With Gratitude for Leadership Mentors, Past and Present
This is the tale of two Jims, one I got to know by working with him and the other by reading his books. More recently, an in-person workshop gave me even more insight. Both Jims inspire me to keep upping my game and work towards an ideal known as Level 5 leadership.
The first Jim is Jim Rich. He exemplified Level 5 leadership even before the term existed. Jim Rich was the VP of Manufacturing for West Coast plants when I was at Frito-Lay. I was his “analyst,” a role that was responsible for executing financial planning, reporting, performance management, leadership offsites and more. I traveled extensively with Jim and got a full immersion into his leadership style.
He was humble. Jim had a wonderfully understated West Texas demeanor, which reflected his genuine humility. He ascended from an entry level supervisor to Frito-Lay’s C-Suite, and he was as approachable the day he retired as the day he started.
Jim Rich loved to celebrate the accomplishments of the people in his organization. When good things happened, he was quick to celebrate everyone who played a role in that success. He established recognition institutions that lauded the achievements of people on his team at all levels. He would talk with enthusiasm about the things “we” accomplished—and he only used the word “I” when he was pointing out that he’d goofed on something.
He had fierce resolve. Jim established a company-wide process for improving the operations that he dubbed “Starfleet.” This program was a gamble; it involved hundreds of new positions and a significant cost infrastructure that needed to “self-fund” quickly. The new positions spanned all parts of the org chart but included a disproportionately large number of frontline operators. Jim believed in the power of harnessing the best our operators had to offer. Despite the early reservations, the program was a massive success. Jim’s fierce resolve made it so.
Perhaps the most telling characteristic of Jim’s leadership was his care for people. When we visited our manufacturing centers, we spent significant time reviewing people-related details and getting clear on what we could do to offer better support. On the plant floor, Jim connected with the technicians, remembering names and tidbits from the last time they spoke, which may have been many months earlier. His care and the way he connected with people at all levels were, and continue to be, an inspiration to me.
I was thinking about Jim Rich a lot this spring. For two amazing days in April, the SpartanNash executive leadership team and I were guests of business management expert Jim Collins in Boulder, Colorado. We went to his research center to learn in person, and it was an honor to work with Collins directly to improve the skills we need to serve as effective leaders at SpartanNash.
Jim Collins is, of course, the author of some of the most researched and insightful books ever written on successful companies and their leaders. His bestsellers include Good to Great, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall and Great by Choice. For anyone who is, or would like to be, a leader anywhere within any organization, I highly encourage reading Jim’s books!
It was Jim Collins who developed the idea of Level 5 Leadership (L5). In the book Good to Great—the result of five years of research—Collins and his team discovered that the leaders of highly successful organizations shared certain traits. They all started as highly capable individuals (L1) and then grew more effective through their contributions (L2), competence (L3) and effectiveness (L4).
Level 5 leaders go above and beyond, as Jim Rich did. These people motivate the enterprise “more with inspired standards than [their] inspiring personality.” Jim Collins summarized the concept in a 2001 Harvard Business Reviewarticle entitled, “Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve.”
It’s more than likely we’ve all encountered Level 5 leaders who we can keep learning from. I am so very thankful for the lessons I learned from these two Jims as well as many other mentors who have shared their time, talents and insights with me.
I’m glad to be here. Thank you, Jim Rich and Jim Collins.