January 10, 2025 • 49 mins
In this eye-opening interview, restaurant industry expert Fred LeFranc reveals how leadership is dramatically evolving in 2025. From the rise of AI and automation changing management tasks, to the emergence of fractional C-suite roles, and the shift away from traditional hierarchical leadership models, LeFranc breaks down what successful restaurant leaders need to focus on now. He explains why human skills like emotional intelligence and self-awareness are becoming more crucial than ever, while sharing insights on how younger generations are reshaping workplace culture. Whether you're a current leader or aspiring to be one, this conversation offers essential perspectives on balancing technology with human elements in modern restaurant leadership.
RestaurantLeadership #FutureOfHospitality #RestaurantIndustry
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RestaurantLeadership #FutureOfHospitality #RestaurantIndustry
🫶 Subscribe NOW - Unlock a world of knowledge, innovation, and growth from the largest podcast network in food service! - https://savorfm.substack.com/
📈 Learn More ~ Restaurant Power Index featuring the top 50 brands' performance in consumer sentiment based on 12 performance markers in food, service, and overall brand consumer sentiment. The RPI features historical and current sentiment analysis for key brands based on the overall market sentiment data. Subscribe for weekly reports on the top brands in the restaurant industry. https://www.savor.fm/restaurant-power-index
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of Rock My Restaurant. Today
is going to be a good one because we're going
to jump into leadership tactics for twenty twenty five, and
you guys don't want to miss it. My name is
Paul Baron and with me today is mister Fred Lafranc
coming in from Results through Strategy, and of course Fred
and I have known each other for a long time.
Welcome back into the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Bred.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's great to see you, Paul. Happy new year.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, it's been a good one. So twenty five is
going to lead us off with I think maybe a
to do list for operators, especially if you're leading brands,
whether you're leading a big brand or a small brand,
you've got a whole new set of things to think about.
And today we're going to cover all of that for
you guys. So make sure it's stay tuned right here,
(00:46):
turn up the volume.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And subscribe now to Rock My Restaurant, the podcast setting
your brand on Fire for you, com into you live
every week. Branding, marketing, innovative, don't get left behind.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
The future is now all right. We're back here with
Fred Lefranc and we're getting into it today about leadership
Taxis for twenty twenty five. Fred. First of all, I
know that you were you were out having some fun
worldwide out there. Is there anything you can tell me
about the hospitality space? You and I always talk about
(01:25):
travel and what you discover in the hospitality side of things.
Have you seen anything that you're like, oh, this is
something that is really interesting from what you've seen out
there among your travels.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, that's that's an interesting question. I had a chance
to be in Italy and Mexico in this last month,
and you know, they're not as tech forward as we
are in the United States in any way, shape or form. However,
what they're really good at is just delivering great food
and great service in some amazing places, and so you
can never forget the fundamentals. I always laugh when companies
(01:58):
so everyone back to the basics. It's like, why do
you forget them? Because you know that's your foundation. The
rest of it is nice. It's kind of nice window dressing,
but you got.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
To exactly but I think that's a lost art too.
I you know, my wife and I were talking about
this this weekend. Is the service on a restaurant that
we've gone to for years, almost a decade, and it
used to be one of the best. I felt like
was one of the best service restaurants in South Florida.
And for whatever reason, you know, over the past six
(02:28):
eight months, the service has just started to decline. And
I don't know if it's staff, if it's an operational
challenge that they're having, But do you think there is
an issue with service right now? What are your thoughts
on that.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You know, it's funny you bring that up because you
remember the Zagat Guide yep, okay, Zagat Guide. Whenever they spoke,
they always said the number one opportunity service because that
was always the lowest score, right, you know, the food
and the ambiance had higher score. Services voice, And you
know it's because that's that's what has to happen right
at the moment, right go into a play and the
(03:01):
actors aren't ready and services were now. In fairness to
all operators, and God bless them for fighting the good fight.
We are really challenged. You know, we have a lot
of labor shortages. You see hours being constrained. You know,
the big thing that happened during COVID is the band
that got ripped off and people realize there is no
(03:21):
safety net in this industry. If you're in the surface space,
you know, there's no retirement. There's really very few companies have,
for one case, down to the employee level, and so
that makes it really really difficult. We have what over
twenty five states raising minimum wage now to sort of
try and make it a little bit better. But the
reality is if you look at it, when I look
at what they call living wage in certain states, eighteen
(03:44):
to nineteen dollars, that really is sort of survival wage.
Who can raise a family and live on eighteen nineteen
dollars an hour. So there's some unique challenges that the
industry's coming to grips with. As I said, I just
came back from Europe where things included in your price,
so they already it's a long time ago. They don't
believe in tipping people. It's a trade. You can make
(04:08):
a living, you can raise a family, and we have
not quite caught up to that yet. And I don't
think it's going to be an easy transition to this
country to do that. The food inflation has been real
on menus. I mean I look at menus now and go,
oh my god, this is like expensive. You know, you
got appetizers starting in twenty dollars, you know, all entrees
started thirty in upper polished casual restaurants. It's like, all right,
(04:31):
this is a real thing, and that it's an expensive
night now. So there's a lot of dynamics, to your point,
that we have to grapple with going forward to twenty
five and part of that is going to be that
whole labor issue coupled with how you deliver awesome service.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So my question, I guess my first lead question is
kind of getting into these challenges from this evolution that
we're seeing in the space. But to your point, service
has been impacted, quality of product has been impacted. We've
seen that. Into your or second point there is that
there is no safety net for the industry. So it
has already created a lot of a problem in terms
(05:06):
of we already had a problem pre pandemic. Now I
feel like we've got even a bigger one in the
essence of being able to recruit and retain talent. And
you look at automation and the promise of what AI
will bring to the restaurant industry. Still extremely early for
it to really see full impact, but in the future.
(05:29):
When you look at leadership c suites out there, is
that even being discussed right now of what we might
look like in five years in terms of a workforce.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I think it is. It is, but it's not easy
to predict, you know, as we've learned with the occurrence
of the pandemic and right now you have like the
bird flu coming into human beings. They are the first
steps reported. Those kind of things are very consruptive. But
what are they considered? Those black Swan events, right they
had to come out of nowhere there once in a
lifetime or whatso, every one hundred years, and you can't
really predict that. All you can try and do is
(06:01):
anticipate what it is. But what I have found with
the companies that have a very clear sense of purpose
why they are in the business that they're in, and
it's not about food and beverage, it's something else. If
you look at great companies Chick fil A, I always
talk about being one of them. I was on the
phone with a couple of operators yesterday, and they see
that their business is an opportunity to develop people. They
(06:25):
call it business as a school, it's a learning organizations,
it's an opportunity to bring people in at early ages
and teach them life skills. And the businesses that sort
of had that kind of focus and attention have an
amazingly loyal workforce because the workforce says, hey, this is
good for me. I'm not just sort of schlepping plates
(06:46):
and washing dishes and making food. I'm actually learning things
because that's part of their curriculum. They really have a curriculum.
And it's wonderful to see that those companies have very
low retention. You know, see me, very high retentionent. You
see very low turnover. And that's what it's about. When
you have companies that just sort of see employees as commodities,
and every company says our employees are our greatest asset,
(07:08):
and quite frankly, there is double speak, and then they
fight a minimum wage increase, and I connects of it.
I'm not here to say everyone should just make more
money just because I'm a big believer in technology. At
some point it makes sense for all QSRs to go
to kiosks. Why we should want to pay anyone any
amount of money to standing how to register and do
(07:28):
what a customer is more than capable of doing. For themselves.
It's a good example. There's a lot of experimentation that
ketch you with cobots to sort of help employees there
and make up for the workforce. But more importantly here
rid of the mindless work make people do things that
sort of challenge them in a positive way where they
can really provide the one thing machinery can never ever
(07:49):
duplicate is human ingenuity, human kindness, creativity, and that's really
what it's about. It's going to just to see how
this all happens. Of course, AI is really bring that
forward very very quickly in many many ways.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I wanted to bring up this article right here. I'm
going to bring it up on Scream and kind of
show a little bit of this with with what's happening
in the space right now. You look at AI technological integration.
This is for leaderships. The other thing that they're talking
about is getting in back to your point, right, there
(08:25):
is prior to and prioritizing, you know, just employee well
well being in general. Right, But you look at the
AI side of things and whether or not we're going
to see that kind of technology really become a thing
within the next let's say, four to five years, because
that's I think that's the real question mark right now
(08:46):
is watching some of the CES keynotes with Jensen Long
from Nvidia. They started a whole new chip now that's
going to help robotics advance much faster. So if you
think about what GPUs have done for gaming and graphics
and where they're going now with autonomous delivery, they even
got a chip that's supposed to be advancing that. I mean,
(09:07):
they're kind of going head to head with what Tesla's doing.
But but the likelihood is we could possibly have low
skill level robots coming into the workforce. It's weird to
say that, but coming into the workforce maybe within the
next three to five years. How much of an impact
do you think that will really have on the food
service space?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Well, it's interesting. It's always one of those things that
just sort of goes very very slowly in one day
to ERPs just h Yeah. Years ago, I spoke at
the Restaurant Finance Velvet conference and I'm talking about what
two thy sixteen seventeen, and in my speech, I brought
a robot up on stage. I pretended I was Thursday.
It was partial, I needed some water, and I said
(09:50):
that it's funny. A bunch of people rushed the stage
with gust warts. No, no, no, I got this, and Aero
Robotics was very nice. John Hat, the founder, brought one
to his robots and it came rolling on stage called Penny.
At that time, it was sort of his prototype.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I remember it. Yeah, two bottles.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Of water and it said, you know, enjoy your meal
because it was programmed to do that. And now that
company has exploded mostly in Asia though, because they're yeah,
in South Korea. But that's changed a lot. I mean
there's always this question, how are people this is front
of the house off, This is not back at the house.
This is a robot delivering your plate food and they
do it now on multi shelves. They have a bussing robot.
(10:25):
That's one of the things listening you got to make
there's a bussing robot. You throw your dirty place in there.
People don't mind that. Yeah, you know so, I think
I think it's going to come into more and more
and more as people figure out how does it work.
