Owning a business is a challenge. Knowing how to keep innovating in your business is an even bigger one. Join restaurant owner, motivational speaker, and innovation expert Sara Frasca each week as she guides fellow business owners in taking the next step to level up their business. If you've ever pondered hiring a business coach but want a sample first, come along for the adventure!
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Sara Frasca is the founder and owner of Trasca & Co Eatery in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, an experienced and engaging motivational speaker, and the CEO of global business coaching firm Point NorthEast.
Transcript:
You're listening to level up your business, the podcast where we talk to hardworking business owners and leaders and help them solve real issues in real time. I'm your host, Sarah Frasca restaurant owner, keynote speaker and business coach. I've spent my career not only in corporate America, but also as an entrepreneur, carrying on my family's legacy through my restaurant. Now a business coach and consultant, I'm helping other businesses to use creative problem solving and innovative thinking, to drive lasting change. Stay tuned to hear some inspiring guidance that will help you to level up your business this summer. So today, I want to take you through a topic that is very important, and is one of my passions. And it's really about empire, empowering your team to be creative problem solvers, and then allowing yourself to trust their thoughts. And I've got four tenants for you today. So four tenants of empowering creativity and trusting their thoughts. All right, here are the tenants. So the first one is let it fly. Honestly, this is all about coming up with tons and tons of ideas. There's no bad idea in a brainstorm, we've got to make it like a popcorn machine where there's ideas on all angles, all angles, from all different vantage points. And I would say if we can really let them fly, we will have some crazy out there ideas, some of them might be close in to what we have now whitespace, or just little iterations. But some of them can be thoughts that we never expected things that are way beyond the boundaries. As part of my coaching for point ne clients, I think that's one of my I would describe it as my superpowers. When I listen to their challenges. When I listen to the things that they're grappling with, I'm able to come up with a myriad of ideas of how they could solve their problems, how they could attack it. And not all of them are going to work. But I will tell you that I have a capability to let it fly. What if you did this? What if you thought of it this way? What if you did a different spin or came at it from this angle. And that's part of, in my opinion, the way to really build creative problem solving. So let it fly. Let those ideas spark new ideas. And when you have good partners in that brainstorming, you might think of something that allows them to think of something and when they say it, you might think of something again. And so now you've got this opportunity for collaboration and idea building, full of energy, full of exuberance, and hopefully full of the winning solution. All right, my second tenant for you of how to empower creativity, and trust your team, check ego at the door, folks, check ego at the door. This is not just for you, although you as the leader, it's very, very important to do that. But it's also important for your layers in your organization. Right? At the restaurant. I always tell folks, I had my best ideas when I opened this business. Now I am counting on all of you to take this business forward. I have then checked my ego. And my directors and my managers are seeing me check my ego. And that allows this open, very vulnerable moment, right? My ideas are not always going to be the best. And I tried to demonstrate that I tried to allow people to see, I'm just a person, I'm just someone and in this brainstorming, who knows whose idea is going to win. I want the best idea to win, not the highest level. In General Mills, I often found that I was surrounded by so many bright people, so many incredible, talented, well educated people. But I was able to see what happens when leaders empower their teams. And I was also able to see some examples where leaders really pounded their fist and made everything happen that they thought was the best. And I truly was able to see the good and the bad, right. Sometimes they were right. Of course they were also extremely smart. But over time, they started to stifle the creativity that their teams had those leaders who said, I don't know if I have the right idea. You may have the right idea and they had this more open and vulnerable and transparent way. They really started to get the two juices flowing for their team, they really started to harness the power of the culture that would bring and drive innovation. So I think it's really important to have no ego in brainstorming. If you think that the best case scenario is a winning idea, then who cares where it comes from, you've just got to allow the process to take hold, and build the Idea Factory. All right, my third tenant for you is fresh eyes. Now, this one is about bringing in people from the outside to see the problem or the challenge in a new way. If you can bring in people that have no impact to their world, with the outcome, you're gonna find that people come in, and they're able to brainstorm a little more effectively. All right, I'll say this again, but just in a different way, it's very difficult to come up with solutions. If your livelihood or your life is affected by the outcome. You paralyze yourself, this is just a kind of human nature thing, in my opinion, you come up with ideas, and then you come up with all the ways that won't work, right? Lego will never