Go your own way
W
hile you may make a move to involve others in decisions, and you are ready to live with possible mistakes, at times, you still have to go with what you want.
“A good leader just doesn’t always go with the consensus if you think the consensus is wrong,” he says. “A good leader looks at why he thinks a decision is a right one and tries to explain why it is a right one, even though a larger number of people don’t agree with that.”
If you are in a situation where the room is against what you were thinking, but you believe your way is the best direction to head, then you have to make that decision.
Such was the case with an idea Young had about one of his baseball teams. The team would allow kids to run the bases a few Sunday afternoons a year, but Young wanted it to be an every-night occasion.
Young presented the idea in a meeting with about 20 staff members.
“We went around and there were probably 15 reasons why maybe you didn’t want to do it every night,” he says. “But every one of those reasons, they weren’t very good ones — ‘It’s going to keep the staff there an extra 20 minutes, it’s going do this, or it’s going to do that.’
“At the end, I said, ‘OK, I’ve heard everything you said, but the customer service and having those kids and their parents go home as happy as can be because they got to run … that’s going to send a great message, so we are going to do it every night.’”
You don’t want to make a habit of making decisions this way, but in instances where you feel very passionately, you should.
“It’s something like that where if I feel strong enough about something, I may listen to everybody, but in the end … I haven’t been able to convince them to look at it from the same perspective I have, but that’s the way we are going to go,” Young says.
After making a decision that goes against the majority, you have to explain your reasons why you made the decision you did.
“When I explained in the end, ‘This is why we are doing it this way,’ they may or may not agree with me, but the fact is they say, ‘OK, he is doing it for a certain reason and we looked at it from a different perspective.’
“So, you get them to buy in. Then, the proof is in the pudding. They see the reaction of the fans and so forth, and if it’s a ho-hum, they might say, ‘Ken, this didn’t work the way you thought.’ Or come back and say, ‘This is pretty enthusiastic for everybody,’ and so they are then eager to go along.”
How to reach: Ovations Food Services LP, (813) 948-6900 or www.ovationsfoodservices.com