#293: David Lafitte – CEO, Tecovas – Serve others with radical hospitality

24:58I think I would say probably my father. I think my father was an incredible lawyer, but humble and humility. A guy would never talk about himself. He rose to become, from Shreveport, Louisiana, to be president of a group called the American College of Trial Lawyers. You know, growing up, I think I had every Supreme Court justice stay at our house, from William Brennan to Lewis Powell to Justice Scalia. And it didn't matter what political side of the equation. My dad ended up kind of befriending all of them. But I think seeing a lot of that, you know, honestly, as a kid, I was a little bit of a, you know, too cool for school type mentality.

25:49And I think some of that was probably a little bit of a defense mechanism on insecurities. Like if I don't apply myself and I fail, it's because I didn't care type mentality. And I think a lot of that changed when I, and I messed around a lot, you know, in high school and college. I think when I finally got to law school. And frankly, I got lucky. I was on a waiting list for Tulane. And fortunately, one day before the first year was going to start, I got off the waiting list and dove in. And that's kind of the first time I really buckled down and applied myself. And I showed myself, you know, what I could do, et cetera.

26:33And then when I got out of law school, I wanted to be a corporate attorney. And this is 1991. And it was a pretty bad recession. Latham and Watkins had just let go of 90 corporate associates. And so it was like, good luck getting a job in that corporate world. So my first three years, I went to a small firm to do litigation. But I quickly realized that while I did well in law school, a lot of these big white shoe firms were going to be hiring from Ivy League and, you know, top 10, 15 law schools. So I kind of developed a little bit of chip on my shoulder there. And I think I started to kind of get to where my dad was, meaning he always worked his tail off.

27:20And I guarantee you, he never showed up in court where he was out prepared ever. And I think that a lot of that ended up rubbing off on me.

27:31David Novak:Hello, friends. I hope you're loving this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to the very end of the episode. As always, David and I are going to debrief some of the concepts that he talks about with this week's guest. So stay tuned to the very end, and I will see you soon. Now, you spent, as I understand it, about 25 years as a lawyer. What did practicing law teach you that most CEOs never learn? Well, I think, first of all, this radical hospitality concept. I was at a mid-sized California firm, and we were up against all the big New York firms, the Lathams, Gibson Dunn, all those types. So punching above our weight on the types of deals we were working on.

28:17But boy, if you didn't have the service element there, and if a client sent an email in or a voicemail, if I didn't respond to that in minutes, they're going to move on and go elsewhere. So we not only had to compete with incredible lawyers, but if we didn't compete on service, we were going to lose. And that's something just as an associate. And to this day, I'm probably a little bit of a pain in the rear with the team, although I try and back off a little bit. But sometimes if I send an email or a Slack or something, I think they know I don't like it to sit for too long. And even though I've backed off that a little bit because I don't think all that's necessary.

28:59When it's a consumer, though, I do think it's necessary. And so I think that that service is critical. I'll never forget, I was fairly new at the law firm and I was working for the managing partner, one of the named partners. and I was working on one of the biggest deals that was going on at the time. It was a large acquisition that was being funded through a public equity offering and a large credit facility. And I think I was probably, I just moved there, so I was probably a third or fourth year associate. I was probably up for three or four days straight and we were trying to get this deal closed the next day.

29:36And the guy whose client it was calls me in and says, hey, I've got a new company coming in tomorrow morning. I'd like you to meet with me with them. And I've got all this stuff to do. And I'm like, what is he kidding? And so I walk in this meeting and it's three Taiwanese guys, young, could hardly speak any English. They wanted me to kind of walk through bylaws. And I'm looking up at the managing partner going, I got to get this thing closed over here, you know.

30:09But I'll never forget the fact that he was willing to spend just as much time with this startup company that was a brand new client as he was with this larger client that we were trying to get this deal closed. And that's kind of the service aspect of it. And sure enough, by the way, that little semiconductor company, we ended up selling three years later for about$400 million.