Granted you have to have a place where the floors
are even in those kind of you know, details that
are important. You can't ignore them, right, But they do
have a robusts that can go up and downstairs? I'm
not sure you have a tray of food a role
(10:47):
that they're going up and downstairs. However, yes, it's going
to be there. Just look at it. If you look
at a Kiosk as an aid to an employee, is
it a robot in the classic sense of it moving
around like a human? No? But is it technology that
is replacing a skill set? Absolutely? Yes, So that's the
early that's the big one. KOs things like that. You
(11:08):
now have companies that are able to predict all your
food preparation.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
The big thing, of course, is now all the data
we're generating, which is you know, we got mountains of data, right,
we're drawning in data of a star for knowledge. You
now have more companies that Yeah, there you go. That's
that's what I'm talking about. That's got deliver your drink.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So in the agility level of these these, we're showing
some Boston for you guys listening in on the audio side.
We're showing some video of Boston Dynamics, one of their
most latest units. And the agility level of this is
easily humanoid like. So the potential there and you can
see a lot of different you know, functions within some
(11:46):
of the equipment that they're they're going into. I guess
that's my question is what kind of positions would be replaced?
Because this is going to be a leadership decision At
some point, leaders are going to have to stay step
back and say, all right, we're going to have decisions
to make around AI and tech. What areas of our
(12:06):
business are we going to focus on to make this happen.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
The things that are mechanical and nature repetitive are the
things that would be the easiest to do. The things
that require creativity, human interaction, A human touch you can't
replace with the robot you know, you know Sweekerings bought
that robot company, Spice out of Boston years well, help
fact your food. But a human is the one that
touches the bowl ass of a little garnish on it
(12:31):
and it has it to the guests. So everything that
can be replaced mechanically, so for and so on, and
I think is prime for substitution. As I was getting to,
I think the bigger issue is taking data and taking
that data and making it into prescriptive knowledge instead of
you know, your typical diagnostic here's some information which one
(12:53):
has to analyze. Then you get the next level, which
is an analysis of what the report says. Now you're
getting to the level AI that it becomes prescriptive do
this next, because it takes all the thinking out of
it for the manager in that regard that the manager's
not capable. But I'm going to tell you something. When
I ran a restaurant, it was very different than running
a restaurant today. You know, a skill set to run
(13:15):
a restaurant today, especially a complex full service restaurant, is
very very high. Yeah, all these apps exist to help you,
but too many apps is too many apps. And now
you have something that says these people are going to
go on overtime, you know, cut them early, or this
is the kind of food you have to prepare, or
these are the things you have to be thinking about
from reorditing and replenishment. All that data analysis to give
(13:37):
you an offering of what to do next is the
next way. We're already beginning to see now, but it'll
become broader in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, that was And for those of you also, I'm
going to show this on screen real quick. This is
a TED talk that I would recommend you guys taking
a look at and it's called leadership in the Age
of AI. This has got Paul Hudson. I won't play
a clip so it do'll get into copyright with Ted.
But what they the summary of this talk that they
(14:05):
gave was very interesting because what it was alluding to
is that there is going to be a time in
which even leadership skills and tactics will be replaced by AI.
I know that even with our own business, and you
and I talked about this prior to the show. What
I've done is I've built I've built I don't know,
(14:27):
on to my own my ninth company right now, this
is number nine. We're ready to launch number ten, and
we've been able to do so much more with AI
tools just in the last eighteen months that is completely
reformatted the way we hire developers, how we work with teams, writers,
(14:47):
eventually what we're going to be even doing here from
podcast editing and things of that nature. So it's already
started to affect at least my side of the business.
But at some point we also talked about this, it's
going to be able to replace me. You know, there's
enough volume of information of how and what I talk
about that it could look at that AI and potentially
(15:10):
now provide real time decision making processes for my business
is almost on the fly. And there's these things called
AI agents. We won't go into all that. I know
this is not a tech topic, but my point on leadership.
If the tech gets good enough, do you feel that
AI will have the capacity to actually make these kinds
(15:32):
of leadership, not you know, critical decisions, but some of
the minutia that we have to do throughout the day.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I'm going to separate it into two words so that
we don't get caught up in the semantics. Yeah, AI
is going to have an incredible impact on management. Leadership.
Is the human quality? Yeah. I don't think it's going
to replace the human quality of it, right, think you
could easily not replace, but augment management skills. You know,
(16:00):
because I've been playing with some AI tools over the
holidays that you know, record what we're talking about, will
take it, pull out significant things, give you the action
steps on what to do. There's a new one now
I'm not going to name it. My here to promote
anybody or it takes all your emails and calls and
so far and so on, and gives your to do list,
an action lists and follows up to make sure you
getting done best management. And that's my god. I mean,
(16:23):
how many emails do you get at day? I get
three four hundred a day. Yeah, it's crazy. You can't
keep up with it. So these tools, now, that's going
to help me manage my time beta right, But in
terms of the quality of the decisions that I make
based on maybe some of the recommendations they pull together
or that people that have to interact with, I don't
think leadership skills are going to be replaced by a machine,
but most definitely all the management stuff will be augmented.
(16:46):
And I want to say, I don't want to use
the word replaced because at some point, why they why
do they exists? Because you are, as a human a
generating this stuff. So I'm saying it becomes a tool.
So let's take like even the basic you know, November
twenty second, twenty twenty two, to me, it was an
inflection in the world, right, chat GPT was launched and
you look now how chat GPT can work. But I'm
(17:07):
working on a script, I'm working on an agenda, I'm
working on a summary, topic for a panel that I'm
doing all my thinking into it and just say, hey,
give me your best what can you do about it?
And I'm shocked at how well it can really add
some element to it, uh it. And you could even
say if you're writing it and I don't know, you
(17:27):
can't you should not use this stuff for publication. Sure,
very well, because there's you can tell something like a
college DC should not be written on AI. I get
that right, a human effort. But it's interesting. You can
write an article and say, you know, write it like
Mark Twain and it's not. It looks like Mark Twain, might.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You know?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
So those things are kind of funny. I look at
them and say that it's interesting. Now people are they
going to chegue with it? Yes? But put that aside.
Now the idea that it can help you take your
basic thoughts in a coherent way and then give you
stuff that you may not have considered in the time.
Because here's the issue that we all have as leaders.
Time is the most precious commodity. We have no doubt
you don't have time. If I'm a even look at
(18:08):
a programmer, An AI written code can take ten minutes
where it might have taken ten days for a programmer.
You know that's a significant savings. Now you have to
go through it and audit it and so far and
so on, And the same thing happens with many management
tasks of what I have to try and do. It's
all about saving time and make yourself much more productive.
So why not use the tool? But I get back
(18:29):
to the point of leadership, and leadership is about involving
your purpose, involving your vision, involving management your culture. Those
are not going to be replaced by a machine, how
do you okay?
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So, and I agree with that. I think the thing
that we've already started to see is those daily tasks
much much more fluid. Even my team, I'm telling them,
you need to manage your own skill set based on
the area in which you are the best, which is
in the creative side, in the real high level problem solving,
(19:03):
and then use the AI tools to get a lot
of this minutia completed. So I totally agree with that.
When you look at the leadership side of things, Fred,
and I know you coach a lot of you know, operators,
startup guys as well. When you think about their biggest
challenge right now, what would you say is for twenty
twenty five, many people would say, oh, it's you know,
(19:24):
managing workforce or dealing with the conflux of tech. Is
there any one area that you are focused in on
right now, especially in your coaching for leaders that are
having challenges, that question.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Has a lot of implications, and I think that that
is still a universal question that cannot be answered in
terms of an external event. I think the biggest challenge
for all leaders, you, myself and everybody else that I
work with is to know oneself. You know, it's a
good point. It is to really understand who we are,
(20:00):
what are we made up of, what are strengths, what
are our weaknesses? Where do we lean toward? You know,
because we all have blind sites and that always has
to be front and center because the rest of it's
going to happen. You know, life happens. But as a leader,
if you need to be prepared for that, then what
are you doing to make sure you maximize your potential?
(20:20):
As a here idea? Because a company's culture is imprinted
by the leader's personality with all their strengths and all
their weaknesses, And if you want to make a difference,
then you've got to start with yourself. They have to
work on because you don't achieve it self awareness, you know,
the emotional intelligence to sort of deal with understanding again
(20:41):
who I am, what can I do? And how do
I surround myself with the right kind of people to
make sure that they compensate for my weaknesses. And then
as a culture, we are whole and we are holistic,
and we are effective, and we are healthy and we
are smart. That always remains to be the biggest challenge
when I talk to leaders, and we'll get into Okay,
this happens, this happens, this happens. Those are both outside shots.
(21:04):
It's the inside that screws us up. You know, it's
the leaders that fail to recognize what they're doing. I mean,
if you look at I think each chock at Diesus
is a great management writer who is very very on
in years, but he wrote some wonderful books that I love,
and he said, when you have outer disintegration, it started
with inner disintegration. And he's right about that. It's the
(21:27):
inside out aspect of it that leaders have to focus on.
And once I help someone get to the point where
they admit that, and there's assessments, you can take. And
there's conversations that you have, and there's other people that
I work with that help that leader come to grip
so that then they're better prepared to deal with these
outside things that come and hit you. The biggest change
is that you have to be very flexible and very fluid.
(21:48):
I believe in constantly learning. You know, you've got to
be doing that. So you have to at some point
disciple yourself to pick your sources of data that you're
going to draw on or knowledge or information, give your
sub dedicated time time to read that. I mean, how
many CEOs have followed what's going on in CS right now?
I dot very many have you have? And I have
all right, because we know that CEES beginning of January
(22:10):
is where a lot of innovation comes out and it
cerculates down into the economy. A lot of stuff's hair brain,
but a lot of stuff isn't and and so, but
you got to stay informed to make sure you understand that.
Like right now, everyone's slapping AI on everything because they
think that's going to be as No, you got to
really understand what does that really mean? What is machine learning?
There's different types of AI. Is that every CEO going
to spend the time to do that, probably not. Should
(22:33):
they have some of their team that does, yes, you
know that that understands the company's purpose and mission and says, hey,
this is how this can help us moving forward. And
that's part of the key. No different than having a
shift is following culinary trends. It's no no doubt.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, And I think you're you're exactly right. Getting ahead
of it is a key part of it. I think
where you're going with this really kind of centering on
the leadership's internal struggle struggle because if you're right, if
you can't kind of get yourself straight, how are you
going to be able to lead others to do that
(23:07):
as well? So I think that you know, just the
self improvement side, obviously constant learning, all of that component
when you get into I don't want to get into
the the metaphysical or religious side of things, but when
you look at I mean, I've got friends of mine
that do yoga, there's guys that love meditation. There's different
(23:28):
leaders that do it through you know, going out on
these crazy weekends and trying to basically kill themselves. Is
there is there anything that you would say, hey, I'm
sure it's different for everybody. But have you seen something
that works better for a leader to kind of get
centered to where they can really focus in on being
(23:49):
that which is a great you know, great leader.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
The paths to reach a state of serenity are many,
all right, and everyone's going to find their way. If
not climbing gets you into the zone, then go do that.
