https://vimeo.com/wiservantleadership . I will be posting some thoughts on this talk regarding Teske's version of servant leadership soon.
So, let me just share something with you if I could. “If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy, but don’t love, I am nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s word with power revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, if I have faith to say to a mountain “jump” and it jumps, but I don’t love I am nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned martyr, but don’t love, I have gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I am bankrupt without love.” And that is where Steve ended.
And so when Dick called me up, I have a tendency to be in front of people quite a bit, whether it’s video blog at Briggs, or something like this, or quarterly meetings in front of all our employees, that sort of thing it is always about the message – what do I want to convey. So, when Dick contacted me about servant leadership, I jumped all over this one because this topic is really important to me. And he asked me to share my journey.
Now here is the problem Tom, there is no I in servant leadership, so I tried to figure out how to do this thing without using the word I, and unless I referred to myself in the third person which is kind of weird, I got to use the word I, so I apologize.
So, what it caused me to do though is think about my life. And how did I get on this servant leadership journey. So, I am going to give you some specific dates, I am not going to take you all the way back from when I was born, don’t worry about that. But ultimately there are some really important dates that speak to me in terms of my journey.
The first one is June 15th 1987, that’s the day I started with Arthur Anderson. Now growing up, my folks did not have a lot of money, I was never wanting for anything, but we didn’t take vacations or anything like that, so what I really wanted to do, and I had to reflect on why did I think the way I thought, why did I act the way I acted was I was excited. I was going to go make money, I couldn’t wait to go make money because I never had a lot of money when I was a kid. So, I remember getting in my suit, and having the brief case and driving downtown to the Seven Seven Wisconsin Building and I was on my way to show the world I was going to make it. And that is what it was about. I never thought about servant leadership back then.
The second date is June 16th 1990. That’s the day I got married. So, I married this really, really wonderful woman. Who for now almost 29 years has put up with all my issues and faults and she has been a really great partner in life. Did I mention she has been a really, really great woman? She is here today; I got the date right. You know what that was important, but it was still about, Kim and I were planners and what Kim and I wanted to do was save up enough money to buy a house and have a foundation to start a family.
The real date that started servant leadership for me was August 3rd 1995, that was the day my daughter was born. You see up to that point it was all about I want to be a partner at Arthur Anderson, I want to make all kinds of money, I want that kind of lifestyle, then all of a sudden this little bundle of joy comes along and now I’ve got responsibility for that. And then Kim decided she was going (she was a teacher) and she decided she was going to be a 24-7 mom. So, what was happening was all of a sudden, I went from being this driven I wanted the next job, I want the next promotion so I can make more money to what kind of life do I want.
So, in April of 1996 I made the decision to leave Author Anderson. I didn’t see my daughter, I didn’t like the lifestyle, so I left. I went to Briggs. And ultimately on August 2, 1997 was when our son CJ was born. And so now all of a sudden, I had to decide, what did I want. I never wanted to be CEO of Briggs at that point in time. But it was important for me to be a leader to my family, to be a leader for my kids. Because I contend that servant leadership starts with parenting. It starts with your family. Leading your family. I wanted to be the dad that was there when CJ struck out and when CJ hit the home run. I wanted to be the dad that was there when Taylor missed the flip turn in swimming and then got her personal best in a different meet. I wanted to be that dad who was there for his family.
So then continuing on at Briggs, on August of 2003 was another profound date for me, that is when I became president of our products group. Now up until that point I was pretty much in finance, accounting, it was all about the rules it was all about the numbers, did the debits equal the credits, all about the good stuff for all the accountants in the room. But ultimately this one was different, because I remember going up to Jefferson where my office was located and I sat in my office and I went – what am I supposed to do? What does a president do? So, I thought about it and I thought here is what I don’t want to do – I don’t want to go out and tell everybody what they should do, because I have no idea what they should do. But you know there are some people that would do that, you guys referred to it early this morning, when you talked about command and control and things like that. So, I thought no, no, no, how can I be helpful?
So, I just got out of my office and started sitting in meetings, didn’t say much and listened a lot. And then started offering suggestions, I didn’t tell them what to do. And all of a sudden people went, ok this is sort of interesting. And this was a turnaround situation, and I didn’t have anything to do with the turnaround. The team did, we turned the business around.
And then I went on to be the Chief Operating Officer and all this other stuff and learned a lot along the way as a servant leader.
But the next really profound date was January 1, 2010. That was the day I became CEO of Briggs. That was an interesting day, not the day itself, but ultimately now being in charge, being the CEO of a 2-billion-dollar company. And understanding at the time that there is 7000 people that now relied on me.
But here is what is funny about it, I relied on them. You see I joke with the team all that time that my job is to shake hands, kiss babies, cut ribbons, and give speeches. So today I have shaken hands, now I am giving a speech, I am working really hard today. But I go in to our plants and we shut the plant down and we bring everybody together and I tell them that and they all laugh, right? And I say no, no, you don’t understand. You are the people on a day in and day out basis that, you are the ones that matter, whether we are doing good in the world. I can make decisions, but ultimately what it comes down to is the decisions you make on a day to day basis, making those engines, making those products, that is really what matters. You’re the ones that fulfill our mission of providing power to people to get work done and make their lives better.
Now what’s interesting about being a CEO is you have a choice. I learned this early on, right after January 1st. Because all of a sudden, I started getting all these people inviting me to these cool things. The Masters, I am a big golfer, I love golf. I am terrible at it, but I love it. The Kentucky Derby, the Packers in the Super Bowl. By the way I didn’t go to any of those, because they violate our integrity policy. So, don’t go back to Briggs and tell them I went to those, because I didn’t. But people wanted me to go with them to places, wow that’s really cool. People wanted me to come up and speak. Wow people care about what I have to say. You know CEO’s as a group are just slightly above politicians when it comes to respect and values and everything else, except individually people show you a lot of respect, wow I must be really important.
You see to this day, here is what I fight, every day. Being a CEO is what I do, being a CEO is not who I am. Who I am is a leader, a servant-leader. Who I am hopefully is a really good dad. Who I am is hopefully a really good husband. Who I am is somebody who wants to do things in the community to make the community better. Because here is the deal, there is going to be a day, where I am not going to be CEO anymore. Now if it is all about I and me, and everything else, you hear it, I hear it all the time from retired CEO’s. Because what they do is they say “Hi I am so and so, I am the retired CEO of - fill in a big company, and you know what I did when I was there? I did this, and I did this, and I did this” and you want to look at him, and you are really polite, and you want to go “you didn’t do anything, it is the people that work for you that you had the privilege of leading, I have no idea how well you lead, but you had the privilege of leading the people who did all that. So it is not about me, and I use the word I a lot. But at the end of the day it is about all these people that work at Briggs and Stratton today. It is about all these people in the community who want to do good things in the community to make the communities better.
So let me leave you with this. What I read to you to begin with was 1st Corinthians 13. It was out of The Message. And let me continue on with two more versus. But I think this second verse I am going to read to you really drives home what servant leadership is all about. What it goes on to say – “love never gives up”, and there it is. “Love cares more for others than for self. “
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