say yes to that. There's not enough capital, there's not enough people to get it done. How am I supposed to get my busy world done if I'm also testing a new idea. And so if you bring in other people who are not connected to the outcome, they may see things in a different way. I would say this is the same thing with coaching my clients for point ne, my clients bring challenges. And I don't have a fight or flight reaction or response, a natural, instinctual response to the outcomes that they are faced with. So I am free to think of all sorts of possibilities, all sorts of different outcomes, I'm able to think through different angles. I also believe that if we bring in people from other vantage points, other industries, other verticals, you can actually get a different train of thought. Now, I'm not a scientist, but I have a best friend that is, and she always has a different way of approaching challenges. She thinks about it from a more linear, maybe a little bit more mechanical perspective. And I'm kind of an emotional person. So I'm thinking about how's everybody going to feel with this? How is this going to affect the team. And so having a very well rounded, kind of surround to the challenge is really effective. And I will say, if you can bring in a physicist, if you can bring in a physician, if you can bring in a pharmacist, a pediatrician or whatever, a professional athlete, a preacher, I was just trying to use keywords there. But if you can bring in people that bring new perspective, you can have different vantage points from which those people are addressing your challenge. Now, a lot of people ask me, what do you do if you have a confidential situation so you can't adequately describe what's going on? I would say in a lot of it a lot of challenges, you can actually dumb it down to its core. And you don't have to tell people any of the confidential aspects. You don't have to bring anything forth, that is needing to be held in the strictest of competences. So you can describe the situation in more general terms. And if you have to tell them some of the confidential components, I'm guessing that legal would become comfortable having an NDA signed a nondisclosure a confidentiality agreement signed. So don't limit yourselves with those types of boundaries, I would say, broaden it so that you get fresh eyes fresh perspective on your challenge. Now, similarly, it might be helpful for you to kind of have partners in crime. For example, I have folks that I worked with at General Mills at the beginning of my career that have gone into all sorts of different beautiful verticals and industries. I have folks that have joined airline industries. I have folks that jewelry, of course, food, pet food, all sorts of places throughout the world technology, etc, etc. Anyway, my point is, you can build relationships with folks and now they have fresh eyes, and you guys can help each other with your challenges. So oftentimes, I'll reflect with a colleague just catching up and it's a little bit of a hey, what are you working on? What are you grappling with? Can I help in any way? They don't have to tell me what they're working on. But Just enough to give me a sense. And I'll say, Huh, wonder if you did it this way? Or have you ever looked at this resource? Or what if you try to in this manner, and they do the same for me, and it's a really effective way of bringing fresh eyes with someone that you trust to come and help you with your challenges. All right, the fourth tenant, for empowering creativity and trusting your team to bring their thoughts. The fourth one, safety first, right? We talked about this with our children, we always say, well, safety first. But here, I mean, that you've got to build the type of culture that enables a safety net for people. Now, if you've studied Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, that the first need that people have is to feel safe. And I mean this from a survival aspect. If you feel in your rule, like you cannot bring your best ideas forth, or even the smattering this popcorn of ideas, because you are afraid of humiliation, you're afraid, afraid of being ostracized, you're afraid of getting fired. These are things that challenge our safety as human beings. These are things that come in and offer threats to our being and hold us back, we're afraid that we'll get fired or lose our job, or our business will close, or people will make fun of us. These are things that we believe could affect our mental state, providing for our families, continuing our role, and having our ego and our persona in the community. These are things that we are deathly afraid of. And I know it may seem crazy, but these are fears that every human being has, it's just the degree to which we are able to really combat them and work through them. So when you're thinking of building your organization, and you're thinking in your mind that I'd like to have a team that is empowered to come up with the ideas necessary to combat competitive pressures, to build our revenue, to drive profitability, to have the type of retention that you want to have. If you want people to come with their best selves, their best ideas, you better be providing a safety net for them. If they come up with a failing idea, you've got to make sure you're protecting them. You've got to make sure that the culture inherent within an organization is one that says that's okay, we tried it, it didn't work, no big deal. We've got your back, you are not losing your job. Because you came up with an idea that didn't work. You've got to have a culture where people do not make fun of each other. I'll tell you, at General Mills, I was a part of the organization for so many years, we had so many failed products, truly products that people spent years formulating building packaging, building marketing