Freddie D dives into the pivotal relationship between leadership and culture in the tech industry, drawing from his own experiences from decades ago. He reflects on his early days in the CAD Cam field, where he learned the importance of empowering teams under the guidance of his manager, Tom. Tom's approach of fostering camaraderie through shared experiences, like happy hours and group outings, created a strong culture of teamwork and appreciation. Freddie emphasizes that great leadership involves setting clear missions and then stepping back to let team members thrive, often leading to unexpected achievements. The episode serves as a reminder that empowering individuals can turn them into super fans of both the leader and the organization.
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Welcome to Freddie D's take on business superfans, the Service Providers podcast, episode 156.
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I was trying to think of what I wanted to talk about today, and I'm going to go back to when I actually began in the tech space decades ago.
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And it's going to be really about leadership and culture and how the two go together.
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Back decades ago, I got started, as I mentioned, into the tech space.
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The area was computer Aided design and Computer Aided Manufacturing, or better known as CAD Cam.
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And I was initially an applications engineer.
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I had a engineering background before I got started into that space.
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It was a new emerging market.
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At the time.
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It was like we were the Wild west in a sense.
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About six of us started roughly around the same time.
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There's another individual that started on the same day that I did.
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We are still friends decades later.
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But there was no training manuals really.
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There was no presentations that were set up.
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We had to put all that together.
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And that really came about by the manager that we had of our application engineering team, which was his first name was Tom.
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And Tom was a unique character in the sense that he wasn't a micromanager by any means.
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He was more of an empowering manager.
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He knew that we had to create all this stuff.
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We had to put together how our presentations were going to be.
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We had to put together how we would end up training customers on using the technology.
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Because we were going from taking people from going from drafting boards, doing 2D drawings to being able to do 3D design on a computer.
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It was a whole retraining that needed to take place for engineers.
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And we had to also learn how to present it so we could sell the technology to engineering and manufacturing companies.
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Tom really empowered us and gave us the leeway to go ahead and do what we needed to do and got out of the way.
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Basically.
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Here's our mission, here's our goals.
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We were just expanding the Chicago office.
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It was really when we came on board, just a few people, and over the years, it grew to over 30 people into the office.
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But this was again, the very beginning.
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And as we started to grow, we started to build a camaraderie with the tech guys, the sales guys, and everybody at the company.
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Tom did, and then we got a regional manager that came into place.
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What they did was initially, it was just every Friday or every other Friday, we would go for happy hour across the street to a restaurant bar, and Tom would buy and pay for our happy hour for everybody that went.
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And it'd be.
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Usually once we got the office going, it'd be 10, 15 people plus would show up and we'd be together.
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And that really built the camaraderie of our office and created a synergy that we had.
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And that synergy transcended into where we would go camping as a group and Tom would be part of it.
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So it wasn't just us, the tech guys, it was also management would come along for that.
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So we bonded as a whole team.
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And we would go to sports games together, we would go to house parties, somebody would throw a house party, we'd all show up.
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Since this was an Chicago area, we would go boating.
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Some of the guys in the team had boats and they'd invite us to go on the Fox river and we would go boating and water skiing and all that stuff.
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So we had a lot of fun.
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We even had poker parties and someone would host a party and people would show up, bring food.
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So we had a lot of fun at the same time that we got a lot of work done because we didn't get stuck by.
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You started at 8 o' clock and 5 o' clock is time to quit.
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We did what it took to get the job done.
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That was our mindset because Tom instilled that into us.
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If everything is done, I don't care what you guys do to really drive that point home.
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I remember we were prepping for a presentation.
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It was a large company and we were putting together a presentation.
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Since we were in a whole new space, we had to take the design from a 2D drawing, put it into a 3D model on the computer screen, and then practice how to put that together and present it to a prospective customer that wanted to buy the technology.
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So we were working late.
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It was a Wednesday.
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We're about:
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And in walks in Tom and he comes in with pizzas and beers.
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And we were like, wow, take back.
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Because we didn't expect that.
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But Tom knew how to recognize us for the extra effort, showed appreciation for us doing that extra effort.
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And that's why he came in with the pizzas and beer, sat with us, had pizzas and beer, and then says, all right, I know you guys are going to pull all nighter, do what you guys got to do and we'll see you in the morning.
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And he left.
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And that's what we did.
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We worked.
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We had brought our suits in because we knew we were most likely going to do an all nighter.
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So we ended up doing the bathroom refresh in the morning to get ready for the presentation.
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And the demo came by, the company came in, we did the demo, it went well.
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And Tom came in the room for a debriefing.
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How did everything go?
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And he sat in for part of meeting, but stepped out.
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And basically he turns around and goes, guys, it's Thursday afternoon.
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Get out of here.
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I'll see you Monday.
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And that's the type of guy that he was.
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And that really taught me a lot about leadership and really the importance of empowering your team, getting them onto a mission and getting out of the way and let people do what they can do, because you'll be surprised what people can do.
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And we went above and beyond.
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Many times did we pull all nighters?
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Because that's what we needed to do to get it done.
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And that was our mindset because again, we were appreciated, we were recognized.
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There was gratitude that was expressed.
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And more importantly, we were a team.
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By going out on the Friday nights, going out on the campings, everything else.
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We had a culture that had synergy in it.
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We had fun together.
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And like I said earlier, I'm still friends with some of those people.
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And I'm very close friends with the guy that I started on the same day because he ended up living with me and renting one of my rooms out of the townhouse that I had.
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We really became close friends over the years.
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And the moral of the story here is really, as a leader, you need to look at ways that you can empower your team, help them understand what the mission is and get out of the way.
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Going back to the happy hours, those were some great times.
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But because of those, I was very fortunate to have met Walter Payton from the Chicago Bears, the restaurant bar that I say was across the street from us.
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He was there, and I'm the one that had the guts to actually walk up to him, say hi, and told him that we had a group and showed the whole table because we had about 15 of us and asked if he would mind joining us and if we could buy him a beer.
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And he was gracious, came over, sat down, met everybody, shook everybody's hands.
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I actually met him twice and had beers with them two times, but that would have never happened if we would have not been doing those happy hours and those get togethers, because those are bonding moments.
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Those are fond memories.
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I met some of the other 85 bears.
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I met Trace Armstrong, Kevin Butler and Dan Hampton all at the same bar because of the activities that we would do.
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And I stayed with that company for seven years.
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And the original six of us that had started, give or take, around the same time, we were all there seven years later.
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And that says a lot about a company.
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That says more about the leadership team.
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And my take on this is really create super fans of your team, of yourself.
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We were super fans of Tom because the way Tom treated us, the way he appreciated us, the way he recognized us, we were his super fans.
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So as a leader, my advice and my suggestion is you want your team to be super fans of your leadership style.
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So if you got questions, if you want some insights, you can schedule a free 30 minute Prosperity Pathway discovery call with me.
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You can do that at ProsperityPathway chat and we'll take a look at what's going on and see what we can discover and see if there's some ideas that can help you punch through.
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Thanks so much for listening.
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Appreciate it.
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And please subscribe to Business Superfans, the service provider's Edge.
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That's it for Freddy D's take.
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We'll talk to you next Monday.
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Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan.
