Accomplish the mission

Accomplish the mission

LEADERSHIP by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

The best leaders don't boss others around, a pro says. They show them how to do it, starting with providing clearly defined goals.

Lloyd Hill, the current chairman of a $1.3 billion public restaurant company, has always been self-assured and confident. And when he was an up-and-coming young executive in the health care field 30 years ago, some would even say he was a little cocky.

No matter what, Hill relied on the old do-your-best mantra, and that always got him by. At least that was until he failed on one major assignment, despite going gangbusters on every other task.

"Sometimes you have to do better than your best," Hill recounts his boss telling him. "Sometimes you have to do what's required."

The comment was Hill's leadership epiphany. It spurred a new way of going about his jobs, and it also led him to think differently about how to lead employees, theories he used as he began working at Applebee's International Inc., first as CEO and currently as chairman for the 1,930-restaurant, Overland Park, Kan.-based chain.

Hill, named one of America's Best CEOs by Institutional Investor magazine in 2005, shared his leadership thoughts with a group of USF Sarasota-Manatee students March 7 at a lecture sponsored by the University's School of Hotel and Restaurant Management.

Hill says the "do what's required" comment put him in a mental quandary, as he thought he knew of no other way to work.

But he later understood that he was being his own limiter and what's more, he learned what he now says is the most important part of leadership:

Having a clear and coherent mission and setting up people to do whatever's necessary (or required) to make the mission a reality.

"If you coach people toward working with a purpose, they can accomplish extraordinary things," says Hill. "What gets employees to jump out of bed in the morning isn't the return on investment - those metrics are outcomes from the mission."

It's a kind of leadership philosophy with a touchy-feely component built into it, Hill says, an especially important feature when engaging and leading the new 20-something workforce.

"The management mantra of 'because I said so' doesn't work anymore," says Hill. "People who lead now will have to provide a compelling and powerful reason for people to follow them."

After mission, Hill says there are two other key leadership ideals. One is the vision of how the mission will be accomplished, and the second is the values employees should be using to reach the vision. The values part is likely the toughest, Hill says, as the bigger an organization gets - Applebee's has more then 100,000 employees - the harder it is to make sure the company's values are being carried out both daily and diligently by everyone.

Hill knows of what he speaks: Applebee's has one of the best retention rates among its peers in the restaurant industry, having reduced hourly employee turnover rates from 146% in 2000 to 83% in 2005.

Under pressure

Lloyd Hill, chairman of restaurant chain Applebee's International who spoke in Sarasota recently about leadership techniques, is currently facing another challenge: The future of his public company remaining public.

The company, traded on the Nasdaq under APPB, has heard from several outside investors seeking changes within the board, in an effort to boost the sagging stock. Midway through last month, prior to the public calls for change, shares had risen only 5% over the previous 52 weeks.

On March 12, in a rebuttal to its critics, the company said it had formed a committee of independent directors to look at its options, including a sale. The committee is expected to report back to Hill and the board in two months.