30:33David Novak:When did you feel, David, that you maybe stopped being a lawyer and became a brand builder? I mean, you're building that brand now. I mean, that's got to be the overall goal. Yeah, I think when I made the decision to leave the law practice, I had, you know, the chairman, the former chairman, CEO of Decker's grabbed me at a board meeting. and said, can you have lunch on Monday? And I said, sure. And they had been looking for a chief operating officer at Deckers for about a year. And he said, I think you should take this role. I'm like, well, I don't know anything about operations or footwear. Other than that, it sounds like a perfect fit.

31:13He's like, no, no, no, don't worry about that. I'll teach you about footwear, but the team trusts you since you've been our outside counsel for a while. And let's give this a run. I think it'll be good for you. I had just turned 50 and figured, why not? If I fail, I'll fail fast and go back to the practice of law. But, you know, right when I made that change, at the time I was mentoring the then associate general counsel to become the general counsel. And I didn't want to be hovering over him. So once I got to the chief operating officer role, I kind of did everything other than the law practice.

31:48And I just kind of put it in the rearview mirror. And I really have not looked back. And I am probably my own worst lawyer because I'm willing to take any risk that's out there. So I need to make sure I've got lawyers actually checking me on. And now you need a good lawyer. Well, exactly. Yeah.

32:10David Novak:You said you never aspired to be a CEO. What changed? Was there a moment where you said, hey, you know, I'd really like to run the whole thing? Um, well, first of all, the opportunity came up, you know, I, I don't, when I say I didn't really aspire to be one, I wasn't against it, but at the same time, you know, I wasn't out there kind of marketing myself to do it. So the TACOVA's opportunity came up. Um, I almost lost the job. I remember at a dinner with several of the board members and it was a great dinner and thought, okay, well, this is going incredibly well. And then one of the board members said, so why do you want to be a CEO?

32:47And I'm like, well, I really don't. This just kind of came up and it wasn't a great answer. I think that what intrigued me about it, I guess, is, you know, in my role before on the executive team, I could influence things. I could beat my head against the wall sometimes when I couldn't influence things. But I thought sometimes I'd be watching a train wreck that if I I could just nip it in the bud and make a call earlier. Things would have been a lot easier. And so while I like to build consensus and make sure we've got people that are bought into decisions that are being made, it is nice to make a call and move on.

33:28And, you know, once we make that call and move on, I want to hear people's opinions and ideas, but I can't get unanimity in every decision. But once we've kind of deliberated, I expect everyone to get in the boat and start rowing hard instead of going back to their team saying, I told them this isn't going to work, we'll see, because then it's not going to work, right? So I like to get the buy-in, but at the same time, you've got to be able to make a call and move on. And I think in this role, that's been the most refreshing part of it. Now, the other part that I've got to be careful of is people take my words literally.

34:05And when I say, and I may think something's a good idea, I don't want them just running with it and saying, well, David said we should do this. Like, no, no, no. I was raising it to see if we think it's a good idea. Don't just, you know, so I got to be careful about being, you know, sort of interpreted too literally, if you will.

34:23David Novak:Yeah. You know, so Paul Hedrick was the founder of Tecovis. You know, what's the biggest leadership thing you've learned from watching him in action? I think Paul's got a lot of the characteristics that, you know, he's just a straight shooting guy. I mean, he's never, he does what he says he's going to do. He's got very good vision. I mentioned about the brand aesthetic, things like that. So even to this day, you know, if I, his main role would be, you know, if we're rolling something out, you know, does it fit kind of within the brand guardrails? And if maybe we're pushing the envelope a little too much, you know, he's good to sit down and bounce it around with.

35:09So I use him a lot on aesthetic, not only on like the retail design or even marketing the look and feel of some of our creative content, but product as well. But those are the qualities. I think he's got a lot of vision, more so than I do. You know, I'm not a real visionary, I don't believe. I hire people so we can empower them to go do their jobs. Because as I said earlier, I think surrounding yourself with the best people is the best thing I can do. But if I don't let them do their job, I'm kind of defeating the purpose. And once the team is clicking, it kind of allows me to think a little bit further along.

