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Dan’s Biz Bookshelf: Leaders Eat Last—Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Leaders create culture and the right culture is what makes great companies and organizations. They lead by example. Leaders allow their teams to be great. No matter the size of your organization, whether it’s three or 3,000 people, culture is always important. Culture is what makes a great company in the end, and that must come from the top.

The simple example of a company president walking down the hall of his company and bending down to pick up a piece of paper off the floor is powerful. Much more powerful than all the talks about keeping the place clean.

Leaders look out for their people. In fact, author Simon Sinek says that we need to treat employees like our children and look out for them the same way we would our children. In the 1980s, Milton Friedman’s economics declared that a company’s only goal was to make money for its shareholders. Yikes! Look where that got us. The big heroes at that time were Jack Welch and "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, whose answer to every problem was to cut heads. Whenever they did that, Wall Street cheered.

As an aside, the children and now grandchildren of these headless victims watched this happen. It affected them firsthand. No wonder they come to us with a deep built-in distrust of corporations. Consider where we are today, when these ensuing generations are wary of joining companies. They don’t trust companies. They witnessed firsthand that lauded leaders like Mr. Welch bragged about laying off 10% of his management staff every year. What are they supposed to think?

No longer is this style of treatment working, nor will it work in the future. The new trend is for the leader to “eat last” by taking care of her people first, and then they will take care of her.

As an example of the new kind of leader, the kind who is succeeding today, Sinek relates in his book the story of Bob Chapman and his company Barry-Wehmiller. Bob Chapman is known for buying distressed companies and making them better. When one of this companies ran into trouble, Bob did not want to lay people off, which went against everything that he had been taught. He felt that, if his family ran into financial difficulties, he would not send a couple of his kids away. The same thing applied to his company.

Instead of laying people off, he talked to his people, and they found ways to cooperate with one another to make sure everyone took care of everyone else.

This is just one example of how leaders “eat last,” and how they are finding ways to take care of their people which in turn will take care of the company.

Some of you may be disgusted by this “kumbaya” approach. Sorry you feel that way, for your own sake. You had better read this book and get religion, or you are going to be one of those companies that goes out of business for lack of a workforce. 

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.

Leaders Eat Last—Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
Author: Simon Sinek
Copyright: 2014
Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin Random House L.L.C.
Price: $18 in paperback
Pages: 350 pages with index