELDER

THOUGHT PROVOKERS

Questions for self-reflection:

• Do you know who your stakeholders are?

• How do you currently serve them and enable them to achieve their goals?

• Do you know if everything that you and your team does is linked to the business objectives? When was the last time you checked?

MORE OF MY FAVOURITE INSIGHTS: