It takes a village to operate a successful catering and events company, but the village people must share the same value, vision, and purpose. Often there is one or more members of a leadership team that simply can’t adopt the company’s culture and will cause the entire team to be disjointed or dysfunctional. In this session based on the principals in Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Advantage, Warren will teach how to define a company’s culture, how to get your team to embrace that culture, and how to face the hard decisions that must be made when a talented and loyal team member just can’t fit into the model.

1. Cook. Craft. Create. Convention & Show
August 3, 2015 – Orlando World Center Marriott

2. My Story
Warren Dietel, CEO & Owner
Puff ‘n Stuff Catering & Chef’s Commissary
 Serial entrepreneur since my teen years
 Professional experience:
 Car detailing, Disney Weddings, Disney
Institute, Scott Kay
 Purchased Puff ‘n Stuff Catering in 2003
 Opened Chef’s Commissary in 2013
 Restaurant Partners Procurement Partner

3. Housekeeping
 I speak fast
 We are going deep - big initiative for my companies
 Questions welcomed during and at the end
Copy of the presentation available on
www.slideshare.net/warrendietel
You can reach me later for questions
warren@puffnstuff.com
407-227-5697

4. The Book That Started It All

5. Organization Health
“When an organization’s leaders are cohesive, when
they are unambiguously aligned around a common set
of answers to a few critical questions, when they
communicate those answers again and again and
again, and when they put effective processes in place
to reinforce those answers, they create an
environment in which success is almost impossible to
prevent. Really.”
Patrick Lencioni

6. And then what…
 Hyper engagement at the leadership level permeates
through the every member of the organization

7. Old Puff
 Opened in 1980 as family-owned business
 Positive reputation in the community
 Purchased in 2003, annual sales of $1.8M, at
operational limit
 Infrastructure required improvements to support
growth
 Small leadership team – mostly family
 Very much a small business feel

8. New Puff
 Tremendous potential + aggressive growth plan = 267% growth in 3
years – 2004 – 2007
 13M Sales Goal for 2015
 Expanded to Tampa in 2010 with acquisition and now a new 32,000
sq ft commissary opening in 2015
 600+ team members Passionately perfecting our clients life
celebrations
 Diversifying segment base
 8 Exclusive venues
 220+ Preferred venues
 Chef’s Commissary’s now in stand alone factory
 Cohesive leadership team…finally

9. Two Requirements for Success
•Strategy
•Marketing
•Finance
•Technology
•Minimal Politics
•Minimal
Confusion
•High Morale
•High Productivity
•Low Turnover
Smart
Health

10. The Four Disciplines

11. Discipline #1
Building A Cohesive Leadership Team
 Team #1 - Leadership team - Small group collectively
responsible for achieving a common objective
 3 to 12 members , but ideal would be 3-8
 Collectively responsible – selfless and shared sacrifices
 Common objectives with collective focus

12. Puff’s Leadership Team
2014
 9 people
 First meeting on 2/26/14
 Committed to one
another that we will be
collectively responsible
 Defined #1 goal for 2014
(financial responsibility to budget)
 Redefined core values
and strategic anchors
2015
• 9 people (one open)
• Leader changes – right
reasons
• Bi-Weekly meetings
• More cohesive and trusting
• Defined #1 goal of 2015
(building up team #1)
• Continuing to fine-tune 2014
initiatives
• Laser focused on
departmental objectives
(vision letter)

13. 2015 Puff Team #1
Warren
Rosy Usmani
Marketing
Fred Miller
HR
Mary
Dickson
Finance
Heather
Hofmann
Tampa
Operations
Heather
Hofmann
Orlando
Operations
Heidi Brice
Orlando
Sales
Amy Pryor
Venue
Relations
Raul Matias
Chef’s
Commissary
Lauren
Balden
Tampa Sales

14. Vision - Goal Setting Letter
What does your business look like 1 year in the future?
Create a vision of the future describing how you achieved your key
goals. Measurable = Accountable.
Process Steps
1. Brainstorm alone or with a colleague to identify your goals
2. Present to your peers for feedback
3. Finalize Vision Letter incorporating these insights
4. Attend quarterly review meetings with peers to review your
progress
5. Review Vision performance at the end of the year

15. Teamwork Model

16. Five Behavioral Principles
1. Building Trust: Team members who trust one another are
comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another about
their failures, weaknesses and fears.
2. Mastering Conflict: When trust is present, teams are able to
engage in unfiltered ideological debate around ideas, issues and
decisions that must be made.
3. Achieving Commitment: The ability to engage in conflict and
provide input enables team members to buy-in or commit to
decisions.
4. Embracing Accountability: After commitment is established,
team members must be willing to hold one another accountable
and remind each other when actions are counterproductive to
the team.
5. Focusing on Results: Collective team results must supersede
any departmental or personal objectives or pursuits.

17. #1 Building Trust Exercise
 Purpose: To improve trust by giving team members an opportunity to
demonstrate vulnerability in a low-risk way and to help team members
understand one another at a fundamental level so that they can avoid
making false attributions about behaviors and intentions.
 Time Required: 15 - 25 Minutes
 Instructions: Go around the table and have everyone answer three
questions about themselves.
1. Where did you grow up?
2. How many siblings do you have and where do you fall in that
order?
3. Please describe a unique or interesting challenge or
experience from your childhood.
 Debrief: Ask team members to share what they learned about one
another that they didn't already know. This reinforces the purpose of
the exercise and allows for a natural ending to the conversation.

18. #1 Building Trust
Sales and Marketing as One Unstoppable Force
 Fall 2013 new Marketing Manager hired
 3rd in 2 years
 Tampa: Doesn’t always have the same access / unique
challenges due to commissary location
 Orlando: In the past a constant struggle and lack of
cohesive support from marketing
 Persistence, patience and an open-mind
yielded growth and trust
 Unified decisions have brought Tampa
and Orlando together, through marketing

19. #2 Mastering Conflict
 With trust, conflict is just pursuit of truth
 Conflict avoidance at the top transfers it down
 Ideally, the team should engage in constructive conflict but
not destructive
 Willing to recover if the line gets crossed
 Mine for conflict in meetings, and
reinforce it when it happens
 Trust is critical

20. #2 Mastering Conflict
It’s not all roses and sunshine!
 Trusted team member came up the ranks to leadership
level. Trust was breached.
 Unhealthy conflicts moving away from vision (shared goals)
 Created two opposing factions
 Team #1 opened the door to face the conflict
 Attention to the challenges and offered a “reset” button

21. #3 Achieving Commitment
 Can’t happen without trust and conflict – people need to
provide input, ask questions and understand the rationale of
decisions
 Can’t wait for consensus – disagree and commit
 Leader’s responsibility to break ties
 Prevent passive sabotage (not speaking up then instigating
“the meeting after the meeting”)
 Must have clear agreement on message
 Move forward UNITED!

22. #3 Achieving Commitment
Hear No Evil; See No Evil
 Team #1 committed to “financial responsibility” in 2014
 To support this goal finance department committed to
reporting financial results on time and accurately
 Required commitment from all leaders to submit invoices
on time and be mindful of spending
 Monthly reports provided clear snapshot of progress
 Finance department also provided additional support by
offering advice and knowledge to leaders to assist with
maintaining their budgets

23. #4 Embracing Accountability
THE HARDEST PART
 Requires commitment first
 Peer-to-peer accountability is the primary and most
effective source of accountability on the leadership team
of a healthy organization
 Can’t all come from leader, but leader has to be willing to
confront
 Hardest part of building a cohesive team
 Ultimately, courageous and selfless (it’s not about you or
me, it’s about the company)

24. #4 Embracing Accountability
Blame Game
 Over $1m spend on (all) discounts in 2013
 Determined there was no ownership, accountability or
process in place
 Finance, Marketing and Sales teamed up to create a better
system that would reduce this amount and provide greater
understanding of our discount dollars
 Reduced total amount by 20%
 Shared accountability has increased trust among these
three departments.
 Positive results fuel additional shared projects