35:50like, where can this be in five years, in 10 years? And so I will start sort of thinking about plan B, or what if this doesn't work? Or what if, you know, this happens, then we got to go on a different thing? Or where are we going to jump an S curve when things do slow down a little bit?

36:06David Novak:I did some of my research I saw where you actually said that you felt you're a little bit more risk averse than Paul, but you just mentioned just a few minutes ago, now you're taking lots of risk. Have you evolved as a leader on that front? Are you more in the take the gamble mode than ever before? Well, not necessarily. I think one reason why I was a good lawyer is that entrepreneurs and business leaders don't want to hear you say no. If you want to know what they're trying to achieve, what is the problem you're trying to solve, you might be able to get them 92 % of the way there, which gets them all they need in a lot less risky path.

36:51So I think in general, business is about risk. It's about calculated risk. So I don't want the team falling over backwards off a cliff that we didn't know was there. But I certainly don't mind people taking a shot at something and it just turns out it didn't work. Those are the biggest learnings you'll have. And you can course correct whether it's a product that you thought was gonna be a product market fit and it didn't and it wasn't, that's okay. That's not going to kill you. So we want the team taking calculated risk and we'll learn from them and we'll move on.

37:24David Novak:You know, when you come up as a new brand and you're building your business, you know, it's almost like you have that chip on the shoulder that you're talking about from not being in an Ivy League school or whatever, you work hard or whatever, but you got kind of a challenger mindset. Is that a mindset you're hanging on to now? Do you think you still have a challenger mindset or do you think you've moved past that? No, no, no. Complacency is my biggest fear. We have a continuous improvement mindset. I think it's just I need people to constantly be curious, constantly trying to push the envelope.

38:02And there's just never a finish line. And I think the key is trying to get people motivated to understand it's all about the journey. You know, once you get to the top, it's like, okay, now what? And I think that having a little bit of a continuous improvement mindset together with stepping back and recognizing people and recognizing the wins that we've had, I think that balance is important. But yeah, complacency is my biggest concern about an organization and myself, frankly. How do you guard against that?

38:35David Novak:I mean, what do you do personally to make sure you don't get complacent? I mean, besides just know it's a problem. So, you know, again, a little bit of intellectual curiosity just on, you know, we've got a long way to go. I mean, we're a Western small brand right now. I mean, our goal is to become the next great American footwear apparel lifestyle brand. So we've just got a lot of work to do in front of us. And it's fun. You know, I think, I don't know, I may be a little bit different. I'm 61. But, you know, I kind of completely changed careers, as I said, at 50. And so I almost feel like I'm just getting going in a lot of ways that my team may be sorry to hear that.

39:17David Novak:I doubt that. What do you do, David, to stay personally connected to customers? I mean, how do you get the real pulse of what's happening in your stores and with your customers? Yeah, I like to visit stores. You know, I live five blocks from our flagship in Austin, so I'm constantly walking my dog down there. And I like to sit in there and sometimes have a beer and just kind of hear conversations and things like that. I also, I think my team kind of doesn't love this, but, you know, people seem to find my email quite a bit. And so while we set a high bar for ourselves on this radical hospitality, I'll have somebody email me saying, you know, I just went into your such and such store and just had a terrible experience.

40:02And they go on and on. And I email them back and, you know, and we chat about it. And the first thing they say is, oh, my God, I can't believe you responded to this. I was just venting. And some of those people I've kept a relationship with, you know, and kind of they're in Seattle, for example. And I'm chatting with a guy in Seattle about, hey, we're thinking about a store in this area, that area. Any thoughts? So, you know, that's hard to scale. But we have each retail store do a summary at the end of the day. You know, what went well? What were you proud of? What were your numbers? How did you bring the spirit of the West to the afternoon, et cetera?