It meditated every morning gets into the zone, then do that. Again.
There's many paths, but the same the goal, the attainment
of some level of calmness, certainty, serenity, of just stopping
(24:14):
all the chatter in your head, which I've done this
for decades, is a very powerful starting point because then
your clear minded and instead of reaching for your phone
to what read all your emails, reach for your phone
to put on a meditation works for many people. Some
practice right, others is prayer. So this is not about
religion or spirituality, whether the case of the issues. Again,
understand the human body, how the human body works. You
(24:37):
have the best AI tool on the planet. It's called
your mind, yep. But it's not artificial, it's natural. This
is natural intelligence, right, it's NI And if you can,
if you can control this supercomputer. Then you're prepared to
deal with all the stuff going out in the world.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
All right, Fred, So I got to ask you this.
Have you ever done hallucinogenics? Yep, So what happens? I mean,
whether it's a I'll ask a mushroom something like that,
I've I've been there, and there is an unlock that
happens that I can't quite explain, you know, when I've
(25:11):
gone through these kinds of little tests that I've done,
you know, almost like a self biohacking. All right, sometimes
I get a very very i won't say concerned, but
I'm a little bit unsure as to where it's going
to take you. You know, it's like when you do
let your mind go in in that kind of state
(25:32):
and now there. I know there's a lot of top
level minds around the world that really rely on this
as a kind of an unlocked block mechanism. What are
your thoughts on that there? Do you believe in it?
What's your theory?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Well, it's not a belief question. It's whether or not
you want to be willing to risk that and let go.
You know. John Macki, the founder of Whole Foods, just
wrote a book called the whole story. Yeah, big on
md NA and I WAST and stuff like that. I've
talked to him because I saw him recent limit of
the team again in a couple of months, and I've
had good conversations about it. And it's so it's not
(26:08):
about how to put it. It's about tapping into other
aspects of one's humanity. I talked about that earlier.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
The basic things understand, if you look at quantum physics,
all life is vibration and frequency, all right, and that
includes all aspects of our of our body. You know,
every cell in our bodies a ninety nine point nine
percent empty space. All that exists is vibration and frequency
and some and consciousness. Right, So this is all about
consciousness and what happens with these these these they call
(26:36):
it the plant medicine. To use a much more polite word,
is that it unlocks the constraints that one has if
you're working off of your mental body that tries to
control everything. If you're a high control person, this is
terrifying to do, okay, because you are like, oh no, no,
I got to have control of every asset of this.
So what are you letting go up? What you're doing
is saying, Okay, I'm not going to let my mental
(26:56):
body control I'm going to let my emotional body controller
I'm going to let my hermetic body control it. And
that's where it gets very interesting. So the people who
really don't go beyond experimentation, they learn to use it
as a force. Is all that's really doing is just
opening up another door that exists, the rule of your
house that you're able. It's greaty to get into an
access and if you go there with guidance and with care,
(27:18):
you don't just do this to do it. And this
is different than you know, smoking a joint when you're sixteen.
This is a whole different thing. This is yeah, for sure,
this is something that should be guided, but can really
again release the potential you have in yourself. I went
to India in late March and April. I with a
(27:39):
with a friend of mine who lives there, and I
went to twenty six temples. No hellucinogenics in India, okay,
but I went to twenty six temples and meditated at them,
went through seventy five ceremonies, several poujas. In fact, I
have a worth this amulet that I received from Indian astrology.
There's an emerald and there's another medallion here that had
(28:00):
months of prayer from monks in temples in India. Does
it work? I don't know, but I know that I'm
willing to explore those things. But I can tell you
that having been in India for all those temples and
all those those the prooges that I went through, when
I came back, I was changed. I was different interesting.
(28:20):
My wife noticed that, and there was a more calmness,
there was much more openness to it. I felt energy
way out here and say, you know, if he's focus
on your heart, you'll feel your heart center open up.
But when you come back for something like that, your
heart center's opened up and it's like nine feet around
your body. Those kind of things, the shaun wuhu are
scientifically proven to be real. Now why do I bring
(28:42):
that up Because when I talk about leadership, when the
leader becomes more aware of their limits and becomes aware
of their strengths, the hidden strengths. Now you bring that
into an organization, it really changes that in a incredible
way because your your patience, your understand your empathy. Does
it make you, you know, a whush not at all
(29:05):
because there's a difference thing being a kind leader and
being a nice leader. Nice leaders are horrible leaders because
they want to like they want to approval from their
employees and say, I respect you, I love you, but
I'm going to hold you accountable to get your job done.
This is not a charity. And I believe in having
kind leaders that are very decisive, know what you're doing,
and remain nimble. You have to remain nimble because the
(29:27):
world's changing constantly, and it's changing faster and faster and
faster all the time, and the only way to be
able to deal with that is to be calm in
the center and be mindful what's going on. A very
good teacher of mine said something that I found very
profound that I keep in remembering is the universe is neutral.
Shakespeare and Hamlet said nothing is good or bad, but
(29:47):
thinking makes it so. And so that's the key is
to realize that shit happens, and when it happens, it
just happens, and be aware of it. Don't get caught
up in it. Oh my god, this is terrible, Oh
my god, this is fantastic. And if you just see
it as is and then just keep letting life keep unfolding.
It's a lot easier to be with all this craziness.
(30:08):
When people talk about being in the zone, athletes talk
about it, it's like slow motion exactly. Yeah, send me
have quickly. Is sort of this three D world. When
you're in that center space, it's very very slow, so
there's plenty of time to act because you are in
a position where you're not caught up in all the externals.
You're coming from within outward rather than from outward.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
In very cool. I mean, this is the kind of
kind the podcast and content I was hoping to get
from you, So it's going the right direction. We're going
to cover some more topics for you guys. Before we do,
I want to take a quick break and just remind
everybody that this is being recorded over on the Saber
Podcast Network. If you have not checked out more of
(30:50):
our shows, you can just go over to our show's page.
It's going to get you access to all the different
shows out there, including this one. Rock My Restaurant. We
have the Restaurant Mastermind podcast, our Restaurant Report. Earl Dardik
hosts The Catering Cage. We have a brand new show
coming on as well talking about startups, So check that
out again. If you're looking to start a podcast, maybe
(31:12):
you're a brand, or an operator or a tech company
and you're thinking, what way can I get out there
and share my story? Check us out. Just go over
to saver dot fm, forward slash Build and you can
possibly become a studio partner as well to basically go
in and build your own podcasts. And we do some
(31:33):
things that are very unique. We have a discoverability engine
that helps drive audience, We use metadata management to help
improve your podcast overall, and then of course we deliver
it to our large audience. So check it out over
on Saverer podcast Network. We'll get back to the show
here with Fred Lafranc. Fred coming into one of the
(31:58):
topics that I wanted to touch on in this The
reason I asked this question is because I have personal
friends of mine that are doing this now in terms
of not only from a leadership side, but they themselves
as leaders are doing this as well. You and I,
and I think I would consider you in this area
as well, and that is the fractional leadership boom you
(32:20):
know that's happening. This was on Forbes. I'll show the
article just so everybody knows we're not making this stuff up,
but a freelancing boom continuing in twenty twenty five is
what they're talking about. Basically sea level talent. It's what
they're referencing here that will eventually come in CFO potential
cxos of all sort. The C suite now is kind
(32:43):
of up for grabs from the sense of a potential
part time And I know you've actually done part time
leadership and CEO positions from someone who's experienced it done it.
First of all, what has been your experience with doing
it as a you know, as a fractional leader. What
(33:03):
do you take away from seeing that kind of interaction
with brand?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, and let's define fractional. This fractional is not that
you work ten hours a week. That's what's considered fractional.
Fractional is you take a period of time, like a year,
and step into a role as you know you're not
going to be there forever, to ultimately replace yourself. I've
done that several times. I mean, I led one hundred
and ten unit Burner team chain many years ago. I
helped Sara big Laurie when he took over Steak and shake.
(33:29):
I just came off of this last year was supposed
to be a year and a half assignment. At three
and a half year assignment running the commercial bakery in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah,
and so my partner James McGehee, who co founded the
Results of Strategy with me, has been the CFO of
Dave's Hot Chicken almost in inception, and he knows at
(33:51):
some point he's going to step off the boat when
they do some sort of event. We've had people here
take over by supply chain technology, finance. So that's something
that's very very typical for our work and results for
Strategy to come in and take over a role for
an organization, not just assess the talent, to make sure
that the systems are in place, the program are in place,
(34:12):
help hire, help train, replace, leave, and so that I
can say from first and experience, we've had that boom
because we've been doing it all along, and I'm not
surprised to say that more people do it. The question
becomes whether or not how you approach that is going
to be effective, because you can't not come in and
just impose what you think should be done without understanding
(34:33):
the nature of the business. And make sure that you're
not just sort of jerking things around for the sake
of showing movement rather than really say what is the
best potential for this brand. I will tell you right
now firsthand that a commercial bakery does not operate like
a restaurant. Though there's a lot of similarities. You're making food,
you don't have sale You have salespeople, not waiters. Right.
(34:54):
You have delivery drivers, not runners. There's some analogies to it,
but they have unique natures to the business that you
need to be mindful of. And so I think the
fractional part of business is going to grow. We offer
that repeatedly. It's it's a big you know what we
do in a We do a tremendous amount of company assessments.
This past year's the all company assessments order directors, the
(35:15):
CEOs bring us in and say, hey, come in assess
our team, assess our systems, our structures, our procedures, how
we work, and come and tell us again what our
blind says, what don't we see and that it's very
revealing to them because we come from an outside perspective.
You know, there's a great line that says everyone's going
to write to their own perception, but perspective can be different,
(35:35):
and so we can help someone see a different perspective.