plans, we had products that just flopped. But the organization was such that they kept going. This one didn't work. What did we learn? Alright, let's try this. All right, we did something a couple years ago, that didn't work. But I think that the consumer mindset has shifted, and I think it'll work now. People looked at the failures as stepping stones as ways to get better to build the type of innovative products that would dazzle the retailers and would fulfill consumer needs. I watched firsthand as the leaders who built a safe environment, protected, protected, and I mean that in every sense of the word, people that we're coming up with ideas, building a safety net. Now, unfortunately, I also worked for leaders that did not. I will tell you when I started at General Mills, I came every day with a notebook filled with ideas. What if we named the twin Stadium after wheedies? What if we did this? What if we created a sign? What if we had T shirts that had this? I came with fresh eyes? I had so much energy for building ideas for this organization and all of its wonderful brands. At the time that I started at General Mills, they had the slogan they may still today I'm not sure our brands, your legacy. I want it to be a part of it. I want it to feel and be As a part of driving those brands into the future of serving families across the world, the food that they wanted that tasted good that would nourish their bodies. I wanted to be a part of it. I came with a full head of steam. And I came with a notebook full of ideas. And every day, I would come into my manager's office. And I would say, All right, what if we did this, and you can imagine, right, I'm very passionate I full of energy at the time, I was 21 years old. And my manager would just sit there. And he was so bored. And he couldn't wait for that hour to be up. For this, Sara, at the time started to stop talking. And so after a while, I stopped doing it. I stopped bringing ideas, I stopped thinking of new ways that we could build our brands. And I became one of those robots that punch the clock every day. And it wasn't until I had my next manager, and my next manager wanted ideas. And we pitched ideas to the brands that were full of life and full of energy, and I regained that spirit, I found it again. And so we have to be the type of managers that bring that out in our people. We have to be the type of managers that provide the safety net for no ideas, a bad idea, bring them all, they may not all work. But why not think about them? There's no bad idea in a brainstorm. If you believe that. If you teach your teams that they are safe with you, they will bring all of their ideas. All right. So I'll go back through the the tenants. But my basic premise today to share with you is how can we empower creative problem solving with our teams? And how can we get them to trust their thoughts? How can we trust their thoughts, right as their manager, the first one, we got to let it fly, you got to just bring all the ideas, throw them against the wall, no idea is a bad idea. Number two, you've got to check your ego at the door. If you want to have this work effectively, that includes yourself, but it includes being a good role model for all of the layers in the organization. Number three, bring fresh eyes. I truly believe that there is no problem that we can't solve. If we do all of these sorts of things, and bringing fresh eyes is a fantastic way to bring people in to see your challenge in a new way. Number four, safety first, if you don't allow your team, the safety, the human instinctual safety to feel like they can do things, try things, test things, you're really not enabling the type of culture that will support forward momentum. You're really just supporting the status quo. So as I close all of these topics, I just wanted to say that I've done things right. And I've done things wrong in my career. I've had managers that have done things, right, and managers that have done things wrong. And unfortunately, that's just the way of the world, right, we're going to work with and for people. And we're also going to do the wrong thing. Sometimes. It's just kind of this trial and error, way of existing. And I don't ever mean to say that I've done everything, right, I just have learned, I've truly learned. And I would say you know as you build a team, and as you try through your way through all of this, you build a culture around you that helps to support this, I am way more capable of allowing people at the restaurant to come up with ideas, because I know now that they're focused on the same vision. At one time, I didn't necessarily trust their ideas because I felt they were selfish, or they were not motivated with driving growth. They were maybe motivated with not doing the work or you not having me do the work. And so there have been different situations where I haven't always done the right thing or had the right people around me to allow this to help. But I would say if we can make baby steps in all four of these categories, we can eventually have the type of organization that we desire. And the ultimate in my opinion, is how my restaurant is functioning now so Truscott and company eatery. I have a general manager who empowers his teams to come up with ideas. But that didn't work without me empowering him. And together we've really built a system where we can have all sorts of people at all sorts of levels coming up with ideas all the time. I also have kind of a kind of an opera operations director that works remotely, who comes up with ideas all the time. And again, I would say, you know, he's not boots on the ground, but he sees things from a different vantage, sometimes the boots on the ground team forgets about the bigger picture, or doesn't see the outside trends or doesn't see what's happening in other areas