Page 135 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Lead by Example

ter & Gamble were pushing their fish sticks. So we finally talk
Ray and Fred into coming to Columbus to see Arthur Treacher’s
Fish and Chips.” Ed and his associate, Tom, picked them up at
the airport, and with Fred and Ray in the back seat, Ed stopped
off at the Arthur Treacher’s, ready to go in. But that was not to
be, as Ed described: “Ray says, ‘I’m not going in there.’ With that,
Ed turns to Fred, and Fred says, ‘I’m not going in there. I never
go into a competitor’s restaurant. I am not spending my money
in a competitor’s restaurant.’ I said, ‘Well, what do you want to
do?’ He said, ‘Well, you invited us down here.’” So Ed went into
the store and bought some fish, and brought it back to the car
for everyone to eat. He continued, “Ray says, ‘I’m not eating that
stuff.’ Fred says, ‘I’m not eating that stuff.’ So Tom and I start
eating and talking about it. Then Fred says, ‘Take us back to the
airport.’” So they did, and Ray and Fred flew back to Chicago.
The visit didn’t last an hour and half, but Ed said he learned
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something valuable that day. “Ray wanted nothing to do with
the stuff. Fred was making a point: stop worrying about the
other guys and worry about yourself. He could have said, ‘I’m
not coming down there, I’m not going through these shenani-
gans.’ But he knew the only way he was going to get that region
to get off their high horse about our competitors was to come
down there and do what he did.”
As Ed saw, sometimes the best way to prove your point is to
demonstrate it, up close and in person. You’ll quickly see who gets
your message, and you’ll also demonstrate that you cared enough
to mentor your people as to where to concentrate their efforts.
That’s not to say that the company didn’t check on its competition.
Of course, it did, as any business should. But Ray and Fred believed
Ed was too concerned about the competition and not concentrat-
ing enough on what was transpiring in his own market.
Fred commented to me about this incident and said not only
did he want to make this point to Ed, he also didn’t want to