It changes it. When we walk into a company that
may not be as healthy as necessary, and you ask
the questions why, and everyone's arguing about that they're right,
the other person's point of view is wrong. I use
a small analogy, but it's effective. It say, okay, mention,
You're at a card table small, you know, three y
three by three by three table, and everyone's holding up
(35:55):
a ball. The question is what color is it? And
someone goes right, someone says yellow, as white, someone's as blue,
and they argue like hell that they're right because what
they see is what they see.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
If you put all the ideas together holistically, you've got
to stripe ball. It's a beach ball, okay, And now
you have strengthened an organization. Now you are taking advantage
of everyone's different perspective to see the whole picture, because
you're not invalidating someone else's point of view because you
feel you are right. Yes, you're right. You know you
may be certainly you may not be right. You are
(36:26):
correct in this case.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's the advantage of seeing the entire perspective, and that's
what we try and bring into an organization.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Do you find that the existing leadership that I would
say controls maybe now probably more quite a bit less,
probably around sixty percent of brands in the market that
you know have kind of been grown from old school,
all right. We've seen a lot of new school management
(36:57):
now make its way in a lot of new styles
of man when people coming from other industries things of
that tradition. You look at some of the problems that
have been out there. This was an article that was
over on Harvard Business Review and I was talking about
problems with traditional education executive education. Do you see the
traditional track of a CEO today or any C suite
(37:21):
person doing the traditional route still today or do you
find the opportunities are being representative to know just different
people from different walks of life that seem to be
coming up in this millennial and Gen Z audience right now,
because it's a different kind of leader that comes out
(37:42):
of those demographics.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Oh, it's very different, very very different. I mean, you know,
I grew up in the boomer world where it was
like the great White Father came out of the corner
office with two stone tablets and said, here go make
this so that doesn't work anymore. That that model has
been destroyed. You need to get to the point where
(38:03):
every employee in your business has an understanding of your
purpose and your shared vision and understands your values to
make their own decisions or what to do next. Because
the decision can't be made from above, It's got to
be made at that level. And so therefore the relationship
that the CEO has with his or her employees has
changed from one of authorities solely, which is much more
(38:25):
of a hierarchical structure, to much more of a matrix structure.
You know, where you know whoever's in charge of a project,
even if it's a low level person, they should be
the one that should be making the decision of what
to do next, not the CEO, because but because they
have the understanding, they have the power. It's that entrepreneur
idea that was brought up many many years ago comes
(38:46):
to wife and today's young workforce. They don't want to
be told what to do. They want to feel that
they can make a contribution, that their efforts matter, that
they're rewarded properly, and the best way to do that
is to have a learning culture, you know, or one.
I mean the hardest thing for COEO to do is
say I don't know or I need help, okay, But
(39:07):
the modern leader is doing that because they realized they
can know everything they do need help, So just say that,
and it's amazing what comes flourishes up from the bottom.
People like they step in, you know, they lean in,
especially if the values align with their own personal values,
which is hard to do. And like I said, they
(39:27):
got to be rewarding. Reward is not just money. Reward
is also intrinsic. Reward is that I'm valued, you know,
I make a difference. I matter.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
So with that theory, because if we are seeing a
dynamic change in the leadership, not only the leadership role,
but how people become leaders, you know, because they could
come whether it's a startup and they start something, or
it's they're coming through the ranks as a midle level manager.
And I know a lot of those that are are
kind of going in that direction right now, and they
have been fostered by what you mentioned afore. There was
(40:01):
you know, a different style of leadership. They've been fostered
through that mid level management, upper level management from a
historical standpoint, most of their cohorts and their colleagues are
coming in from you know, not the Ivy League schools.
A lot of you know, startup you know, kind of
drop the dropout phase, which we saw a lot in
(40:22):
the tech industry. Right But I guess my question to
you is, do you think we're going to see a
shift in how leaders get placed into you know, because
right now, it's still within the restaurant industry, it's still
kind of the old boys club. You know, it's you know,
you want to get Brian Nickel out at Chipotle and
(40:44):
let's drop him in over at Starbucks. You want to
get this sea level and let's drop him in at Roadhouse.
You know, it's this pluck and play kind of scenario
versus you look at some of the other industries that
I'm working in, it's not that way at all. So
do you think the restaurant indust three will change anytime soon?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Well, I think it'll have to evolve. So the answer
is yes, when I can predict that. You know, if
you first off, remember that I grew up in the
era when there was no pe in the industry. It's
all entrepreneurs. Yeah, that was very different, okay, And that's
to be the old school part of them is they
grew up within the business, their operators. They didn't go
to college figure in how to run a restaurant company.
(41:23):
They just did it. They figured it out and they
grew empires. You know, Norm Brinkers and Larry Conocoy. I
worked with Elteredo and people like that. That and then
pe came in and really changed rules, and for a
while we went through the sphace where CFOs became CEOs.
Nothing against CFOs, love CFOs, but CFOs are not known
as an enlightened class. Now it's the CTO. Yeah, because
(41:43):
I used to joke about I called them cf nos.
Their job is to stay And what I we used
to do. I used to do a small group gathering
of CFOs and I would do a little presentation on
being a cf NO, And I said, before you say no,
start asking questions, you know, making sure that the person
comes from pay to not just say can I do this?
These the answers do walk out say can I do this? Well,
(42:04):
why do you want to do it? What's the benefit
of company so far? And so on. So there becomes
an engagement. So they become a little bit broader, and
CFOs can make the lifelong lovely CEOs, but a lot
of them fail. Cmos has started becoming more CEOs if
you look at first Watch or Veld the Taco two
great friends of mine, you know, with Chris and Clay,
(42:24):
who are fantastic CEOs because they've taken the time to
learn the other functions in the business and take them
into consideration, and make sure they surround themselves with the
people who know more subject matter experts than they do
in certain areas, and then have a partnership with their
CFO or their CTOs. So far and so on. I
haven't quite seen a CTO take over a company. Let's
you know what. I haven't seen that, but not to
(42:47):
say that they shouldn't be there. I spoke at the
years ago and I had four hundred CTOs in the
audience and asked the question, how many of you see
yourself as a CEO. Only one person raised their hand.
And these are for restaurants companies. Obviously, if you're CTO
and you have a tech company, it's a different story. Yeah,
so I don't. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
It comes more from I think you're right, that's usually
the marketing area that evolves too.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
The CTO should sit at the big table. There's sure,
there's four foundational departments in every company. Okay, there's obviously finance,
there's technology, there's human resources, and there's integration. Integration is
the one that's least understood and the most needed. Yeah,
all right. Integration is where accountability rests. Integration is where
internally you track all the projects, all the tasks, all
(43:34):
the things that are going on, the accountabilities deadlines and
so far and so on. And that's where the rover
hits the road when the external integration is I'm onboarding
new program, I'm opening up a new location, I have
a new partnership that I'm trying to do here. That's
a different function, but it's the integration function that many
the companies we look at that's the weakest because these
have never considered it. All right, but those four foundation
(43:56):
departments support all the other departments on top of it,
you know, call it or operations, facilities, et cetera, et
cetera that sit on.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Top of it.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
And so that's part of the holistic view. We try
and give the perspective to founders and CEO say, hey,
look at your company in this manner, and now let's
see whether or not is ready for growth and it's
ready to really take advantage of various opportunities out there,
or is flexible and fluid enough to adjust the changing conditions.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, well, and I think to your point, it's it's
in a situation right now where there has become a
very unique C suite that it used to be kind
of the cornerstone of CEO, CO CFO, that was kind
of the c suite corner. Now it's really started to
develop into a lot of other functions within operations, specially
(44:45):
in food service industry. When you look at the C
suite today and leadership teams, is there a new incumbent
that is coming in and playing a bigger role that
maybe has not been there before. And I'm thinking about
people or out there listening to this podcast and thinking
I wanted to, you know, I want to develop my
career more. Which route should I take? You know, Should
(45:08):
I consider trying to become a chief operating officer? Should
I go to the marketing track? Should I look at
bettering myself for a CEO position? Is there any area
that you've seen open up in the industry that's that's
kind of brand new.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Not so much a new position. I think it's how
people see themselves and how they envision themselves. You know.
Can you make a case that marketing shouldn't be a
functional department on top of the other four that I mentioned,
Should it be down below in the foundation departments? Because
it now becomes branding, right, you know, And it's not
semantics because branding now permeates everything. It's the spirit that
(45:46):
moves us, so to speak, internally and externally as well,
because now branding I've seen good branding officers. They have
as much impact on the culture partnering with HR as
they do with the guests. Yeah, you know, and this
came about in COVID because what happened with the marketing officer.
The CMO by default had to take over the digital
(46:07):
experience when COVID came about, So they became sort of
the chief Marketing Technology Officer. And now what you're seeing
is that's evolved to the Chief Experience Officer. Now they're ceexos.
And that position of CXO, if you look at it
internally to your employees, if you look at the xton
to your guests, that's a position that's been a sentence
(46:29):
in the last few years, and more and more companies
have begun to do it, and they have yet to
get the full effect to really step into a broader
foundational role. But I think that's the one that's going
to be there, and then they can decide whether they
want to be a CEO.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Or Yeah, I think so. Well. Listen, this has been
a good topic today we're going to try to cover.
We'll cover some more topics like this around leadership on
the show. For it's always fun having you on. As
a reminder for everyone, make sure and check out the
YouTube channel if you're want to catch the video version
of the podcast. Just by going over to YouTube and
(47:03):
hitting saber Fm, you'll find us over there. We just
cracked one hundred and twenty five thousand subscribers over there.
Our most recent videos out there best Tech for Business,
We just did one on AI that just dropped this morning.
A lot of going on the Best of twenty twenty four,
So there's a lot happening out there that you guys
can catch all of our content. I would suggest take
(47:24):
a look at this one right here that I'm showing
on screen, which is the NFT collaboration on what McDonald's
has been doing. This podcast right here was fantastic because
it really got into what McDonald's is doing in the
web three space. So check it out see what you
guys think. And of course, also I want you to
(47:45):
visit Fred's website and I'm going to bring Fred's website
up here that is Results through Strategy. Check it out
if you want to learn more about Fred Lafronk and
what is his team are doing over there. How do
you turn to or who do you turn to when
everyone turned to you? I like that one. That's a
great that's a great theme. I was reading that earlier
(48:05):
this morning and I said, that's a good question. Actually,
who do you turn to?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
That's right, Well, CEOs, I have a lonely role. They
can't tell the board, they don't know what you're doing, they.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Can't It's lonely at the top. Man, it's lonely at
the top. I've said that for years. Is you don't
have if you're if you're an entrepreneur, you have very
few friends except the mentors or mentees or usually the
colleagues around you that in most of the time are
trying to decap you as well, because they're a competitor,
(48:34):
so so you kind of have to walk a little
bit of an interesting way. So I don't I don't uh,
I don't envy you Fred getting out there and doing all. Man,
you guys have really done a lot of work with
a lot of different clients. I didn't realize you were
touching so many different areas of the industry. So congrats
on everything you're doing over at Results or Strategy.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Well, thank you, Paul. This has been delightful conversation is
a great way to kick off from the new Europe
you bet.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Anyway, thanks again for brad Ler Frank coming in. If
you guys are not subscribed to the show right now,
do that take a time get that little subscribe button.