25. #5 Focusing on Results
 Ultimate outcome of trust, conflict, commitment and accountability
is results
 Need to focus on collective goals – not departmental goals – one
team, one score
 Place higher priority on leadership team than the team they lead
 Leadership team must embrace the power of team #1
CELEBRATE

26. #5 Focusing on Results
This Feels Good…NO, better
 Steady decrease in employee moral for past 4 years
 Led to poor productivity, high turn over and reduction in overall
quality of service
 Single, most difficult challenge faced by leadership
 Frequently discussed during meetings
 Solution: Added HR position to oversee current efforts, become
employee advocate, relieve Finance of HR tasks
 Action Items: Better staff communications, targeted hiring,
anniversary lunches, personal birthday cards, Token of Appreciation
Program, accurate job descriptions, progression planning, improved
training, and many more
People who don’t fit our core values are invited to work elsewhere

27. Checklist for a Cohesive Leadership Team
 The leadership team is small enough to be effective
(3 to 10 people)
 Members of the team trust one another and can be
genuinely vulnerable with each other
 Team members regularly engage in productive,
unfiltered conflict around important issues
 The team leaves meetings with clear-cut, active and
specific agreements around decisions
 Team members hold one another accountable to
commitments and behaviors
 Members of the leadership team are focused on
team number one. They put the collective priorities
and needs of the larger organization ahead of their
own departments or themselves.

28. The leadership team must agree on the answers to six
simple, but critical questions
1. Why do we exist?
2. How do we behave?
3. What do we do?
4. How will we succeed?
5. What is most important, right now?
6. Who must do what?
Discipline #2: Creating Clarity

29. Question 1: Why do we exist?
 Core purpose from Built to Last
 Why a company exists has to be completely idealistic
 Employees in every organization need to know that
at the heart of what they do lies something grand and
aspirational
Here is why we exist…
Deliver a better world for our valued team members in
order to deliver a better product to the client.

30. Question 2: How do we behave?
 Core values guide employee behavior
 Can’t be effective if broad
 Core values
 Apparent in the organization for a long time
 100% of the team must be committed
 Found in best employees (and missing in employee misfits)
 Must be embodied and modeled by leadership team
Here is how we behave…
 Quality
 Creativity
 Dedication
 Consistency

31. Question 3: What do we do?
 Simplest of the six questions
 Not idealist – just a description of what the organization
actually does
 One-sentence business definition
 No adverbs or qualifiers, no details on strategy
 Can change over time
Here is what we do now…
Provide catering solutions to diverse markets in the Tampa
and Orlando communities.

32. Question 4: How Will We Succeed?
 Essentially – the strategy
 Strategy is simply the plan for success – intentional decisions a
company makes to thrive and differentiate from competitors
 Broad – every decision is part of it
 Important to boil down to 3-4 strategic anchors
 Create an exhaustive list of everything intentional you do –
hiring, product/service approach, marketing, décor
 Then look for patterns to find three strategic anchors
 Strategic anchors change when market conditions change
 Provide clarity to walk away from opportunities that don’t align
with strategic anchors

33. Question 4: How Will We Succeed?
Here is how we will succeed..
 Strategic Anchor: A care in selection and development of
team members at every level.
 Strategic Anchor: State of the art equipment, technology
and processes for superior execution.
 Strategic Anchor: Establish our identity as the ultimate
caterer in the market place…Really.
 Strategic Anchor: Enable each team member to
understand their purpose within the organization.

34. Question 5:
What is most important, right now?
 Most immediate and tangible impact on the company
 Companies have too many top priorities
 Create alignment by having one top priority at any given time
 Identify a thematic goal
 Singular – one thing is the most important now
 Qualitative – not about specific numbers (yet)
 Temporary – clear time boundary of 3 to 12 months
 Shared across leadership team – all member focused on this as their top priority
 Not about rallying the troops – more about clarity for how the leadership
team will spend their time and resources
 Must identify four to six defining objectives to achieve, and also identify
standard operational objectives

