Today’s leadership lesson comes from a weird place. I’m a bit of a movie buff, and some of my favorites didn’t get great Rotten Tomatoes scores. This might be one of those. The backdrop for today’s leadership lesson stems from a pivotal scene in the Kevin Costner movie “Draft Day”
Leadership lesson number 7: “Stay true to your values”
Draft Day, in case you haven’t seen it, follows an NFL general manager – played by Kevin Costner – through a chaotic roller coaster ride on Draft Day. At the beginning of the movie, as he finishes his coffee before heading to the NFL Draft war room, he scribbled something on a yellow sticky note and stuffed it in his pocket. We don’t find out what it says until the end of the movie, after he’s had some crazy ups and downs, trade offers, and decisions questioned by the owner of his team, the Cleveland Browns. The pressure of that day was like no other.
In the end, he stayed true to his values and drafted Vontae Mack, a devastating pass rusher out of Ohio State. The sticky note in his pocket said “Vontae Mack, no matter what.” He needed a reminder of who he really wanted to draft no matter what other options presented themselves.
I loved that message. Remind yourself daily of what matters to you. Know your values and stay true to them. Most of the time, values in a business setting are simply words on a website. They don’t get put into practice daily.
Here’s where this gets fun. Let me take you back to July 31, 2019 – my first day as NexusTek’s CEO.
I walked into a hornet’s nest on Day 1. I had been asked by our Private Equity sponsor to integrate and turn around 6 companies that had been acquired in the preceding 18 months. The executive team was suspicious at best about this new CEO they got. People from each of the acquired “tribes” had their own cultures and refused to interact with the others. There were 4 ERP systems, 58 different variable compensation plans, and customers were churning at record rates. It was chaos from the jump.
I’d been there a hot minute, and I didn’t have all the answers. What I did know was this: It was going to take a strong team to pull this off, and so I wrote the following acronyms on the white board in my new office:
HAC
GAS
NA
It was my version of the yellow sticky note from Draft Day. I wanted a daily reminder of the caliber of people I’d need on the team to be successful. What do those 3 acronyms stand for, you may ask?
“HAC” stood for “have a clue.” I’d need smart people who knew what was going on. “GAS” stood for “give a shoot (the G-rated version).” I’d need people with passion who cared about making the business successful. “NA”….you guessed it. “No A-holes.” We couldn’t have any self-serving, entitled jerks on the team.
I lived by those 3 acronyms every day for 5 years. I think we did a pretty good job as a company sticking to them as well, but I know we weren’t perfect. We created a single company, with a single mission, with a culture of passionate customer service and attention to results. It may sound hokey, but it worked. Stay true to your values.