Chick-fil-A LEADER CAST 2013

I attended Chick-fil-A leader cast 2013 on May 10th. This year concept is Simply Lead. It was very interesting session with leaders like Jack Welch, Condoleezza Rice, Rorke Denver (Navy Seal trainer), John Maxwell etc.,

All the leaders presented sessions this year excelled in their respective careers, each of them spent around 30 mins talking about Simply Lead. Just to give you a background of leader cast, it has been happening from last 10 years. This year it was live cast from 750 different sites in US, around 120,000 people attended the sessions and in North West Arkansas around 1900 people attended it. NWA is largest site outside Atlanta.

Some of the interesting quotes from the session are as below. They are not in any order or sequence. I just pulled some quotes I liked out of their sessions.

ANDY STANLEY: Best selling author of 20 books, 2.3 million monthly listener world wide.

• Leadership is about dealing with ambiguity. Leader may not be the smartest person in the room, May not have all the information, may not have the best decision in the room. 
• If you want to become a leader, surround yourself with smart people.
• Growth comes with complexity, complexity is the enemy of clarity.
• If you have the only hot dog stand in the town, quality of it need not be good.
• The mist in your mind becomes the fog in the organization.
• He encouraged everybody to have one sentence job description.
• Three important things you should always remember are
• What are we doing ?
• Why are we doing ?
• Where do I fit in ? (your core responsibility)

DAVID ALLEN:  One of the top 5 executive coaches in the US. Published in 28 languages. over 1 Million twitter followers.

• Appropriately engage yourself with Life, family, health and spirituality. If you don't make peace with these factors they will impact you a LOT.
• Its not lack of time its lack of bandwidth in MIND.
• You are productive when you can mess.
• Keep your mind like water. It will respond with small ripples when you throw small stone, it will respond with big ripples when you thorw boulder in it.
• shift IN and OUT pretty quickly with things. If a martial arts guys is fighting with 4 people, He will not fight with all the four at the same time, he will fight with one at a time. Similarly in your work shift in and out of things pretty quickly
• Your work will run you, if you let it. You are NOT your work.

HENRY CLOUD: Wrote more than 20 books, sold more than 7 Million books.

• Necessary Endings. This is very important decision in life, somethings need to end. No need to hold  them for ever. Because in your life best things need more attention. If season is passed, pull the plug. Don't hesitate.
• Why bankruptcy judge need to tell General Motors to shutdown PONTIAC, which didn't make profit in long time ? because someone holding it with their emotional decision.
• Holding things for fear of losing it or emotional reasons is not good.
• Steve jobs when re entered Apple, he said we are not continuing 30 models of computers, we are going to provide 4 models only. A laptop, desktop for Home and business that't it. Keep it simple.
• Your brain only needs Oxygen, food and relationship. Make some people your buddies, they will reduce your stress.

JOHN MAXWELL: Wrote 60 books, 19 million books sold. One of the top 20 authors in amazon.com.

• There is a difference between Educator and communicator. Educator will make things complex, communicator makes things simple.
• Its not easy to be simple, but it is effective.
• Simplistic methodology is shallow and fast. complex methodology is Deep and slow. Simple methodology is Deep and Fast. there is a difference between simplistic and simple.
• Leadership is influence, adding value to people everyday, subtract leadership landmines, multiply your strengths by developing them, divide your weakness by delegating them.
• Problem in today's world is, they are tying to find a leader to solve the problem. Be the leader, instead of finding one.
• Confidence does not replace skill.

COACH BRET BIIELEMA: Razor backs collage foot ball coach.

• According to Razor backs coach, there are 4 kinds of leaderships 
• Blind leadership
• Mentoring leadership
• Direct Leadership
• Applied leadership
• If you ignore a situation, it will come back as weird situation in the future. Address things, don't ignore them.
• Adversity is when men define themselves.

MIKE KRZYZEWSKI: 36 years of basket ball coaching, over 950 career wins, 2 Olympic gold medals.

• Don't hold back, say it.
• Don't delegate things, empower people to do things.
• Rule is something enforced by system, that is external entity. Standard is owned by people internally.
• Truth leads to trust.

CANDOLEZ RICE: she explained situation and leadership in the view of 9/11 attacks. It seems all the people in whiet house are shifted to bunkers on that day. One important thing she said is, take care of yourself. No body else can take care of your needs. You are responsible for taking care of your needs.

JACK WELCH: Needs no introduction, Manager of the century as per Fortune Magazine. During his 20 years as CEO, GE's Capital rose by 387 billion.

• You need to prune businesses /divisions or departments you don't need. Ask one question to yourself before taking such decision, If you are NOT into the business already, would you enter now.
• Fairness is part of love.
• One important gene successful leaders have is, generosity gene. They love to give promotions and grow their people.
• There are 3 S's, Self confidence, Simplicity and speed.
• Every meeting you have is personality review.
• Performance and respect to values are two things like X and Y axis in any person in the organization. you always need to show the door for two kinds of people. People with Low performance and low respect to values, High performance and low respect to values.
• Great leaders fear right things.
• You never as good as they pay you and never as bad as they pay you.
• Love what you are doing, over deliver at what you are doing. these are two qualities you need to excel in business world. 

That's all I was able to capture, 2014 Chick-fil-A concept is "Beyond You", I am sure it is going to be very interesting.