40:42And so it's a little bit of a summary on recapping the day. And I read, I try and read those every day, every night. Now it's up to, because we have 56 stores, it's 56 emails of reading, again, how that day went. But my mind a lot of times works in maybe it's my reading legal background or whatever. But I kind of get a lot of those anecdotes that I do just looking at a spreadsheet of numbers. And so I kind of feel like I have a pretty good finger on the pulse when I can read those kinds of things. And I think it's fun for the team. They know I'm reading them and I'll respond and email the group saying, wow, what an incredible day.

41:24what a great story that you helped this woman get to her car from, you know, the door because it was snowing and she was slipping. You know, just little things like that are nice to see.

41:34David Novak:You know, I've heard you say something that I thought was really interesting, that you don't want to be known as concrete cowboy. Explain what you mean by that. If there's a guy on a ranch and he's talking to his buddies and they're talking about Tecovas, I want them to be proud of what they're seeing and what we're bringing to life, whether it's our creative content, whether it's a commercial we're running, an advertisement, or the product we're doing, and the way we're showing up, as opposed to kind of, I don't know, someone doing karaoke in the snow with a fake background. I think it's just trying to maintain authenticity is the main point.

42:16And I think that if we can do that in a way that makes the true ranch hand proud instead of embarrassed, then I think that's a good filter to use. And it's one reason, we got into wholesale recently. It's been about a year and a half now. And the channel that I wanted to get into was a lot of these independent Western stores that are truly catering to an authentic Western lifestyle consumer. These are people who've probably been shopping at that store in Howell, Michigan, since they were five years old, and now they're 20, or now they may be a store associate, and they've been shopping there since five years old.

42:55Those are the people that I think if they're representing the brand, and we can educate them about our brand and what our values are and what we're all about, and they're selling now to people who this is their lifestyle, I think that's growing the roots. And so as much as we want to try and bring and open the tent up to Western and opening in places, again, like Soho and Detroit and Orange County, California, et cetera, I want to make sure we're growing those roots at the same time so we don't just have a tree that's tipping over.

43:29David Novak:You know, you're in a growth business and things are definitely moving in a great direction. What's an uncomfortable truth about your business right now that your team needs to hear? You know, in building a culture, what we're trying to do is build a team of leaders, like a whole building of them. It's not, you know, leadership, I don't believe, is a position. I think it's a characteristic, an attitude. And I'm a big believer in a team rowing in the same direction, very clear aligned goals, is incredibly powerful. and just a competitive advantage. You may think you've got that going in a great direction.

44:12And as you start to scale and you add people, and if you're not incredibly diligent about the things that are important to create a culture, before you know it, it's sideways. And if you're putting up with a bad apple that's managing up, that's throwing people under the bus, that's taking credit for other people's work, that's not taking accountability for things they should be taking, and you let that fester, you can go off the rails so quickly. And I think that we're in a great position to have a very collaborative team. And it's not that we don't have our issues, but we've got to make sure people are having hard, constructive conversations and not letting things fester.

44:57But to me, if we can keep all that going and we're solid on our strategy and what we need to execute, I think we can go a long way. But as an activist at Decker's once told me at lunch, his father was a big businessman. And he said, my dad used to always say, business isn't rocket science, but managing people is. And, you know, I think there's a little bit of truth to that. but you know I need everybody in on on this and it can't just be me dictating this is what we're going to go do because if you don't have the buy-in or the right culture to really see it through so to me I think that's the thing I try and focus on we've got a lot of creative people great product people and so I don't really worry about are we going to miss the season because we didn't come up with the right product.

45:51That kind of stuff doesn't keep me up at night. Yeah.

45:55David Novak:You know, when you look at your business, David, how much of a role is AI playing in it now or what do you see happening there? So what we're doing first is we're arming the entire team with the tools, right? So they have a license to, you know, an enterprise version of whatever tool they need, whether it's ChatGBT or Claude, et cetera. We've set up, we hired a person who's a very good prompt engineer to kind of work with people on how to, okay, I'm stuck. How can I get this tool further to do what I'm trying to get it to do? So we're trying to help people. We've set up a Slack channel, which is kind of an AI recognition channel where people get like quick wins and like, look what I just built and I saved me and my team 10 hours a week that we no longer have to do this or that.

