Have this, don't need the rest.

Family business

While many of her friends went into corporate jobs straight out of university, Karen joined a family business, East Anglo Kitchen Supplies. She had always been intrigued by the tenacity to create something from scratch, and felt connected to these businesses. East Anglo supplied all sorts of commercial kitchen needs, from utensils to appliances.

Over the two decades that the founders had been steadily building the business, it grew to a headcount of 25 employees. Family businesses have traditionally found it a challenge to recruit the right talent, so within that headcount she counted at least five family members or relatives involved.

When Karen joined she got immediately involved in all aspects of East Anglo, from warehousing to dispatch, operations, finance and accounting, business development, and marketing. After 4 years with the business, she finally settled on business development.

Acting on a trend

Due to her exposure to various parts of the business, she had noticed a trend. East Anglo had traditionally serviced commercial kitchen clients on the budget and mid price ranges. Over the years the taste of customers going to restaurants had become more sophisticated, and an increasing number of the commercial kitchen clients were requesting for higher end utensils and appliances. 

These same commercial kitchens were also beginning to request for some degree of consultancy services from East Anglo. Karen saw this as an opportunity and presented a case to the founders that she would start up a corporate sales team to service these high end requests.

The reason she had put forth was that with the business development team, managed by a relative of the founders, was a generalist team covering all spectrum of clients' needs, whereas the corporate sales team would be a specialized team, with a slightly different set of skills and employee personalities that would deal with these higher end commercial kitchen clients.

Surprisingly there was little to no resistant from the business development team manager, Hans. The founders agreed to give it a go.

Maiden voyage

Karen was about to embark on her journey as a first-time leader. She knew she had to quickly prove that the corporate sales team could be a profitable expansion, and so she set about recruiting her first team member, Lee. 

Lee was fresh out of school, with a hospitality diploma and was familiar with the workings of a commercial kitchen as well as a restaurant area. He had repeatedly attempted to land a corporate job but was unsuccessful. Karen hired him because she realized he was a rough diamond. Lee had the attitude but lacked the communication skills to put forth his thoughts.

Karen went about establishing slightly different processes for the corporate sales team with operations, dispatch, finance and accounting, and business development. Eventually she would create a separate product line, Carvery, to market higher-end utensils and appliances as well as consultancy services provided by East Anglo. 

Growing to keep

In part due to the success of the Carvery market brand, Karen was able to grow the corporate sales team to a strength of 6. The headcount for East Anglo had also grown to about 40 and her first hire, Lee, was now the team supervisor while she remained the team manager.

Though things were not all going rosy. Lee, who had developed into a competent team member and as her right hand man, had always kept his eye on the corporate work environment. Karen knew this was the case and so she had made him supervisor as a retention strategy. She had hoped it would work in keeping him around longer.

One day Lee tendered his resignation letter. He had finally landed a corporate job and was moving on. Karen knew Lee's leaving was inevitable. The company growth was organically steady over the years, and the only other area of growth was for him to take over her position as team manager. However she had yet to develop new areas for herself within the business.

She graciously accepted his resignation and wished him the best. They agreed to stay in touch.

Pouring rain

Another challenge rose shortly after Lee's departure. One issue with family businesses is that there were often too many chiefs in the company, each with their own vision of where the company should be headed.

The family member who was in charge of the business development team, Hans, had grown envious of Karen and the corporate sales team. He was beginning to feel that he was left to deal with the budget and mid-price clients, while Karen lavished and dined with the high-end segment.

He cleverly proposed a merger of the two teams in order to drive greater cost and process efficiencies and promote cross-selling between clients.

Umbrella, anyone?

Karen was furious and she would have none of that nonsense. She stated that Hans had plenty of opportunities to develop a new brand for East Anglo even before she started the corporate sales team, but he did not take action despite her recommendation after seeing the trend while she had worked for him.

Now he wanted in on the action because Carvery is successful.

The founders intervened and advise Hans to further develop the budget and mid-price markets. Karen and the Carvery brand has been successful and should be further supported to even greater heights.

Relationship between Hans and Karen would simmer awkwardly for a period of time after that. Eventually Hans would come to accept that he had missed an opportunity.

Exploring the uncharted waters

A few more years would pass and East Anglo Kitchen Supplies would grow to a headcount of 57. The growth of the business meant that they would also have to quadruple their warehousing space from 10,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet.

Karen was now a veteran with over a decade of experience. Things were running well for the corporate sales team, the Carvery brand, and their high end commercial kitchen clients. 

Looking back, she saw a need in the market and took ownership of addressing that need for the greater good of East Anglo. She did not do it for the recognition, it was simply an avenue of growth for her. She went through the entire process of recruiting a team, setting up processes, and eventually turning things to be successful because she owned the journey. 

With ownership, things will be sorted.

It was never an issue for her to walk the journey. She was responsible for seeing things to the end, and did not need a system of accountability to ensure that she did.

She had now identified a new area to develop and it was time to find her replacement as corporate sales team manager. She looked outside of East Anglo for someone with corporate experience that could bring structure to the team.

That was when she reached out to her first hire, Lee, to inquire how he was doing. Turns out he had been a team leader for a number of years in his corporate job and was now ready for a fresh challenge. 

Karen was now in a position to offer him the right opportunity. They agreed to meet up and discuss.

Question: Have you ever taken full ownership for seeing things through, and did you need a system of accountability to ensure that you did?

About the writer:

Daniel Lee is a speaker and writer and is co-authoring a book on First Time Leadership (FTL) to create a roadmap to understanding leadership for aspiring and first time leaders.

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Disclaimer  

This article is based off a true story that I learned during my interviews with senior and first time leaders. Any similarities with fictitious events or characters are purely coincidental.