35. What was Goal #1 for Puff in 2014?
Financial performance to 2014 budget.
Objectives to Achieve This
 Finalize the budget – gain commitment & buy in (I can’t commit if I
don’t understand)
 Staff training for great efficiency and Leadership training to better
understand the budget
 Transparency – Communication about productivity expectations
needs to cascade down
 Provide a consistent message – this is the budget and it must be
achieved. That’s it!
 Daily measureable results – accountability & follow up

36. What Is Goal #1 for Puff in 2015
Building up Team #1.
Objectives to Achieve This
 Mine for conflict
 Hold each other accountable
 Providing a consistent message
 Ask for clarification
 Measurable Result: Employee moral and retention
 Measurable Result: Staff satisfaction survey’s
 Transparency – Communication about productivity expectations
needs to cascade down

37. Question 6: Who must do what?
 Division of labor – starts at the top
 Easy step but can’t be overlooked
 Worthwhile to clarify so everyone on the leadership
team knows and agrees on who does what
 Make sure all critical areas are covered
Back to the org chart for who does what…

38. 2015 Puff Team #1
Warren
Rosy Usmani
Marketing
Fred Miller
HR
Mary
Dickson
Finance
Heather
Hofmann
Tampa
Operations
Heather
Hofmann
Orlando
Operations
Heidi Brice
Orlando
Sales
Amy Pryor
Venue
Relations
Raul Matias
Chef’s
Commissary
Lauren
Balden
Tampa Sales

39.  Members of the leadership team know, agree on, and
are passionate about the reason the organization
exists
 The leadership team has clarified and embraced a
small, specific set of behavioral values
 Leaders are clear and aligned around a strategy that
helps them define success and differentiate from
competitors
 The leadership team has a clear, current goal with a
collective sense of ownership for that goal
 Members of the leadership team understand one
another’s roles and responsibilities, and are
comfortable asking questions about one another’s
work
 The elements of clarity are concisely summarized
(‘Play Book’) and reviewed regularly by the leadership
team
Checklist for
Creating Clarity

40. Discipline #3: Over-Communicate
Clarity
 Employees are skeptical about what they’re told unless they hear it consistently over time.
 Need to be CROs – Chief Reminding Officers. But Leaders are hesitant to repeat themselves.
Why?
 It seems wasteful and inefficient – want to avoid redundancy.
 They fear it is insulting or patronizing to repeat a message.
 They get bored saying the same things over and over.
 Need to overcome all this and do more reinforcing of key messages.
 Leaders need to tell ‘true rumors’
 Cascading communication takes the message through the company
 Three keys to cascading communication
 Consistency of message
 Timeliness of delivery
 Live, real-time communication
 Have to end leadership meetings answering the question:
What are we going to go back and tell our people? And make sure there is agreement.

41. Checklist for Over-
Communicating
Clarity
 The leadership team has clearly
communicated the six aspects of clarity to all
employees.
 Leadership team members regularly remind
the people in their departments about those
aspects of clarity.
 The team leaves meetings with clear and
specific agreement about what to
communicate to their employees, and they
cascade those messages quickly after
meetings.
 Employees are able to accurately articulate
the organization’s reason for existence,
values, strategic anchors and goals.

42. Discipline #4: Reinforce Clarity
 Every process that involves people needs to reinforce the answers to the
six questions
 You need to institutionalize culture without bureaucratizing it
 Hiring, performance management, training and compensation need simple
systems specific to the company
 Hire for cultural fit
 Orientation needs to be built around the six answers and leaders need to
take an active role in design and delivery
 Performance management needs to be simple and stimulate the right kinds
of conversations on the right topics.
 Compensation and reward has to be tied to one or more of the big six
questions
 Leaders need to give recognition and personal appreciation, and be quick
to take out employees who don’t fit the values

43. Great Meetings
 A cohesive team with clarity requires more meeting time,
not less.
 Eliminate meeting stew – can’t combine tactical, admin,
strategy, personnel and brainstorming in one session.
 Emotionally engage your people
 Anniversary lunch hard questions
 Be careful what you wish for
 Be ready to take action
 Making them feel truly a part of the team
It is crucial that leaders bring back key content (agreed upon
by team #1) to their teams.

