Let Them Lead

To get to his current post, as Vice-President of a 250-store chain, Tim Williams beat the odds repeatedly. Born and raised in inner-city Milwaukee, Williams earned an academic scholarship to a Catholic boys’ school, then an athletic scholarship at the University of Michigan, where he started as linebacker and won three Big Ten titles. But Williams declined his fifth year, and a shot at pro football, to enter UM’s law school, and later turned down bigger money in private practice to become Vice-President at Meijer. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Williams preaches that diversity and inclusion entails more than race, gender, and ethnicity, and embracing it is a smart business strategy.

In this introductory episode, I explain why I wrote Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team, how it led to launching this podcast, and what this podcast is all about.

This weeks Guest is Ari Weinzweig. Food critics around the world have extolled the virtues of Zingermans community of businesses, from their flagship delicatessen to their Roadhouse restaurant to the Creamery, Coffee Company, Mail Order service, and Zingtrain, where they teach leaders from all fields their secrets. But you wouldn’t have guessed Zingerman’s success in 1982, when Weinzweig, a self-described “lapsed anarchist” and former busboy, and Paul Saginaw started Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor. In this episode, Weinzweig explains how the business they built on trust – including sharing their financials with everyone – became a $70 million dollar a year empire.

When Richard Sheridan speaks to MBA students, he tells them that their careers will really start after they’ve been fired the first time. This gets their attention – and it got ours. It happened to Sheridan when he was 43, with a wife and three young daughters, and he got the call that his software company would be eliminating his position. But from that low point came his best idea: Menlo Innovations, a completely different kind of software company, one they founded on an almost foreign concept: joy – joy for the creators, the users, and the sponsors. “Joy is the goal,” he says, and the high customer satisfaction, low turnover, and strong profits, happy byproducts. Almost everything your company probably does, Menlo does the opposite.

Jim Hackett started his leadership career as a third-string center on the University of Michigan football team, where he kept a group of young-back ups motivated to take on some of the nation’s best players in practice every day. He rose to become the youngest CEO of Steelcase furniture at the ripe age of 39, turning the Fortune 500 around during trying times. After two decades, he accepted the University of Michigan’s invitation to return as interim athletic director – “Some jobs are for God and country,” as he explains -- then became Ford Motor Company’s CEO, one of the world’s biggest leadership jobs. One of his takeaways: “The softest pillow in the world is a clean conscience.”

The Let Them Lead podcast is about the risks and rewards of leading in today's world. Hosted by John Bacon, author of Let Them Lead: Unexpected lessons in leadership from America's worst high school hockey team.

Each week we'll talk to amazing leaders from around the country from just about every field you can think of and pick up their hard won wisdom. In the words of John’s fifth grade teacher, Mr. Putin, “It'll be fast fun, and we'll get it done.”

So please join us each week for an inspiring discussions you’ll hate to miss.