A Leader's Vision

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my husband picked up a side hustle building an app for a local restaurant. We live in a golf club neighborhood and one day I thought it would be nice if a golf cart could bring me some food to my front door. From that thought we started coming up with ideas for a golf cart delivery app idea. From that idea and many meetings and pitches, we landed on the one that is currently in use. The golf cart idea never took off because the club house owners thought the idea of using their employees to deliver food outside of the course was too risky. After reading more about the diffusion of innovation theory, I believe the owners are laggards. They are constantly asking the community what they can do to change and bring in new customers, especially young ones. I know that as a young working professional with two small children that sometimes doesn’t get home until 6:30, take out is my only option once or twice a week. I also love to support small businesses. To me it would be an easy win for them, but they decided not to take it.

However, one person heard it and ran with it. He told my husband if you build me the app, I will provide the drivers and will use it in my restaurant that I am getting ready to open. We just launched the app a few months ago and so far, it’s going well. Definitely better than we ever anticipated. I think our parents thought we were insane when we told them we were working on a delivery app. Now they are so proud when they see advertisements or social media postings for it.

But why is the app doing so well? Because the restaurant is doing very well. But why is the restaurant doing so well? I’ve also mentioned before I live in a pretty small town. The restaurant sells personal size pizzas and a few salads. They do not sell alcohol. We have multiple restaurants already selling pizza in town, and they do fine. Not great, but fine. But people are lined up out the door waiting to get in at this place. Wait times are unbelievable. What makes this restaurant stand out about the rest is their leadership. They have a visionary leader. He believes to his core that he has the best concept and that by getting his own app he will be able to be innovative, forward-thinking, and get his new ideas out to his audience as soon as possible. He is very creative with his approach to marketing and has done campaigns around town like I have never seen before. He posted a giant QR code on a billboard without any words so to find out with the purpose of the QR code was for, you had to scan it! It ended up taking you to the app and I believe it came with something free with your first purchase. He’s also done a great job with his social media presence. It can be difficult for small businesses, especially in small towns, to survive now with social media being ever so present. People unfortunately rarely use social media to share wonderful things about your business, rather they use it to bash you. What they have done is hired a full-time person to not only just post regular content, but to respond to customers. So, if someone goes on their page to complain that they were charged incorrectly or waited too long, they will get an immediate response and typically an offer to make it right.

I watched an interesting video presented by Jerry Porrars. Essentially, he describes two types of leaders. Charismatic visionary leaders and built to last leaders. Charismatic visionary leaders are described as passionate, inspirational, unconventional, and highly motivated to lead. Steve Jobs would be a great example. Built to last leaders are described as soft spoken, gentle, serious, humble, modest, and good listeners. Porrars used Paul Galvin, creator of Motorola, as an example of a build to last leader. Porrars believes that visionary leaders build companies around themselves, and without the leader there is no company. While I sort of see what he means, I am not 100% on board with him. I think you need those visionary leaders to take your business off. You need their out of the box ideas. Sometimes the modest leader is a little stale and safe. One of the things this pizza restaurant does that others in our area does not is they do not make perfect cuts. Even I was skeptical, but it became a huge hit on social media.

I will say working directly with a visionary leader does come with a set of challenges. Daniel Goleman put it best calling it “organizational whiplash”. Organizational whiplash is the sudden change and disruption in the organization causing inefficiency and confusion. Because the owner was such a dreamer and it was his first time opening a restaurant, he would tend to get a little lost in who should be doing what. For example, my husband has absolutely nothing to do with the restaurant. He is just the app guy. The restaurant was up and running at this point and he stopped by one day to show them how to update the app on their phones. While he was in the restaurant, the owner asked him if he wanted to help deliver. My husband wasn’t sure if he was kidding, but I don’t think he was. The owner was just that excited about his new app! In this guys head he had no distinction about whose job was whose. But even though he wasn’t perfect at running the restaurant at times, he is still a great leader because he is aware of his shortcomings. In the areas he is weak he has hired the best in the business to manage his operation. He understands that he needs to lead his organization into the future, but that it’s up to management to run the day-to-day operations for his establishment to be successful in the long run.  Oh, but I forgot to mention the most visionary detail about him of all. Not only was this the first restaurant he ever opened. Not only was this the first time he ever made a pizza. Not only was he not a chef. He was my husband’s barber. Who liked a great idea and had a vision.