Author, speaker, and franchising leader Dina Dwyer-Owens explains how to live R.I.C.H. (respect, integrity, customer focus, and having fun) in your business.Hear Dina's full interview in Episode 186 of The Action Catalyst.
So talk to me about Live Rich. OK, so you you use that a lot. Rich is actually an acronym. So in 1993, I mentioned we took our company public, which was a big step for our founder and my father. And then unfortunately, in 1994, he died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 60. So quite a young man. So one of the things that we knew as a leadership team was we had to keep this culture special.
It's what attracted the strong franchisees we had. It's what attracted the great team that we had. They were aligned. in those values. So we knew we had to keep that foundation strong. We took Don's original values, his belief system, and we operationalized it. So that's where Rich came from. And Rich stands for respect, integrity, customer focus, and having fun in the process.
So when we say we live rich at the Dwyer Group, Of course, we're in business to make money at the end of the day, but it's about how we treat people. And when we treat people with respect and dignity, we provide a quality product or service. Profits are the applause we get, as my friend Ken Blanchard would say.
We said anytime we have the meeting of three or more of our team members or our franchisees, we're simply going to bring the values front and center in that meeting. Before we talk about anything else, we're going to either review all 15 values in our case because they're really behavioral statements if you want to think about them being that black and white.
Sometimes we might just highlight a value that we're not so good at. Maybe we've gotten some feedback from a customer that we're not doing a great job. This is who we are. This is the only way. that we're going to keep these values front and center.
And the minute we start getting lazy about it, I liken it to people who do a good job of brushing their teeth, but they don't floss their teeth very often. And what happens when you don't floss your teeth very often? You get rot, you get decay. And what happens when you start having decay? It not only affects your teeth, it affects major organs in your body.
And in my mind, it's up to the leader to stay firm on the fact that you've got to keep the values front and center because the minute you quit flossing, You're going to get decay. You start getting decay. Organs start shutting down. Your body is not going to be at optimal health. It's the same thing with a franchise organization or any organization. The values have to remain front and center.
The minute we start getting lazy about it, we lose an opportunity to really be great. When properly practiced, values inflict pain. They make some employees feel like outcasts. They can limit an organization's strategic and operational freedom and constrain the behavior of its people. They leave executives open to heavy criticism for even minor violations, and they demand constant vigilance.
So this value step is not for everybody. It's really not for the faint of heart.