46:50So there's a lot of just getting buy-in and people understanding that you got to dive in here and use these tools. Don't be scared of them. Don't be, you know, like if I get good at this, they're going to just get rid of me. Because I think there's other things there that we can redeploy people to things that we've said no to because we just don't have the horsepower to do it, that we might be able to green light now more quickly by freeing up people instead of doing mundane type work.

47:19David Novak:How are you using AI personally to develop your leadership skills? I'll tinker with it quite a bit just on, you know, pushing on collaboration ideas, partnership ideas, things like that. I mean, I'm not exactly a guru, but it's amazing what it can do. I'm not trying to build myself dashboards and things like that. For example, our head of e-com, we had in our budget a million dollars for a certain technology to kind of move some, we've got a ton of data in a very clean data warehouse, but now how do we mine that data to really make, to get answers to questions that if we had those answers, we could make much better decisions and much better capital allocation type decisions and optimizing how we're, you know, spending on marketing, those types of things.

48:16She spent three hours on a Saturday with Claude and came back on Monday and said, take that million out of the budget. We don't need that. We've already developed what I need now. And she'll keep iterating on it. But, you know, we are seeing those kinds of moves pretty quickly here. And I do feel like we're agile enough. And the collaboration and teamwork that I mentioned, very few big things can happen in an organization that aren't, where you're not dependent upon some cross-functional partner. It's just, you know, it's hard to move the needle on, you're in a silo and you're really pushing something forward.

48:58And so I think the ability to kind of work collectively with the teams on what are these things we can be building together that really leapfrog. And that's kind of what I'm excited about. We're starting to see a lot of interesting data that, you know, when you look at like when we put a store in a given MSA, what happens? You know, and yeah, you can see e-com, what happens to that business. But to truly be able to kind of connect the dots and see what decisions are being made and the impact of them, I think is going to be fascinating.

49:32David Novak:Well, this conversation has been fascinating and fun. And I'd like to have a little fun with you with my lightning round of questions, David. Are you ready for this? I'm not sure, but fire away. All right. The three words that best describe you. I would say integrity, loyalty, and curiosity. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Maybe Abraham Lincoln. Your biggest pet peeve? Arrogance. Who would play you in a movie? Maybe Kevin Costner or Robert Duvall. What's your favorite Cajun menu item? That's a good one. I would say turtle soup.

50:16David Novak:That's great. I love that. Are you more of a boots on the ranch kind of guy or boots with a suit kind of guy? I like to be both. I would say that people probably would say boots and suits. How many pair of boots do you have? About 52. About 52 to be precise. Yeah. As a former lawyer, what's something most people, in your mind, misunderstand about lawyers? I think their judgment. And I think lawyers tend to, yeah, I mean, I think judgment is something that's truly helped me in my career. And I think a lot of lawyers that are good have good judgment. What's something you've been curious about lately that has absolutely nothing to do with your business?

51:02I'd say hockey. Not only for the Team USA, but my new son-in-law is a hockey player. And so I've grown up in the South. It's a sport I've never really followed. And now my wife and I are watching hockey four times a week.

51:17David Novak:The one thing you do just for you? I would say swim, swimming, exercise. Besides your family and friends, what's your most prized possession? I'd say gratitude, maybe. I don't know if it's a material possession. I'd say gratitude. I'm grateful for where I am. Yeah. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Well, these days, country music. What's something about you few people would know? Maybe competitive. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? I would say exercise of some sort. All right, we're out of the lightning round. And, you know, I like your choice of actors that are going to play you.

52:01David Novak:I think that's great. Nobody's ever accused you of having a big ego, have they? No. I know that. I can tell. So what's the absolute most exciting thing that you're just are so pumped up about it going on in your company right now? Just our momentum. And I think a lot of irons in the fire that are, you know, I like to think about, you know, returns on investment that are either going to be near term or something's going to take a little longer term. Right now, I think we have a very good mix of things that are going to start rearing their head in two years. Some are going to start rearing their heads in six months.