of the country. So we're all kind of supplementing each other's creativity by building this system. Ultimately, I believe that we are headed in the right direction. And I think it's only going to get better. So I hope this is helpful to you. As I always do, I want to make sure that I'm opening up some time to answer questions that are coming through via social media, and via this chat. And I'm always always watching the social media, if you're watching this after the live, just to see if there are other questions out there. So please keep sending them to me. Please keep asking your questions. And please, as a lot of you have done, let me know if I can help you. I think we're getting a lot of great engagement from folks. And they do have questions. And I think, at the very beginning of setting this up, I was able to share with you that really my sole purpose in doing this is to help people. If you need help in your business, if you have questions, just reach out and let me know what I can do to help you. I do not want people out there suffering thinking that they don't have any resources. I don't want anyone thinking that there's not an idea somewhere in the world to solve your problem there is you just have to know how to ask or where to find it. And I might not have the answer. But hopefully I can be a conduit to allow that type of brainstorm, storming to start and to populate ideas from all different angles and from fresh eyes. All right, I'm starting to get some questions. So let me answer this one here. What do you do if your boss isn't willing to allow your ideas. And I think this is a really good one, because you may be kind of in middle management or wherever in the organization, and you are trying very hard to empower and trust your treat your creative solutions, but you have a roadblock above you. And this is a really good question. So thanks for answering it. So I would say you know, this is a this is a tricky situation, because this happens quite often, right? I was at General Mills, and I know what this feels like, I'm doing all that I can to empower and bring ideas forth, whether they're mine or someone else's. But I'm hitting that roadblock. So the first thing that I would say is to be open and maybe a little bit vulnerable with your superior to say something like, you know, I got a lot of ideas that are percolating from my team. And I'd love the opportunity to have space to share them with you. And you might just as I have done, say, they're not all going to work. That's not why I'm bringing them. But we're looking at the long term vision of this business or looking at the long term, you know, focus for this brand, whatever it is. So you're you're influencing a little bit by putting yourselves in those shoes, you're thinking through what is this person responsible for? Maybe its growth in revenue, maybe its profitability. And so you're framing it in, you know, my job is to support you, as you are trying to lead our team to the horizon, whatever that goal is. And I've really been thinking a lot about it. And I've been empowering our team to come up with ideas and ways to try to fix this or solve it or help you. And we want to bring some ideas forth. And I, again, not all of them are going to work. But if we try and we make some baby steps, and maybe even offer up the idea that we want to dip our toe in the water and do a couple of tests. Maybe it's with one product that we're building, or we're talking to a consumer panel of 10 people, and maybe it's informal, so we don't have to expend any costs, right? You're making that threshold of coming up with ideas bearable for them. So you're having the empathy to sit in their seat and think through what are they trying to achieve? And what are all the roadblocks that they're going to put in front of you. Whether it's budget time, you don't have the capacity. Maybe it's like a plant capacity, maybe it's human capacity. And I think you can start to chip away at their defenses and their reactions for shutting it down. And I'm not suggesting it's going to work in every situation. There are some folks out there that again, probably have so much insecurity or are so focused on doing what they think is right, et cetera, and You're maybe just gonna have to be patient. But try a few of these things again to chip away at that ice block that roadblock that is in front of you. And hopefully you can influence them very gently to see things a little differently. All right, keep sending good questions out there. I really appreciate it. And again, helping others to see their way through this, I think is really, really meaningful. I think it's also really helpful to know that they're not the only one battling that roadblock up. So I'm glad that you asked that question. Well, I think that's it for today. I'm very grateful to spend some time with you. I'm really, really hopeful that this is helpful to you, especially as you build your business and drive growth. And again, this leveling up your business is all about finding small ways to grow, finding small ways to challenge the status quo. And today was all about bringing that huge Geyser of ideas forth, right? really empowering your team to just spew ideas left and right on all sorts of areas, topics, big and small. And hopefully, again, you're making progress towards that vision that you need to get to. So thanks for letting me be a part of your journey. I'm really happy to share that with you. And if you need anything, I'm here. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of level up your business with me, Sarah Frasca. If you have a problem in your business that's keeping you up at night. Please join us in a future episode so we can help get you unstuck. Just clicking the link in the show notes and send us a message. Please remember, stay innovative friends