Page 157 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Courage

actually in the store. He also befriended police officers, inviting
them to speak at team meetings, increasing their presence at the
store. And he taught his crew to greet and observe customers
the moment they entered the store—an approach he thinks
deterred would-be criminals from striking. As Roland demon-
strated, it was important to fight crime, but equally critical to
do so with some out-of-the-box deterrents.
Troubling as some of these experiences seem, they also help
you develop a tough exterior. I know it helped me overcome
other episodes during my career, including personal threats and
even a shotgun in my chest during a holdup.

Lesson Learned

As leaders, we find that people turn to us to diffuse potential
or actual altercations. So use your smarts—especially when it 127
comes to personal safety. Developing a plan of action to deter
crime is a critical first step.

You had to be tough to persevere over that kind of element,
and sometimes that tough element actually existed within the sys-
tem, as former CEO Mike Quinlan reminded me, when he shared
a story about serving as the new regional manager after being the
district manager for only seven months in St. Louis. Now, here
he was in Washington, D.C., his new region. It was the early
1970s, and this region had its share of troubles. In particular,
Mike learned from his predecessor about five licensees who ran
poor operations. “I thought to myself: I’m not going to spend my
life out here pandering to the bad guys and trying to reform
them, because if I spend my time doing that, when do I get the
good stuff done? So I got in my car and I got on a plane and I