52:44So I like just the capital investments we're making and the returns I think we're going to see on it. I think that the way in which the team has kind of made decisions on sequencing things, I think is we're going to really see payoff in the next few years.

53:03David Novak:You know, you mentioned earlier that you're, you know, 60 or so, you know, and your founder, I think, is in his 40s, you know. He's 37 or 38, I think. Okay, 37, 38. Okay. You know. His dad and I are good friends. Put it that way. Well, how have you made that work? I mean, that's a big, you know, you got a lot more seniority than him. He started the company. How do you, you know, what advice can you give to people on how to make it work with a founder? Because a lot of people work for founders and it just doesn't work out. Yeah, I think, well, first of all, my practice of law, I dealt with a lot of founders and entrepreneurs.

53:45So I think, you know, PhD candidates at whatever or, you know, doctorate. So I've dealt with a lot of founders. Um, and, but again, I think Paul and I have a, a solid relationship where, uh, I'll lean on him on stuff and he trusts me on stuff. And I, I think I took the time to earn his trust. You know, if I had come in and just said, you know, you got to move out of my way and let me do this and that, that would not have been the right approach. And, and I think he respects that. And I think over time I did earn his trust and, and there, you know, there's always a why behind what we're trying to accomplish.

54:28And I felt like if I brought him along, just like the rest of the team, frankly, that we would be in a good situation. And he is a very, very sharp guy, I can tell you. I mentioned his vision, but an incredibly bright guy. And so he challenges me too, you know, and he'll ask four deep questions. And if you don't have the answer, so good luck with earning his trust. But so I learn a lot from him as well.

54:53David Novak:So last question here, David, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? I think for me, what has worked and what I didn't realize until later in my career was I'd rather somebody be a learn-it-all than a know-it-all. And I think you don't ever have to worry about not having the answers to every question. Nobody is going to be able to know soup to nuts. Here's what you need to do across a brand, across a company. So you don't need to know it all. Now, you need to go find out the answers to things or your best guess at what that answer may be. But I think I mentioned earlier about insecurities.

55:38I feel like if I had known that and I didn't have to kind of fake my way through a lot of things, which comes with a lot of anxiety and that. But if you just kind of took comfort in the fact that I don't know the answer to that, but I'm going to go find it out and find it out quickly and I'll come back to you. That answer is fine as long as you go back to them.

55:59David Novak:Yeah. And building on that, curiosity has to be a trait if you're going to be a learn-it-all. Do you have one question you ask that you find to be the most powerful question you use in your repertoire? I'm more trying to understand the person I'm dealing with before I can even know what that question is. So it's a little bit of a rapport issue and just sort of getting comfortable with somebody and then seeing where they may be paranoid about something. I may hit a nerve too early or, you know, I don't think there's one question that I, like in every interview, this is a question I'm going to ask them to see how they answer it.

56:36I kind of, I'm a little more of a gut feel than that, I guess.

56:39David Novak:Is that gut, does that come from experience or is that something that you've always had? I think probably a little of both. I think it certainly comes from experience and seeing. I think my judgment's pretty solid and I think I've got a good feel for people and issues. And I can tell pretty quickly if we bring somebody on board, how they're going to fit within the team. And if they don't, I'm also a big believer in getting them on the bus and getting them off the bus if we need to. Also a big believer, just again, because in getting athletes on the field and we'll figure out the place to put them.

57:22I'll take a guy and gal willing to work hard and intellectual curiosity all day long. We can usually do pretty well with that type of characteristic and we'll figure out where to put them on the field.

57:36David Novak:Yeah, great, great. Well, thank you very much, David. It's been a great conversation and I'm going to have to now go out and get a pair of your boots. Yeah, see, we got you into the brand. Now we got to kick you over the ledge in a pair of cowboy boots. Well, thank you for having me, David. I love your podcast. I've listened to several of them. And so it's a great one and I appreciate having the honor to be on it. Yeah, well, it's my honor to interview you. So thank you.

