Since introducing its hot dogs at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, Vienna Beef Ltd. has called Chicago home. And if
James Bodman has his way, that isn’t about to change any time soon. Vienna’s chairman and CEO is committed to keeping his
company true to its roots in what some consider the hot dog capital of the world and providing an income for 450 area families.
Vienna, whose growth has somewhat mirrored that of Chicago itself, now offers condiments, soups, deli meats and pickles along with
its famous dogs, and last year, the company produced more than 250 million hot dogs and recorded sales of about $105 million.
Smart Business spoke with Bodman about the importance of change, how mistakes can help improve future decisions and why
he empowers talented people and gets out of their way.
Keep your ego in check. I tend to hire people
who are more talented than I am. I befriend
them, I give them goals and I leave them
alone. That’s difficult for some leaders to
do. We all have some insecurities in life; I
just don’t happen to have that particular
one. I’ve had problems with managers in
our own business that don’t pass on that
philosophy, and they are afraid to go out
and hire good people because they think
they’re going to take their jobs.
Have trust in the fact that you can hire
somebody who you think is better than you
are. The man who runs our plant is better
at it than I am. The guy who is our chief
operating officer is better at it than I am.
The guy who is our chief financial officer is
new and learning the trade, and I’m kind of
helping him along, but he is dramatically
smarter than I am. He will be better at
doing this than I could ever be.
Expect and accept mistakes. If you walked
through this office and equated the quality
of folk working here with the size of the
business, you would be very taken aback.
We have some enormously talented people.
Of the six or seven folks that I put into the
close cadre of my leaders, any one of them
could be the CEO of this company. These
people love knowing that they can work
for a company that is very athletic. They
can make decisions and see the results of
their decisions right away, and generally
know that they’re not going to get their hair
cut if they make the wrong decision. What
they get is a smile in the hallway and the
knowledge that they’ve got a million people standing behind them, and they’ll make
a better decision the next time.
It’s like having a private in the Army
shooting at the enemy. If he misses, you
don’t go call him a schmuck because he
won’t shoot again. You want him to feel
free.
You want people to have the confidence
knowing that a lot of the decisions that
they make and a lot of the actions they take
are going to be wrong. They have to have
the confidence to continue doing it.
At the end of the day, you’ve got to support them, and when they make a mistake
you’ve got to let them know that it’s OK,
that you expect mistakes and that it’s good
to have a mistake out of the way because
that just increases the probability of the
next decision not being a mistake.
Maintain focus on customer needs and embrace
change. Sixty percent of our revenues today
come from products that didn’t exist 20
years ago. If we don’t keep changing everything that we make and offering tastes and
packaging that are more acclimated to the
marketplace, we would go broke in a New
York minute.
If we ran this company the way it was
structured 40 years ago, we would no
longer be in business. We derived 40 percent of our revenue from pickled corned beef, which is an easy-to-make, ethnically
demanded product. You find it in the Irish
bars and the old Jewish delis and Polish
neighborhoods. Today, it represents 5 percent of our revenue, and the margins are
small.
You have to keep moving away from
things. You have to add value. You have to
give the things to your customers that they
are demanding that are parallel to what
your abilities are. Too many companies get
caught in the old-fashioned way.
I’m 66 years old. You know how I spent
yesterday morning? I spent yesterday
morning walking around with our salesman. We visited 10 hot dog stands in The
Loop in downtown Chicago. I talked to
them, and I listened to what they had to
say.
Five of them bought from us, and five of
them didn’t buy from us. There are now
three of them that don’t buy from us. I go
out and I talk to people. I listen to what customers have to say, and I make a solid practice of listening to our salesmen because
they’re saying to us what the customer is
saying.
Reward effort. If you put the right people in
the marketplace and they give it effort, in
the long run, they are going to succeed. It’s
much like being the manager of a baseball
team.
He’s got a guy playing out in left field
who’s very talented, who’s trying very hard
but who has had a bad spring. Things aren’t
going well, and the press and everybody in
the world is yelling at him to bench the guy.
Just let him go. Give him some time to perform.
I’m willing to accept faults, and I’m willing to encourage people who maybe aren’t
given all the talents in the world, and I’m
willing to recognize and reward effort.
Too many people are fixed in the need to
empirically drive income and promotions
for their employees and rewarding aggression and performance as opposed to effort.
HOW TO REACH: Vienna Beef Ltd., (773) 278-7800 or
www.viennabeef.com