It does help us out whether you're watching or you're listening.
And of course we'll catch you next time. Right here,
Unrock my restaurant.
Welcome back to another episode of Rock My Restaurant. Today
is going to be a good one because we're going
to jump into leadership tactics for twenty twenty five, and
you guys don't want to miss it. My name is
Paul Baron and with me today is mister Fred Lafranc
coming in from Results through Strategy, and of course Fred
and I have known each other for a long time.
Welcome back into the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Bred.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's great to see you, Paul. Happy new year.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, it's been a good one. So twenty five is
going to lead us off with I think maybe a
to do list for operators, especially if you're leading brands,
whether you're leading a big brand or a small brand,
you've got a whole new set of things to think about.
And today we're going to cover all of that for
you guys. So make sure it's stay tuned right here,
(00:46):
turn up the volume.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And subscribe now to Rock My Restaurant, the podcast setting
your brand on Fire for you, com into you live
every week. Branding, marketing, innovative, don't get left behind.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
The future is now all right. We're back here with
Fred Lefranc and we're getting into it today about leadership
Taxis for twenty twenty five. Fred. First of all, I
know that you were you were out having some fun
worldwide out there. Is there anything you can tell me
about the hospitality space? You and I always talk about
(01:25):
travel and what you discover in the hospitality side of things.
Have you seen anything that you're like, oh, this is
something that is really interesting from what you've seen out
there among your travels.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, that's that's an interesting question. I had a chance
to be in Italy and Mexico in this last month,
and you know, they're not as tech forward as we
are in the United States in any way, shape or form. However,
what they're really good at is just delivering great food
and great service in some amazing places, and so you
can never forget the fundamentals. I always laugh when companies
(01:58):
so everyone back to the basics. It's like, why do
you forget them? Because you know that's your foundation. The
rest of it is nice. It's kind of nice window dressing,
but you got.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
To exactly but I think that's a lost art too.
I you know, my wife and I were talking about
this this weekend. Is the service on a restaurant that
we've gone to for years, almost a decade, and it
used to be one of the best. I felt like
was one of the best service restaurants in South Florida.
And for whatever reason, you know, over the past six
(02:28):
eight months, the service has just started to decline. And
I don't know if it's staff, if it's an operational
challenge that they're having, But do you think there is
an issue with service right now? What are your thoughts
on that.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You know, it's funny you bring that up because you
remember the Zagat Guide yep, okay, Zagat Guide. Whenever they spoke,
they always said the number one opportunity service because that
was always the lowest score, right, you know, the food
and the ambiance had higher score. Services voice, And you
know it's because that's that's what has to happen right
at the moment, right go into a play and the
(03:01):
actors aren't ready and services were now. In fairness to
all operators, and God bless them for fighting the good fight.
We are really challenged. You know, we have a lot
of labor shortages. You see hours being constrained. You know,
the big thing that happened during COVID is the band
that got ripped off and people realize there is no
(03:21):
safety net in this industry. If you're in the surface space,
you know, there's no retirement. There's really very few companies have,
for one case, down to the employee level, and so
that makes it really really difficult. We have what over
twenty five states raising minimum wage now to sort of
try and make it a little bit better. But the
reality is if you look at it, when I look
at what they call living wage in certain states, eighteen
(03:44):
to nineteen dollars, that really is sort of survival wage.
Who can raise a family and live on eighteen nineteen
dollars an hour. So there's some unique challenges that the
industry's coming to grips with. As I said, I just
came back from Europe where things included in your price,
so they already it's a long time ago. They don't
believe in tipping people. It's a trade. You can make
(04:08):
a living, you can raise a family, and we have
not quite caught up to that yet. And I don't
think it's going to be an easy transition to this
country to do that. The food inflation has been real
on menus. I mean I look at menus now and go,
oh my god, this is like expensive. You know, you
got appetizers starting in twenty dollars, you know, all entrees
started thirty in upper polished casual restaurants. It's like, all right,
(04:31):
this is a real thing, and that it's an expensive
night now. So there's a lot of dynamics, to your point,
that we have to grapple with going forward to twenty
five and part of that is going to be that
whole labor issue coupled with how you deliver awesome service.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So my question, I guess my first lead question is
kind of getting into these challenges from this evolution that
we're seeing in the space. But to your point, service
has been impacted, quality of product has been impacted. We've
seen that. Into your or second point there is that
there is no safety net for the industry. So it
has already created a lot of a problem in terms
(05:06):
of we already had a problem pre pandemic. Now I
feel like we've got even a bigger one in the
essence of being able to recruit and retain talent. And
you look at automation and the promise of what AI
will bring to the restaurant industry. Still extremely early for
it to really see full impact, but in the future.
(05:29):
When you look at leadership c suites out there, is
that even being discussed right now of what we might
look like in five years in terms of a workforce.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
I think it is. It is, but it's not easy
to predict, you know, as we've learned with the occurrence
of the pandemic and right now you have like the
bird flu coming into human beings. They are the first
steps reported. Those kind of things are very consruptive. But
what are they considered? Those black Swan events, right they
had to come out of nowhere there once in a
lifetime or whatso, every one hundred years, and you can't
really predict that. All you can try and do is
(06:01):
anticipate what it is. But what I have found with
the companies that have a very clear sense of purpose
why they are in the business that they're in, and
it's not about food and beverage, it's something else. If
you look at great companies Chick fil A, I always
talk about being one of them. I was on the
phone with a couple of operators yesterday, and they see
that their business is an opportunity to develop people. They
(06:25):
call it business as a school, it's a learning organizations,
it's an opportunity to bring people in at early ages
and teach them life skills. And the businesses that sort
of had that kind of focus and attention have an
amazingly loyal workforce because the workforce says, hey, this is
good for me. I'm not just sort of schlepping plates
(06:46):
and washing dishes and making food. I'm actually learning things
because that's part of their curriculum. They really have a curriculum.
And it's wonderful to see that those companies have very
low retention. You know, see me, very high retentionent. You
see very low turnover. And that's what it's about. When
you have companies that just sort of see employees as commodities,
and every company says our employees are our greatest asset,
(07:08):
and quite frankly, there is double speak, and then they
fight a minimum wage increase, and I connects of it.
I'm not here to say everyone should just make more
money just because I'm a big believer in technology. At
some point it makes sense for all QSRs to go
to kiosks. Why we should want to pay anyone any
amount of money to standing how to register and do
(07:28):
what a customer is more than capable of doing. For themselves.
It's a good example. There's a lot of experimentation that
ketch you with cobots to sort of help employees there
and make up for the workforce. But more importantly here
rid of the mindless work make people do things that
sort of challenge them in a positive way where they
can really provide the one thing machinery can never ever
(07:49):
duplicate is human ingenuity, human kindness, creativity, and that's really
what it's about. It's going to just to see how
this all happens. Of course, AI is really bring that
forward very very quickly in many many ways.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I wanted to bring up this article right here. I'm
going to bring it up on Scream and kind of
show a little bit of this with with what's happening
in the space right now. You look at AI technological integration.
This is for leaderships. The other thing that they're talking
about is getting in back to your point, right, there
(08:25):
is prior to and prioritizing, you know, just employee well
well being in general. Right, But you look at the
AI side of things and whether or not we're going
to see that kind of technology really become a thing
within the next let's say, four to five years, because
that's I think that's the real question mark right now
(08:46):
is watching some of the CES keynotes with Jensen Long
from Nvidia. They started a whole new chip now that's
going to help robotics advance much faster. So if you
think about what GPUs have done for gaming and graphics
and where they're going now with autonomous delivery, they even
got a chip that's supposed to be advancing that. I mean,
(09:07):
they're kind of going head to head with what Tesla's doing.
But but the likelihood is we could possibly have low
skill level robots coming into the workforce. It's weird to
say that, but coming into the workforce maybe within the
next three to five years. How much of an impact
do you think that will really have on the food
service space?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Well, it's interesting. It's always one of those things that
just sort of goes very very slowly in one day
to ERPs just h Yeah. Years ago, I spoke at
the Restaurant Finance Velvet conference and I'm talking about what
two thy sixteen seventeen, and in my speech, I brought
a robot up on stage. I pretended I was Thursday.
It was partial, I needed some water, and I said
(09:50):
that it's funny. A bunch of people rushed the stage
with gust warts. No, no, no, I got this, and Aero
Robotics was very nice. John Hat, the founder, brought one
to his robots and it came rolling on stage called Penny.
At that time, it was sort of his prototype.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I remember it. Yeah, two bottles.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Of water and it said, you know, enjoy your meal
because it was programmed to do that. And now that
company has exploded mostly in Asia though, because they're yeah,
in South Korea. But that's changed a lot. I mean
there's always this question, how are people this is front
of the house off, This is not back at the house.
This is a robot delivering your plate food and they
do it now on multi shelves. They have a bussing robot.
(10:25):
That's one of the things listening you got to make
there's a bussing robot. You throw your dirty place in there.
People don't mind that. Yeah, you know so, I think
I think it's going to come into more and more
and more as people figure out how does it work.
Granted you have to have a place where the floors
are even in those kind of you know, details that
are important. You can't ignore them, right, But they do
have a robusts that can go up and downstairs? I'm
not sure you have a tray of food a role
(10:47):
that they're going up and downstairs. However, yes, it's going
to be there. Just look at it. If you look
at a Kiosk as an aid to an employee, is
it a robot in the classic sense of it moving
around like a human? No? But is it technology that
is replacing a skill set? Absolutely? Yes, So that's the
early that's the big one. KOs things like that. You
(11:08):
now have companies that are able to predict all your
food preparation.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
The big thing, of course, is now all the data
we're generating, which is you know, we got mountains of data, right,
we're drawning in data of a star for knowledge. You
now have more companies that Yeah, there you go. That's
that's what I'm talking about. That's got deliver your drink.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So in the agility level of these these, we're showing
some Boston for you guys listening in on the audio side.