58:13David Novak:Thank you. All is right in the world. We are able to proceed with this conversation, debriefing your conversation with the CEO of Tecovas. Thank you so much, David. You have made the people very happy. Well, I enjoy doing that. Do you got boots on too? Can you kick your feet up on the desk and just make it all come? I'm not going to go get my boots, but I have a pair. I love it. I know you have a pair because you actually went to a Tecova. Let's get going, darling. Let's go. I know you have a pair of boots, David, because you actually went to a Tecova store to prepare for your conversation with David Lafitte.

58:55David Novak:Yes, yes, I did. I bought T-shirts. I bought belts. I bought everything. And I got a free drink while I was there. Well, David, how's the quality of all the stuff that you bought? Very, very good. It better be because it wasn't cheap. Well, I can't wait to debrief some of the concepts that you and David talked about in this conversation. And it's just really, really fantastic that you have this hat on. Giddy up and let's go. Let's go. David, the first concept is this idea of radical hospitality. Now, Tecova's is all in on this idea of radical hospitality, all the way from their frontline employees in their stores down to the folks in the factory helping them manufacture their products.

59:36David Novak:They've got free drinks, like you said, and personalization and shoeshines in their stores and all this store space that really makes you want to linger in this radical hospitality. Now, that phrase radical hospitality, radical is a powerful word. So I'm curious just what you what your take is on that concept. I love radical hospitality because what does radical mean? It means be radical. It's not like, oh, let's be hospitable. It's like we don't want to just be hospitable. We want to distinguish ourselves as hospitable. And it reminds me of the former CEO of Target, who really put Target on the map.

1:00:16David Novak:Bob Allerick used to be on the Yum Brands board. he talked about how the great companies differentiate themselves in everything that they do. And that's really what Tekovas is really trying to do with their service proposition and even how they work with their suppliers. And he said exaggerate your differentiation in everything you do. That was basically a way to say radical. He said exaggerate. You know, for example, he always talked about how important it was for Target to have wide aisles. You know, the wide aisles were really a big feature of Target versus other retailers. And he said if it was up to him, he'd make them wider every year, you know, because he believed that was really powerful.

1:01:03David Novak:So, you know, I think leaders should look for powerful words to really demonstrate what they want their people to do that will drive differentiation and exaggerate the differentiation you're trying to drive in the marketplace. Well, that radical hospitality is serving them well as they grow and scale their company, which brings me, David, to the next topic that I love your take on, which is this idea of culture at scale. And you can really tell that David is on high alert against complacency. And we all know how fast a culture can go sideways as you scale a business and grow it. What advice, David, can you give people for protecting that culture as your company grows at massive scale?

1:01:45David Novak:First of all, make sure everybody knows what your culture is. You know, explain it in really simple terms and make everyone know and train everybody on the power of your cultural behaviors and how that's going to result in great results. So, you know, make everyone know what you want to stand for and why it's important. That's important. and I think you have to train people on your culture. So when you have new people come in, you have a, you know, at Yum, we had the Yum experience, you know, where we had two days of indoctrination on what our culture was and why and I think that's very important.

1:02:23David Novak:And then measure it. Anything that's important, you measure. So we always measured our culture, you know, in our restaurants, in our regions and in our divisions, in our headquarters, you know, How well are we really walking the talk on our cultural behaviors? I think that basically says a lot. But I tell you one thing that really drives your culture and maintains it, promote people who walk the talk on your culture. Because when people know that that's how you get promoted, culture doesn't have a tendency to go away. And then I think in terms of complacency, which is one of the things that he was very careful on, you've got to continually be raising the bar.

1:03:03David Novak:You're never satisfied. You got to have a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo. And that comes from the leader. You know, you can't walk by mediocre performance. You can never walk by it. And so you got to let people, you know, what's good. And then when you see good, recognize the hell out of it. It really is shocking to think about how many businesses are, how many huge businesses aren't telling people what their culture is. I mean, I feel like if you walked into the doors of a huge corporation somewhere and you ask any employee, you know, what is your culture? The number of people who aren't able to answer that question is kind of staggering.