44. Impacting and engaging future
leaders
 Heather Allen, Special Event Coordinator
 Started in 2010
 Awarded ICA & Vertera’s scholarship
 Demonstrates Puff values (the right hire)
 Department leader has provided a
clear progression path
 Clearly communicated goals, while
providing tools to achieve them
 Takes initiative to gain hands on experience
 Receiving promotion to Special Event Planner

45. Checklist for
Reinforcing
Clarity
 The organization has a simple way to ensure that
new hires are carefully selected based on the
company’s values.
 New people are brought into the organization by
thoroughly teaching them about the six elements
of clarity.
 Managers throughout the organization have a
simple, consistent and non-bureaucratic system for
setting goals and reviewing progress with
employees.
 Employees who don’t fit the values are managed
out of the company. Poor performers who do fit
the values are given the coaching and assistance
they need to succeed and grow.
 Compensation and reward systems are built around
the values and goals of the organization.

46. Dirty laundry - When it Doesn’t Work!
Case Studies
1. “Ops”
 Wrong hire and waited too long to react
 Disrespect was tolerated
 Horrible communicator
 From day one the mistake was obvious, but we kept trying to re-align
 Terminated, refined job description, better recruiting/vetting process, must follow gut
2. “Chef”
 Wanted his skillset so bad we overlooked what he was telling us from the beginning
 Not a fit for our values
 Terminated, re-evaluated the Corp. EC position, added middle level leaders
 Isolated himself through individualized initiatives

47. Melissa’s words of wisdom
When someone shows you who they are
…believe them!

48. Walking the Walk…every day
Critical to cascade messages throughout organization.
Discipline #1: Build a Cohesive Leadership Team
Discipline #2: Create Clarity
Discipline #3: Over-communicate Clarity
Discipline #4: Reinforce Clarity

49. Two Organizations
 First - Led by a team who remind employees why the company exists, its
core values , its strategy and its top priority. They communicate the
same message to employees, and make sure they know the concerns
and ideas of their people to use in decision making. The company has
simple practices for recruiting and orienting people based on core
values, managing performance based on top priorities, and training and
rewarding based on culture and strategy.
 Second – Leadership team limits communication to a few events each
year, mainly on tactical initiatives, doesn’t share consistently after
meetings, and aren’t aware of employee opinions. The company has
plenty of processes, but most are generic and complicated, not
customized to the unique culture and operations of the company.
How much of an advantage does the first have over the second?

50. A recent success story
Weekend of 2/27 was HUGE and a HUGE team success!
 Saturday February 28, 2015
 Polk Museum Gala: Plated 277 guests
 Food from Tampa, but service, culinary and sales from Orlando
 DeBatolo Gala: Plated 820 guests
 Trivedi Wedding: Buffet 188 guests
 Grace O’Malley: Plated 345 guests
 5 additional events between Tampa and Orlando
 500+ team members working in concert with support from every
team
 Hard rains all morning, making set up very difficult
 Traffic congestion 2x long as expected

51. A True Team Effort

52. And if that wasn’t enough…
Sunday February 29, 2015
Discerning, luxury client’s housewarming brunch party
 10 day lead time
 Managed all portions of event production too
 New action stations
 Custom designed décor and menu cards
 Elaborate menu and bar options
 Many of the staff worked late Saturday night, and
brought their A game to put on a great event

53. A True Team Effort

54. But the best outcome of all…
CRAZY
GREAT &
BEAUTIFUL
RESPECT

55. You can market this stuff, too!
By uniting the entire organization around Team #1’s
initiatives it can be used as a motivator and a way to
communicate the company’s culture as a differentiating
feature of doing business.
Here’s a little taste of our Cool-Aid…
Drink up!

56.  Catersource 2016 Conference and Tradeshow: March 13th-16th,
2016 at The Mirage in Las Vegas
 Please be sure to join the Catersource Event Solutions Community
at www.catersource.com
Don’t Forget…

57. THANK YOU!
Warren Dietel | warren@puffnstuff.com | 407.227.5697
To download a copy of my slides, go to:
http://www.slideshare.net/WarrenDietel
www.facebook.com/puffnstuffcatering | Twitter: @pscatering