We're showing some video of Boston Dynamics, one of their
most latest units. And the agility level of this is
easily humanoid like. So the potential there and you can
see a lot of different you know, functions within some
(11:46):
of the equipment that they're they're going into. I guess
that's my question is what kind of positions would be replaced?
Because this is going to be a leadership decision At
some point, leaders are going to have to stay step
back and say, all right, we're going to have decisions
to make around AI and tech. What areas of our
(12:06):
business are we going to focus on to make this happen.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
The things that are mechanical and nature repetitive are the
things that would be the easiest to do. The things
that require creativity, human interaction, A human touch you can't
replace with the robot you know, you know Sweekerings bought
that robot company, Spice out of Boston years well, help
fact your food. But a human is the one that
touches the bowl ass of a little garnish on it
(12:31):
and it has it to the guests. So everything that
can be replaced mechanically, so for and so on, and
I think is prime for substitution. As I was getting to,
I think the bigger issue is taking data and taking
that data and making it into prescriptive knowledge instead of
you know, your typical diagnostic here's some information which one
(12:53):
has to analyze. Then you get the next level, which
is an analysis of what the report says. Now you're
getting to the level AI that it becomes prescriptive do
this next, because it takes all the thinking out of
it for the manager in that regard that the manager's
not capable. But I'm going to tell you something. When
I ran a restaurant, it was very different than running
a restaurant today. You know, a skill set to run
(13:15):
a restaurant today, especially a complex full service restaurant, is
very very high. Yeah, all these apps exist to help you,
but too many apps is too many apps. And now
you have something that says these people are going to
go on overtime, you know, cut them early, or this
is the kind of food you have to prepare, or
these are the things you have to be thinking about
from reorditing and replenishment. All that data analysis to give
(13:37):
you an offering of what to do next is the
next way. We're already beginning to see now, but it'll
become broader in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, that was And for those of you also, I'm
going to show this on screen real quick. This is
a TED talk that I would recommend you guys taking
a look at and it's called leadership in the Age
of AI. This has got Paul Hudson. I won't play
a clip so it do'll get into copyright with Ted.
But what they the summary of this talk that they
(14:05):
gave was very interesting because what it was alluding to
is that there is going to be a time in
which even leadership skills and tactics will be replaced by AI.
I know that even with our own business, and you
and I talked about this prior to the show. What
I've done is I've built I've built I don't know,
(14:27):
on to my own my ninth company right now, this
is number nine. We're ready to launch number ten, and
we've been able to do so much more with AI
tools just in the last eighteen months that is completely
reformatted the way we hire developers, how we work with teams, writers,
(14:47):
eventually what we're going to be even doing here from
podcast editing and things of that nature. So it's already
started to affect at least my side of the business.
But at some point we also talked about this, it's
going to be able to replace me. You know, there's
enough volume of information of how and what I talk
about that it could look at that AI and potentially
(15:10):
now provide real time decision making processes for my business
is almost on the fly. And there's these things called
AI agents. We won't go into all that. I know
this is not a tech topic, but my point on leadership.
If the tech gets good enough, do you feel that
AI will have the capacity to actually make these kinds
(15:32):
of leadership, not you know, critical decisions, but some of
the minutia that we have to do throughout the day.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I'm going to separate it into two words so that
we don't get caught up in the semantics. Yeah, AI
is going to have an incredible impact on management. Leadership.
Is the human quality? Yeah. I don't think it's going
to replace the human quality of it, right, think you
could easily not replace, but augment management skills. You know,
(16:00):
because I've been playing with some AI tools over the
holidays that you know, record what we're talking about, will
take it, pull out significant things, give you the action
steps on what to do. There's a new one now
I'm not going to name it. My here to promote
anybody or it takes all your emails and calls and
so far and so on, and gives your to do list,
an action lists and follows up to make sure you
getting done best management. And that's my god. I mean,
(16:23):
how many emails do you get at day? I get
three four hundred a day. Yeah, it's crazy. You can't
keep up with it. So these tools, now, that's going
to help me manage my time beta right, But in
terms of the quality of the decisions that I make
based on maybe some of the recommendations they pull together
or that people that have to interact with, I don't
think leadership skills are going to be replaced by a machine,
but most definitely all the management stuff will be augmented.
(16:46):
And I want to say, I don't want to use
the word replaced because at some point, why they why
do they exists? Because you are, as a human a
generating this stuff. So I'm saying it becomes a tool.
So let's take like even the basic you know, November
twenty second, twenty twenty two, to me, it was an
inflection in the world, right, chat GPT was launched and
you look now how chat GPT can work. But I'm
(17:07):
working on a script, I'm working on an agenda, I'm
working on a summary, topic for a panel that I'm
doing all my thinking into it and just say, hey,
give me your best what can you do about it?
And I'm shocked at how well it can really add
some element to it, uh it. And you could even
say if you're writing it and I don't know, you
(17:27):
can't you should not use this stuff for publication. Sure,
very well, because there's you can tell something like a
college DC should not be written on AI. I get
that right, a human effort. But it's interesting. You can
write an article and say, you know, write it like
Mark Twain and it's not. It looks like Mark Twain, might.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
You know?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
So those things are kind of funny. I look at
them and say that it's interesting. Now people are they
going to chegue with it? Yes? But put that aside.
Now the idea that it can help you take your
basic thoughts in a coherent way and then give you
stuff that you may not have considered in the time.
Because here's the issue that we all have as leaders.
Time is the most precious commodity. We have no doubt
you don't have time. If I'm a even look at
(18:08):
a programmer, An AI written code can take ten minutes
where it might have taken ten days for a programmer.
You know that's a significant savings. Now you have to
go through it and audit it and so far and
so on, And the same thing happens with many management
tasks of what I have to try and do. It's
all about saving time and make yourself much more productive.
So why not use the tool? But I get back
(18:29):
to the point of leadership, and leadership is about involving
your purpose, involving your vision, involving management your culture. Those
are not going to be replaced by a machine, how
do you okay?
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So, and I agree with that. I think the thing
that we've already started to see is those daily tasks
much much more fluid. Even my team, I'm telling them,
you need to manage your own skill set based on
the area in which you are the best, which is
in the creative side, in the real high level problem solving,
(19:03):
and then use the AI tools to get a lot
of this minutia completed. So I totally agree with that.
When you look at the leadership side of things, Fred,
and I know you coach a lot of you know, operators,
startup guys as well. When you think about their biggest
challenge right now, what would you say is for twenty
twenty five, many people would say, oh, it's you know,
(19:24):
managing workforce or dealing with the conflux of tech. Is
there any one area that you are focused in on
right now, especially in your coaching for leaders that are
having challenges, that question.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Has a lot of implications, and I think that that
is still a universal question that cannot be answered in
terms of an external event. I think the biggest challenge
for all leaders, you, myself and everybody else that I
work with is to know oneself. You know, it's a
good point. It is to really understand who we are,
(20:00):
what are we made up of, what are strengths, what
are our weaknesses? Where do we lean toward? You know,
because we all have blind sites and that always has
to be front and center because the rest of it's
going to happen. You know, life happens. But as a leader,
if you need to be prepared for that, then what
are you doing to make sure you maximize your potential?
(20:20):
As a here idea? Because a company's culture is imprinted
by the leader's personality with all their strengths and all
their weaknesses, And if you want to make a difference,
then you've got to start with yourself. They have to
work on because you don't achieve it self awareness, you know,
the emotional intelligence to sort of deal with understanding again
(20:41):
who I am, what can I do? And how do
I surround myself with the right kind of people to
make sure that they compensate for my weaknesses. And then
as a culture, we are whole and we are holistic,
and we are effective, and we are healthy and we
are smart. That always remains to be the biggest challenge
when I talk to leaders, and we'll get into Okay,
this happens, this happens, this happens. Those are both outside shots.
(21:04):
It's the inside that screws us up. You know, it's
the leaders that fail to recognize what they're doing. I mean,
if you look at I think each chock at Diesus
is a great management writer who is very very on
in years, but he wrote some wonderful books that I love,
and he said, when you have outer disintegration, it started
with inner disintegration. And he's right about that. It's the
(21:27):
inside out aspect of it that leaders have to focus on.
And once I help someone get to the point where
they admit that, and there's assessments, you can take. And
there's conversations that you have, and there's other people that
I work with that help that leader come to grip
so that then they're better prepared to deal with these
outside things that come and hit you. The biggest change
is that you have to be very flexible and very fluid.
(21:48):
I believe in constantly learning. You know, you've got to
be doing that. So you have to at some point
disciple yourself to pick your sources of data that you're
going to draw on or knowledge or information, give your
sub dedicated time time to read that. I mean, how
many CEOs have followed what's going on in CS right now?
I dot very many have you have? And I have
all right, because we know that CEES beginning of January
(22:10):
is where a lot of innovation comes out and it
cerculates down into the economy. A lot of stuff's hair brain,
but a lot of stuff isn't and and so, but
you got to stay informed to make sure you understand that.
Like right now, everyone's slapping AI on everything because they
think that's going to be as No, you got to
really understand what does that really mean? What is machine learning?
There's different types of AI. Is that every CEO going
to spend the time to do that, probably not. Should
(22:33):
they have some of their team that does, yes, you
know that that understands the company's purpose and mission and says, hey,
this is how this can help us moving forward. And
that's part of the key. No different than having a
shift is following culinary trends. It's no no doubt.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, And I think you're you're exactly right. Getting ahead
of it is a key part of it. I think
where you're going with this really kind of centering on
the leadership's internal struggle struggle because if you're right, if
you can't kind of get yourself straight, how are you
going to be able to lead others to do that
(23:07):
as well? So I think that you know, just the
self improvement side, obviously constant learning, all of that component
when you get into I don't want to get into
the the metaphysical or religious side of things, but when
you look at I mean, I've got friends of mine
that do yoga, there's guys that love meditation. There's different
(23:28):
leaders that do it through you know, going out on
these crazy weekends and trying to basically kill themselves. Is
there is there anything that you would say, hey, I'm
sure it's different for everybody. But have you seen something
that works better for a leader to kind of get
centered to where they can really focus in on being
(23:49):
that which is a great you know, great leader.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
The paths to reach a state of serenity are many,
all right, and everyone's going to find their way. If
not climbing gets you into the zone, then go do that.
It meditated every morning gets into the zone, then do that. Again.