1:03:44David Novak:So, I mean, I love what you said, David. It's so simple. Make sure everyone knows what your culture is. You know, that's why there's so many toxic workplaces, you know, and the statistics are staggering. People don't know what the culture is and the culture isn't lived out. And many times the culture is articulated, but it's on a laminated plaque that's in the corner office somewhere where nobody really understands what it is. And I think as leaders, you have to bring your culture alive in the ways that I talked about. Moving on to the final topic, David, that I love your thoughts on. David is, Takovas David, is 50 years old, and he was a corporate lawyer for 25 years before making the move into the C-suite for shoe and apparel companies at his age.

1:04:36David Novak:Now, that's a big change relatively later in one's career. If someone is considering a career pivot like this and really wants to go from a functional expert to a general manager, what coaching would you give them? The first thing I'd say is you've got to really be an avid learner of the business. You know, I've seen marketing people fall asleep as soon as people started talking about finance. I've seen finance people start to yawn as soon as the marketing person starts to talk. You got to be an avid learner. You got to care about the whole business. You got to own the whole business. You know, so you got to act like an owner.

1:05:18David Novak:I think if you want to move into a general manager role, you got to think like a general manager and you got to show people that you care about the whole ball of wax, not just your piece of the pie. And I think that that care is demonstrated by your ability to go out and learn the other functions, learn, learn enough to where you can lead other functions. You know, I always feel like you got to make sure you don't have anything that's going to derail you. If you're a finance person and you don't really have an understanding of the customer, you better learn how to love customers. You know, If you're a supply chain expert and you have no interest in marketing, you better learn something.

1:06:01David Novak:And so you've got to demonstrate a capability and a willingness and a huge desire to know and be able to lead the entire business, not just what you're accountable for. And David, how do you report back to your boss or to the person who would put you in that new role that you have gone out and done that learning? Because it's one thing to go do it, but how do you make sure the people that you're trying to keep informed of your activity, how do you make sure that they know that you've done that? They'll see it. They'll see it in your contribution to the business. Okay. You know, it reminds me of a great story I loved from John Wooden.

1:06:41David Novak:And John Wooden thought recognition was really important. okay and he felt that every times any one of his players threw a ball to somebody and helped somebody score a basket okay they should the whoever scored that basket should acknowledge the person who who either set the pick or or through the pass or whatever that helped them make the basket and he said one of the players said to him one time well what if they're not watching coach and the coach said, Oh, they'll be looking. Okay. And I think the people that you work for, they're looking, they're looking at you all the time. They're not going to put you in a job unless you demonstrate you have the capability to take on more responsibility.

1:07:25David Novak:So, so you got to show people that you really are interested in the total business. And I, I, I really believe acting like an owner and acting like someone who owns a total businesses is, is, is really critical for anybody who wants to be a general manager. David, as we wrap this episode up, what do you really want people to be thinking about as they try to apply some of these insights to their lives and to their leadership? Okay. If you've got something that's really important that you think is going to drive your business, exaggerate the differentiation. Be radical in the words that you choose.

1:07:59David Novak:Number two, if you want to really make sure you have a powerful culture, take the time to seat it deep in all the ways it takes to make sure that people understand what the culture is and it stays alive. And then number three, if you want to be a general manager, you want to make a big career pivot into something else, you better show a very active interest in the total business and on whatever function that you don't have a real knowledge in so that you at least get competent enough at it that you can help lead it and coach it and be a powerful powerful player that can make a difference in the business.

1:08:36David Novak:Recognizing that your core function capability, you know, is always going to be your strong suit. You just got to make sure the other stuff is not something that will derail you. I love it, David. Well, thank you again so much for an excellent episode of How Leaders Lead. Thank you also to David Lafitte for your wonderful insights. And thank you, of course, to you, our listeners. Stay tuned for another episode of How Leaders Lead next Thursday, and we will see you soon.