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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

392: Robert Rosenberg - Leadership Lessons From The Former CEO Of Dunkin Donuts

Duration
58m
Broadcast on
15 Nov 2020
Audio Format
other

Text LEARNERS to 44222

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

Notes:

  • Sustaining Excellence =
    • Passion for what they do
    • Persistence - "Life is lumpy." People fall and have to dust themselves off.
    • Character - Must be trustworthy, caring, and sensitive to others
    • Values driven - "When things go wrong, take the pain"
  • Bill Gates is an example of sustained excellence - "His persistence, his relationship with his wife Melinda. He's a great example of sustained excellence."
  • Bob describes the time early in his career when he made big mistakes and the board fired him.
    • He said, "I needed to learn strategy. You can't blame your followers. You must take 100% ownership."
  • Read the book, The Best and The Brightest by David Halberstam
    • "You need humility, you need to learn, you need emotional intelligence."
  • How he felt when he got fired?
    • "Unbelievably sad. It hung heavy on my shoulders."
  • There are two ways to respond:
    • Be a victim
    • Be introspective
      • "I remember the moment vividly. I was reading The Best and The Brightest. Hubris was the problem. They weren't going to the front lines to understand what was happening. I thought, Oh my God, Halberstam could be talking about me."
      • "Our job is to LISTEN, get feedback, and fix it."
  • As a leader, you must have the willingness and ability to define reality, not what you want it to be.
    • Read Max Dupree - The Art of Leadership
  • Understand The Stockdale Paradox - "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose —with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." ~ James Stockdale
  • Building trust in a crisis:
    • The 4 elements to be trustworthy:
      • Sincerity - "Your public and private conversations should be the same"
      • Competence - It's not the same as never making a mistake.
      • Reliability - "Make promises. Deliver on those promises"
      • Care - "Treat people well. Care for their well being. It's not transactional. Treat them with dignity and respect."
  • How Bob stays so sharp at age 82:
    • Lots of exercise - He trains 5 days a week
    • Time with grandchildren
    • Planning - "I still have a lot of gas left in the tank"
  • Have a dream -- "Happiness is a mood. You can design a mood."
    • Satisfaction
    • Peace
    • Fulfillment
  • The four primary functions of a leader:
    • Strategy - The CEO must shepherd the strategy
    • People - Get the right people in the right jobs
    • Communication - Align all constituencies behind the business. People must understand the mission
    • Evolve - The world changes. Find a small team of experts to identify the issue, and leave the rest of the team alone to do their work
  • "You need thrill customers continuously."
  • "People will always be evaluating you as a leader. They look at your body language, and see how you respond."
  • Hiring qualities Bob looks for in a leader:
    • Crisp thorough about the job assignment.
    • Complementarity - The use Gallup's strengths. Focus on strengths and them filling a gap on the current team.
    • Fit the culture. Need to be able to work with a team and collaborate.
The world is constantly changing, it's the one constant you can count on, and you have to be adaptable and agile. One of the things that I think core to good strategy is the willingness and the ability to define reality. Not the world as you want it to be, not the comfortable world that you're in, but the world as it really is and how it's moving in the future. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show presented by Brexian Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text. Learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive mindful Monday updates. What I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about, also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text. Learners to 44222. Now on to today's feature leader, the great Robert Rosenberg former CEO of Dunkin Donuts. Bob took a company with 100 shops and $10 million in sales when he first became CEO and grew it to 6,500 outlets and nearly $2.5 billion in sales the year he retired. Throughout his 35 year tenure, Bob dealt with the near death business challenges of a class action lawsuit and a hostile takeover battle among other tumultuous changes, all of which threatened the very existence of the now world famous Dunkin Donuts brand. And a few of the topics we discussed, he shares the four primary functions of a leader and how you can do those effectively. And then there is one book at one critical moment in Bob's life that changed the course of their business forever. And he shares that and then how to lead and build trust in times of crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, I know you'll get a lot of value out of this one with Robert Rosenberg. Bob Rosenberg, I guess your former name is Robert, but you told me to call you Bob. So it's good to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you. My pleasure, Ryan. I've been looking forward to this one and to get us going quickly. Bob, in you have an amazing story and we're going to get to a lot of it, but if you had to think about the leaders that have been in your sphere who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, what have you found to be a few of the behaviors those people have in common? My observation is that those that sustained for long periods of time do have some common elements, I think a passion for what they do. I think a passion for the job that they hold, persistence is incredibly important, I often tell my children. Life is lumpy and very few people ever come through and cross the river without falling off the rocks and into the water and having to get back up and dust themselves off and continue on. That was certainly the case with me in my journey. I think it's true of most people, not only in business, but people and life in general. Persistence is a wonderful characteristic to have. I think behind it, you'll also find a couple of other things.

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