There's many paths, but the same the goal, the attainment
of some level of calmness, certainty, serenity, of just stopping
(24:14):
all the chatter in your head, which I've done this
for decades, is a very powerful starting point because then
your clear minded and instead of reaching for your phone
to what read all your emails, reach for your phone
to put on a meditation works for many people. Some
practice right, others is prayer. So this is not about
religion or spirituality, whether the case of the issues. Again,
understand the human body, how the human body works. You
(24:37):
have the best AI tool on the planet. It's called
your mind, yep. But it's not artificial, it's natural. This
is natural intelligence, right, it's NI And if you can,
if you can control this supercomputer. Then you're prepared to
deal with all the stuff going out in the world.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
All right, Fred, So I got to ask you this.
Have you ever done hallucinogenics? Yep, So what happens? I mean,
whether it's a I'll ask a mushroom something like that,
I've I've been there, and there is an unlock that
happens that I can't quite explain, you know, when I've
(25:11):
gone through these kinds of little tests that I've done,
you know, almost like a self biohacking. All right, sometimes
I get a very very i won't say concerned, but
I'm a little bit unsure as to where it's going
to take you. You know, it's like when you do
let your mind go in in that kind of state
(25:32):
and now there. I know there's a lot of top
level minds around the world that really rely on this
as a kind of an unlocked block mechanism. What are
your thoughts on that there? Do you believe in it?
What's your theory?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Well, it's not a belief question. It's whether or not
you want to be willing to risk that and let go.
You know. John Macki, the founder of Whole Foods, just
wrote a book called the whole story. Yeah, big on
md NA and I WAST and stuff like that. I've
talked to him because I saw him recent limit of
the team again in a couple of months, and I've
had good conversations about it. And it's so it's not
(26:08):
about how to put it. It's about tapping into other
aspects of one's humanity. I talked about that earlier.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
The basic things understand, if you look at quantum physics,
all life is vibration and frequency, all right, and that
includes all aspects of our of our body. You know,
every cell in our bodies a ninety nine point nine
percent empty space. All that exists is vibration and frequency
and some and consciousness. Right, So this is all about
consciousness and what happens with these these these they call
(26:36):
it the plant medicine. To use a much more polite word,
is that it unlocks the constraints that one has if
you're working off of your mental body that tries to
control everything. If you're a high control person, this is
terrifying to do, okay, because you are like, oh no, no,
I got to have control of every asset of this.
So what are you letting go up? What you're doing
is saying, Okay, I'm not going to let my mental
(26:56):
body control I'm going to let my emotional body controller
I'm going to let my hermetic body control it. And
that's where it gets very interesting. So the people who
really don't go beyond experimentation, they learn to use it
as a force. Is all that's really doing is just
opening up another door that exists, the rule of your
house that you're able. It's greaty to get into an
access and if you go there with guidance and with care,
(27:18):
you don't just do this to do it. And this
is different than you know, smoking a joint when you're sixteen.
This is a whole different thing. This is yeah, for sure,
this is something that should be guided, but can really
again release the potential you have in yourself. I went
to India in late March and April. I with a
(27:39):
with a friend of mine who lives there, and I
went to twenty six temples. No hellucinogenics in India, okay,
but I went to twenty six temples and meditated at them,
went through seventy five ceremonies, several poujas. In fact, I
have a worth this amulet that I received from Indian astrology.
There's an emerald and there's another medallion here that had
(28:00):
months of prayer from monks in temples in India. Does
it work? I don't know, but I know that I'm
willing to explore those things. But I can tell you
that having been in India for all those temples and
all those those the prooges that I went through, when
I came back, I was changed. I was different interesting.
(28:20):
My wife noticed that, and there was a more calmness,
there was much more openness to it. I felt energy
way out here and say, you know, if he's focus
on your heart, you'll feel your heart center open up.
But when you come back for something like that, your
heart center's opened up and it's like nine feet around
your body. Those kind of things, the shaun wuhu are
scientifically proven to be real. Now why do I bring
(28:42):
that up Because when I talk about leadership, when the
leader becomes more aware of their limits and becomes aware
of their strengths, the hidden strengths. Now you bring that
into an organization, it really changes that in a incredible
way because your your patience, your understand your empathy. Does
it make you, you know, a whush not at all
(29:05):
because there's a difference thing being a kind leader and
being a nice leader. Nice leaders are horrible leaders because
they want to like they want to approval from their
employees and say, I respect you, I love you, but
I'm going to hold you accountable to get your job done.
This is not a charity. And I believe in having
kind leaders that are very decisive, know what you're doing,
and remain nimble. You have to remain nimble because the
(29:27):
world's changing constantly, and it's changing faster and faster and
faster all the time, and the only way to be
able to deal with that is to be calm in
the center and be mindful what's going on. A very
good teacher of mine said something that I found very
profound that I keep in remembering is the universe is neutral.
Shakespeare and Hamlet said nothing is good or bad, but
(29:47):
thinking makes it so. And so that's the key is
to realize that shit happens, and when it happens, it
just happens, and be aware of it. Don't get caught
up in it. Oh my god, this is terrible, Oh
my god, this is fantastic. And if you just see
it as is and then just keep letting life keep unfolding.
It's a lot easier to be with all this craziness.
(30:08):
When people talk about being in the zone, athletes talk
about it, it's like slow motion exactly. Yeah, send me
have quickly. Is sort of this three D world. When
you're in that center space, it's very very slow, so
there's plenty of time to act because you are in
a position where you're not caught up in all the externals.
You're coming from within outward rather than from outward.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
In very cool. I mean, this is the kind of
kind the podcast and content I was hoping to get
from you, So it's going the right direction. We're going
to cover some more topics for you guys. Before we do,
I want to take a quick break and just remind
everybody that this is being recorded over on the Saber
Podcast Network. If you have not checked out more of
(30:50):
our shows, you can just go over to our show's page.
It's going to get you access to all the different
shows out there, including this one. Rock My Restaurant. We
have the Restaurant Mastermind podcast, our Restaurant Report. Earl Dardik
hosts The Catering Cage. We have a brand new show
coming on as well talking about startups, So check that
out again. If you're looking to start a podcast, maybe
(31:12):
you're a brand, or an operator or a tech company
and you're thinking, what way can I get out there
and share my story? Check us out. Just go over
to saver dot fm, forward slash Build and you can
possibly become a studio partner as well to basically go
in and build your own podcasts. And we do some
(31:33):
things that are very unique. We have a discoverability engine
that helps drive audience, We use metadata management to help
improve your podcast overall, and then of course we deliver
it to our large audience. So check it out over
on Saverer podcast Network. We'll get back to the show
here with Fred Lafranc. Fred coming into one of the
(31:58):
topics that I wanted to touch on in this The
reason I asked this question is because I have personal
friends of mine that are doing this now in terms
of not only from a leadership side, but they themselves
as leaders are doing this as well. You and I,
and I think I would consider you in this area
as well, and that is the fractional leadership boom you
(32:20):
know that's happening. This was on Forbes. I'll show the
article just so everybody knows we're not making this stuff up,
but a freelancing boom continuing in twenty twenty five is
what they're talking about. Basically sea level talent. It's what
they're referencing here that will eventually come in CFO potential
cxos of all sort. The C suite now is kind
(32:43):
of up for grabs from the sense of a potential
part time And I know you've actually done part time
leadership and CEO positions from someone who's experienced it done it.
First of all, what has been your experience with doing
it as a you know, as a fractional leader. What
(33:03):
do you take away from seeing that kind of interaction
with brand?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, and let's define fractional. This fractional is not that
you work ten hours a week. That's what's considered fractional.
Fractional is you take a period of time, like a year,
and step into a role as you know you're not
going to be there forever, to ultimately replace yourself. I've
done that several times. I mean, I led one hundred
and ten unit Burner team chain many years ago. I
helped Sara big Laurie when he took over Steak and shake.
(33:29):
I just came off of this last year was supposed
to be a year and a half assignment. At three
and a half year assignment running the commercial bakery in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah,
and so my partner James McGehee, who co founded the
Results of Strategy with me, has been the CFO of
Dave's Hot Chicken almost in inception, and he knows at
(33:51):
some point he's going to step off the boat when
they do some sort of event. We've had people here
take over by supply chain technology, finance. So that's something
that's very very typical for our work and results for
Strategy to come in and take over a role for
an organization, not just assess the talent, to make sure
that the systems are in place, the program are in place,
(34:12):
help hire, help train, replace, leave, and so that I
can say from first and experience, we've had that boom
because we've been doing it all along, and I'm not
surprised to say that more people do it. The question
becomes whether or not how you approach that is going
to be effective, because you can't not come in and
just impose what you think should be done without understanding
(34:33):
the nature of the business. And make sure that you're
not just sort of jerking things around for the sake
of showing movement rather than really say what is the
best potential for this brand. I will tell you right
now firsthand that a commercial bakery does not operate like
a restaurant. Though there's a lot of similarities. You're making food,
you don't have sale You have salespeople, not waiters. Right.
(34:54):
You have delivery drivers, not runners. There's some analogies to it,
but they have unique natures to the business that you
need to be mindful of. And so I think the
fractional part of business is going to grow. We offer
that repeatedly. It's it's a big you know what we
do in a We do a tremendous amount of company assessments.
This past year's the all company assessments order directors, the
(35:15):
CEOs bring us in and say, hey, come in assess
our team, assess our systems, our structures, our procedures, how
we work, and come and tell us again what our
blind says, what don't we see and that it's very
revealing to them because we come from an outside perspective.
You know, there's a great line that says everyone's going
to write to their own perception, but perspective can be different,
(35:35):
and so we can help someone see a different perspective.
