Last year at the CESA Symposium, the whole theme was related to the racecar industry since we were meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. We toured the NASCAR museum and everything! It was pretty fascinating as I really didn’t know many of the behind the scenes stories. The whole conference was good, but one of my favorite parts of the event was a panel on the last day that included Dave Alpern, President of Joe Gibbs Racing. He mentioned a book he had written called Taking the Lead and I immediately put it in my Amazon cart to follow up on. I had a plane ride a few weeks ago that was the perfect time to read it.
Alpern is an incredible storyteller who understands both the vision of serving others and the practicality of that in the day to day. He prioritizes his walk with the Lord, leading his family, and serving those in his care. This was a great read to confirm some things I already knew about servant leadership and to get a new perspective on some other ideas for the long haul.
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- When I reflect on Joe Gibbs Racing’s history, I see five overarching principles that have guided us from nothing to greatness:
- Deliver more than you cost.
- Create a winning culture.
- Stay on mission.
- Treat people as souls, not transactions.
- Win at life. p. 9
- Trying to become who others want us to be ignores who we were created to be. Instead of reprogramming what we were wired to do, we need to be who we were created to be and do what we were created to do. p. 39
- One of the challenges of delivering more than you cost to your company is that there will be an internal struggle with the fact that the personal payoff you are receiving from the company is less than you’re delivering. You’ll grow frustrated that you are underpaid and underappreciated. The juice sometimes doesn’t seem worth the squeeze. p. 47
- I am proof that doing small things pays off–and that the best way to become indispensable in any role is to deliver more value than you cost. p. 48
- A culture of yes means entering every interaction with a posture of wanting to serve the customer. p. 93
- The best way to make someone feel they are important is to communicate openly and honestly with them as much as possible. p. 97
- When a company is silent, people will invent their own why. A void of information is filled by assumption, and that’s dangerous. p. 98
- Caring is not our reward to our employees for their performance. Performance is our employees’ reward to us for caring about them. p. 168
- People who are bought in to a culture and sold on the mission will want to run into crisis for the sake of the team. p. 178
- Determine what is okay to sacrifice. p. 217
- Work wants to take. The people in your life need you to give. Honor both. p. 219
