Ron Lovett - Outrageous Empowerment: The Incredible Story of Giving Employees Their Brains Back

Praise for
Outrageous Empowerment

I learned at an early age to model the masters when it came to business success. Ron Lovett, in Outrageous Empowerment , tells it like it is. In his storytelling fashion, Ron doesnt deliver us theory, but rather, take aways we can implement immediately to accelerate our success.

Jack Daly, Amazon Best Seller, Sales Guru and Serial Entrepreneur

Ron overcame bigger industry challenges than Southwest Airlines
or Starbucksan incredible feat.

Len Preeper, President and CEO of Thinkwell Research

Finally, theres a how-to on getting your staff aligned on purpose, values and key metrics so all your people are beating the same drum. This book was a game-changer for my organization.

Shaun Majumder, Actor/Comedian and Social Entrepreneur

This book is dedicated to the staff of fifteen hundred plus that helped me realize how much potential they had that I didnt know about. Im grateful for all the authors, speakers, and corporations that inspired me to take bits of their knowledge along the way.

Its also dedicated to all the CEOs, leaders, and managers in companies with a large frontline staff. You are all blessed with an ocean of untapped human resources available to you, right on your frontlinethe people that are interacting with your customers face-to-face and gathering crucial information to innovate every day. Dont let this go to waste. Believe in them and allow them to flourishdont be me and wait ten years to realize their potential.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

SECTION I

STARTING AT THE SOURCE

CHAPTER 1

MY FATHER AND PABLO

CHAPTER 2

FLYING BY THE SEAT OF MY PANTS

CHAPTER 3

NEW TRICKS FOR OLD DOGS

CHAPTER 4

CULTURE ULCERS: THE PAIN OF DEFINING COMPANY CHARACTER

SECTION II

FIGHT TO THE FINISH

CHAPTER 5

FIND, SHIFT, ALIGN: A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

CHAPTER 6

BEAT STARBUCKS: COMPETE AGAINST THE BEST

CHAPTER 7

GIVE PEOPLE THEIR BRAINS BACK

SECTION III

LIFE AFTER TAKEOFF

CHAPTER 8

BE A COACH, NOT A BOSS

CHAPTER 9

COLLABORATE OR PERISH

CHAPTER 10

TIME TO ASK MYSELF THE TOUGHEST QUESTION OF ALL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

I suppose youre thinking its terribly unorthodox for an authors wife to write a foreword for a business book, but in fairness, being unorthodox captures the books essence, so perhaps, its quite fitting.

When I met Ron Lovett, he had a tremendous back-story involving several entrepreneurial ventures (most of them legal); and he had a way of communicating with people of all backgrounds that made them feel important.

At the ripe age of twenty-two, Ron did what he does best: he dove head first into completely unknown waters. Surprisingly enough, this wasnt the scariest part of his journey. After over a decade of operating quite similarly to his competitors in the security industry, he realized that if he didnt start innovating, he was simply going to lose.

The security industry was challenging, to say the least. There were terrible margins, accompanied by a sales process that was almost always driven by the lowest bidder. Security guards shuffled from one company to the next depending on where the work was, so company loyalty was practically non-existent. And given the nature of turnaround time when you did land a contract, the hiring process basically consisted of anyone who had two arms and legs and was willing to do it. Site managers had become accustomed to being minimum-wage babysitters. Minor fires were reported on a daily basis, but problem solving for the company from the frontlines was something foreign to the industry and typically left to the CEO. Sound familiar yet?

Needless to say, a culture built on family values and collaboration wasnt something that seemed attainable.

After a couple of financially devastating years, Ron decided that in order to find personal enjoyment in his business once again, he needed to turn the industry on its head. No process, company hierarchy, or personnel type was to stay as it was. Everything would be done differently. If it wasnt broken, then they would break it anyway and put it back together in a way that was completely contrary to the industry.

People began to think that Ron was a visionaryan entrepreneurial genius that had something nobody else did. But I saw the simplicity of it all. I was, of course the one who had the pleasure of eavesdropping while he cooked dinner, or listening to his why in the world has no one done this yet? rants he spewed every morning from the shower.

New competitors were finally on his radar. He wanted to compete with Starbucks in regards to customer experience. Southwest Airlines was his newest target as it pertained to frontline workers and their company culture. And then, of course, there was Uber, who had revamped a transportation industry without any parameters in terms of how they did the work.

One day I asked, But honey, these companies are in completely different industrieshow are they relative? Sometimes Id think hed gone off the rails.

Thats the whole point, he said. I hate how the security industry operates, as do my peopleall of themfrom the front-line security guards to the management staff. Thats why we need to start looking at things through a different lens. We need to start fresh for the entire industry.

Now, this was the most daunting challenge Ron had ever been faced with. If he was wrong about how to reinvent this stale industry, it would mean closing his doors. We were looking at starting a family right around this time, so tackling something of this magnitude was extremely scary for me as well. But no amount of cautionary tales would stop this trainhe was already on it, and recruiting everyone around him to jump on board.

Ron took it process by process, dissecting how everyones work was completed, and how those employees felt about the daily tasks at hand. He began to see traction, and then regression. The cycle repeated itself, and I continued to watch the internal struggle of what felt right to him, but was not necessarily translating into dollars.

Until one day, Ron gave a security guard from Toronto the task of purchasing the next company vehicle. That security guard researched the best deals, models and contracts in terms of what made sense to the market there. The security guard struck a chord with Ron. Ron felt like he had given a minimum wage worker their brain back, and the results were powerful.

Alignment. It was that simple. If he could tap into the unused potential of his over fifteen hundred employees across the country, he could create a security business that was for the first time, truly aligned. It would have to flow through their people, their processes, each department and their recruitment strategy. But it was possible.

My conversations with Ron over dinner slowly morphed into much more positive discussions. The fear began to subside, and he found momentum by converting his staff into stakeholders in the company. People were now actually loyal to the brand because the brand finally stood for something, and those core values that were originally taped on an 11 x 13 poster on the boardroom wall were now being painted in the main foyer of their head office, and truly internalized by the fifteen hundred employees who were actually living them every day in their work.

Though our family dinner time was often interrupted by staff from all across the country calling Rons cell phone to discuss new opportunities and share their stories, I knew then that something great was occurring, and my husbands ability to execute was unlike anything I had ever seen. If something was working, he did more of it, immediately. If something was not working, he changed it, immediately. No smoke and mirrors, or genius at playjust the ability to execute faster with a fearlessness that no one saw coming.