It changes it. When we walk into a company that
may not be as healthy as necessary, and you ask
the questions why, and everyone's arguing about that they're right,
the other person's point of view is wrong. I use
a small analogy, but it's effective. It say, okay, mention,
You're at a card table small, you know, three y
three by three by three table, and everyone's holding up
(35:55):
a ball. The question is what color is it? And
someone goes right, someone says yellow, as white, someone's as blue,
and they argue like hell that they're right because what
they see is what they see.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
If you put all the ideas together holistically, you've got
to stripe ball. It's a beach ball, okay, And now
you have strengthened an organization. Now you are taking advantage
of everyone's different perspective to see the whole picture, because
you're not invalidating someone else's point of view because you
feel you are right. Yes, you're right. You know you
may be certainly you may not be right. You are
(36:26):
correct in this case.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's the advantage of seeing the entire perspective, and that's
what we try and bring into an organization.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Do you find that the existing leadership that I would
say controls maybe now probably more quite a bit less,
probably around sixty percent of brands in the market that
you know have kind of been grown from old school,
all right. We've seen a lot of new school management
(36:57):
now make its way in a lot of new styles
of man when people coming from other industries things of
that tradition. You look at some of the problems that
have been out there. This was an article that was
over on Harvard Business Review and I was talking about
problems with traditional education executive education. Do you see the
traditional track of a CEO today or any C suite
(37:21):
person doing the traditional route still today or do you
find the opportunities are being representative to know just different
people from different walks of life that seem to be
coming up in this millennial and Gen Z audience right now,
because it's a different kind of leader that comes out
(37:42):
of those demographics.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Oh, it's very different, very very different. I mean, you know,
I grew up in the boomer world where it was
like the great White Father came out of the corner
office with two stone tablets and said, here go make
this so that doesn't work anymore. That that model has
been destroyed. You need to get to the point where
(38:03):
every employee in your business has an understanding of your
purpose and your shared vision and understands your values to
make their own decisions or what to do next. Because
the decision can't be made from above, It's got to
be made at that level. And so therefore the relationship
that the CEO has with his or her employees has
changed from one of authorities solely, which is much more
(38:25):
of a hierarchical structure, to much more of a matrix structure.
You know, where you know whoever's in charge of a project,
even if it's a low level person, they should be
the one that should be making the decision of what
to do next, not the CEO, because but because they
have the understanding, they have the power. It's that entrepreneur
idea that was brought up many many years ago comes
(38:46):
to wife and today's young workforce. They don't want to
be told what to do. They want to feel that
they can make a contribution, that their efforts matter, that
they're rewarded properly, and the best way to do that
is to have a learning culture, you know, or one.
I mean the hardest thing for COEO to do is
say I don't know or I need help, okay, But
(39:07):
the modern leader is doing that because they realized they
can know everything they do need help, So just say that,
and it's amazing what comes flourishes up from the bottom.
People like they step in, you know, they lean in,
especially if the values align with their own personal values,
which is hard to do. And like I said, they
(39:27):
got to be rewarding. Reward is not just money. Reward
is also intrinsic. Reward is that I'm valued, you know,
I make a difference. I matter.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
So with that theory, because if we are seeing a
dynamic change in the leadership, not only the leadership role,
but how people become leaders, you know, because they could
come whether it's a startup and they start something, or
it's they're coming through the ranks as a midle level manager.
And I know a lot of those that are are
kind of going in that direction right now, and they
have been fostered by what you mentioned afore. There was
(40:01):
you know, a different style of leadership. They've been fostered
through that mid level management, upper level management from a
historical standpoint, most of their cohorts and their colleagues are
coming in from you know, not the Ivy League schools.
A lot of you know, startup you know, kind of
drop the dropout phase, which we saw a lot in
(40:22):
the tech industry. Right But I guess my question to
you is, do you think we're going to see a
shift in how leaders get placed into you know, because
right now, it's still within the restaurant industry, it's still
kind of the old boys club. You know, it's you know,
you want to get Brian Nickel out at Chipotle and
(40:44):
let's drop him in over at Starbucks. You want to
get this sea level and let's drop him in at Roadhouse.
You know, it's this pluck and play kind of scenario
versus you look at some of the other industries that
I'm working in, it's not that way at all. So
do you think the restaurant indust three will change anytime soon?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Well, I think it'll have to evolve. So the answer
is yes, when I can predict that. You know, if
you first off, remember that I grew up in the
era when there was no pe in the industry. It's
all entrepreneurs. Yeah, that was very different, okay, And that's
to be the old school part of them is they
grew up within the business, their operators. They didn't go
to college figure in how to run a restaurant company.
(41:23):
They just did it. They figured it out and they
grew empires. You know, Norm Brinkers and Larry Conocoy. I
worked with Elteredo and people like that. That and then
pe came in and really changed rules, and for a
while we went through the sphace where CFOs became CEOs.
Nothing against CFOs, love CFOs, but CFOs are not known
as an enlightened class. Now it's the CTO. Yeah, because
(41:43):
I used to joke about I called them cf nos.
Their job is to stay And what I we used
to do. I used to do a small group gathering
of CFOs and I would do a little presentation on
being a cf NO, And I said, before you say no,
start asking questions, you know, making sure that the person
comes from pay to not just say can I do this?
These the answers do walk out say can I do this? Well,
(42:04):
why do you want to do it? What's the benefit
of company so far? And so on. So there becomes
an engagement. So they become a little bit broader, and
CFOs can make the lifelong lovely CEOs, but a lot
of them fail. Cmos has started becoming more CEOs if
you look at first Watch or Veld the Taco two
great friends of mine, you know, with Chris and Clay,
(42:24):
who are fantastic CEOs because they've taken the time to
learn the other functions in the business and take them
into consideration, and make sure they surround themselves with the
people who know more subject matter experts than they do
in certain areas, and then have a partnership with their
CFO or their CTOs. So far and so on. I
haven't quite seen a CTO take over a company. Let's
you know what. I haven't seen that, but not to
(42:47):
say that they shouldn't be there. I spoke at the
years ago and I had four hundred CTOs in the
audience and asked the question, how many of you see
yourself as a CEO. Only one person raised their hand.
And these are for restaurants companies. Obviously, if you're CTO
and you have a tech company, it's a different story. Yeah,
so I don't. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
It comes more from I think you're right, that's usually
the marketing area that evolves too.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
The CTO should sit at the big table. There's sure,
there's four foundational departments in every company. Okay, there's obviously finance,
there's technology, there's human resources, and there's integration. Integration is
the one that's least understood and the most needed. Yeah,
all right. Integration is where accountability rests. Integration is where
internally you track all the projects, all the tasks, all
(43:34):
the things that are going on, the accountabilities deadlines and
so far and so on. And that's where the rover
hits the road when the external integration is I'm onboarding
new program, I'm opening up a new location, I have
a new partnership that I'm trying to do here. That's
a different function, but it's the integration function that many
the companies we look at that's the weakest because these
have never considered it. All right, but those four foundation
(43:56):
departments support all the other departments on top of it,
you know, call it or operations, facilities, et cetera, et
cetera that sit on.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Top of it.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
And so that's part of the holistic view. We try
and give the perspective to founders and CEO say, hey,
look at your company in this manner, and now let's
see whether or not is ready for growth and it's
ready to really take advantage of various opportunities out there,
or is flexible and fluid enough to adjust the changing conditions.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, well, and I think to your point, it's it's
in a situation right now where there has become a
very unique C suite that it used to be kind
of the cornerstone of CEO, CO CFO, that was kind
of the c suite corner. Now it's really started to
develop into a lot of other functions within operations, specially
(44:45):
in food service industry. When you look at the C
suite today and leadership teams, is there a new incumbent
that is coming in and playing a bigger role that
maybe has not been there before. And I'm thinking about
people or out there listening to this podcast and thinking
I wanted to, you know, I want to develop my
career more. Which route should I take? You know, Should
(45:08):
I consider trying to become a chief operating officer? Should
I go to the marketing track? Should I look at
bettering myself for a CEO position? Is there any area
that you've seen open up in the industry that's that's
kind of brand new.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Not so much a new position. I think it's how
people see themselves and how they envision themselves. You know.
Can you make a case that marketing shouldn't be a
functional department on top of the other four that I mentioned,
Should it be down below in the foundation departments? Because
it now becomes branding, right, you know, And it's not
semantics because branding now permeates everything. It's the spirit that
(45:46):
moves us, so to speak, internally and externally as well,
because now branding I've seen good branding officers. They have
as much impact on the culture partnering with HR as
they do with the guests. Yeah, you know, and this
came about in COVID because what happened with the marketing officer.
The CMO by default had to take over the digital
(46:07):
experience when COVID came about, So they became sort of
the chief Marketing Technology Officer. And now what you're seeing
is that's evolved to the Chief Experience Officer. Now they're ceexos.
And that position of CXO, if you look at it
internally to your employees, if you look at the xton
to your guests, that's a position that's been a sentence
(46:29):
in the last few years, and more and more companies
have begun to do it, and they have yet to
get the full effect to really step into a broader
foundational role. But I think that's the one that's going
to be there, and then they can decide whether they
want to be a CEO.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Or Yeah, I think so. Well. Listen, this has been
a good topic today we're going to try to cover.
We'll cover some more topics like this around leadership on
the show. For it's always fun having you on. As
a reminder for everyone, make sure and check out the
YouTube channel if you're want to catch the video version
of the podcast. Just by going over to YouTube and
(47:03):
hitting saber Fm, you'll find us over there. We just
cracked one hundred and twenty five thousand subscribers over there.
Our most recent videos out there best Tech for Business,
We just did one on AI that just dropped this morning.
A lot of going on the Best of twenty twenty four,
So there's a lot happening out there that you guys
can catch all of our content. I would suggest take
(47:24):
a look at this one right here that I'm showing
on screen, which is the NFT collaboration on what McDonald's
has been doing. This podcast right here was fantastic because
it really got into what McDonald's is doing in the
web three space. So check it out see what you
guys think. And of course, also I want you to
(47:45):
visit Fred's website and I'm going to bring Fred's website
up here that is Results through Strategy. Check it out
if you want to learn more about Fred Lafronk and
what is his team are doing over there. How do
you turn to or who do you turn to when
everyone turned to you? I like that one. That's a
great that's a great theme. I was reading that earlier
(48:05):
this morning and I said, that's a good question. Actually,
who do you turn to?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
That's right, Well, CEOs, I have a lonely role. They
can't tell the board, they don't know what you're doing, they.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Can't It's lonely at the top. Man, it's lonely at
the top. I've said that for years. Is you don't
have if you're if you're an entrepreneur, you have very
few friends except the mentors or mentees or usually the
colleagues around you that in most of the time are
trying to decap you as well, because they're a competitor,
(48:34):
so so you kind of have to walk a little
bit of an interesting way. So I don't I don't uh,
I don't envy you Fred getting out there and doing all. Man,
you guys have really done a lot of work with
a lot of different clients. I didn't realize you were
touching so many different areas of the industry. So congrats
on everything you're doing over at Results or Strategy.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Well, thank you, Paul. This has been delightful conversation is
a great way to kick off from the new Europe
you bet.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Anyway, thanks again for brad Ler Frank coming in. If
you guys are not subscribed to the show right now,
do that take a time get that little subscribe button.
It does help us out whether you're watching or you're listening.
And of course we'll catch you next time. Right here,
Unrock my restaurant.
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