Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1262525
Business Leader of the Year (Large business) Harry Kokkinis, President, Table Talk Pies My education in becoming an effective business leader has truly been a family affair. It is the lessons I have learned from my family throughout my life that have helped me become the leader that I am today. I am so fortunate to have been born into this family which has such a large collection of great teachers, especially my grandfather, my father, my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, my wife, my son, and even my godson. I have been so blessed to have had such great educators. It all started with my maternal grandfather, Theodore Tonna, who came to this country from Greece as a 12 year old boy in 1910 without any formal education. In 1924 he started Table Talk Pastry Company, with the help of a partner, Angelus Cotsidas. Together they built a strong foundation for our business, and this foundation has helped us to become the great company we are today. Despite his lack of a formal education, my grandfather was a brilliant man, both in business affairs and in life in general. He believed in the value of proverbs, and this was one of the ways that he used to impart his wisdom. Proverbs can be seen, as one author put it, as "short sentences drawn on long experience". They are common sayings that are "full of meaning and sound advice". This is certainly true in my grandfather's case. And I cherish them, and hopefully you will see why as I talk about them below. Note that many of these proverbs may seem old fashioned or out of step with our times, but I don't really care. They are what have given me strength and wisdom through my years in business and in life, and I wish more people would follow them. We would have a better world if more people did. 1. You need a purpose, not a goal. When I first heard this, I was confused because lots of people would talk about needing a goal in life. But as my grandfather pointed out, if you achieve your goal, what do you do next? You need a purpose to guide your actions both in business and your personal life. I can't think of any purposes better than the ones my grandfather claimed as his own: to raise a family, to be successful, and to be charitable. 2. The fish stinks from the head. My grandfather loved this one, particularly during the Watergate scandal in the 1970's when he would talk about President Nixon. I wonder what he would say now. For me this saying speaks to the need for self-awareness. Management sets the tone of a business, establishes its culture. When things go wrong in a company, we can often spend a lot of time searching for someone to blame. I believe that time can be better spent looking at how we as leaders may have created an environment that allowed such things to happen. 3. Once you learn how to make (expletive), you always make (expletive). My grandfather had an unwavering commitment to Quality, and it is this commitment that is the bedrock of our success as a company. As my grandfather would say, "Quality is our most important product." Not bad for a man without any formal education. Quality is something you must strive for every day. We cannot let up. This saying makes a strong statement about the dangers of complacency, and I find it very useful in discussions with our management team, as they can attest to. I could go on about my grandfather's proverbs, but I also want to talk about the contributions from other members of my family, especially my father, Chris Cocaine. My father worked side-by-side with my grandfather/ his father-in-law, drinking in his wisdom. Chris worked hard to carry on my grandfather's legacy, and we can now see the fruits of his labor. Chris taught me so much. I will be forever indebted to him. 4. In order to give orders, you must first learn how to take orders. My father put a great emphasis on respect, but it wasn't just about respect for your superiors, but also respect for your teammates and your subordinates. It is important to be able to see things from their perspective. He believed that you must start from the bottom, just as he did when he started working with his father-in-law. 5. Do the right thing I never thought that my father would agree with the movie director Spike Lee, but they both agree on one thing: the importance of this saying. This is what he told me in one of his last days at work before he passed away. For Chris, integrity was everything. He once threw a potential vendor out of his office for offering what amounted to be a bribe. Our integrity is the only thing we have when you leave this world. Integrity continues to be a critically important part of our culture at Table Talk and is something that we continually work on developing and maintaining in all our employees. 6. A pass is as good as a shot. My father drilled into me the importance of teamwork from an early age. The success of the team is what is important, not individual "glory". For me, this saying speaks to the need for humility, a key trait for managers. To be effective leaders, we cannot use the word "I" or "you". It has to be "we". We must put the needs of the business first, not our own personal needs. As we like to say at the Bakery, "the pies come first." 7. Make sure your words are sweet; you may have to eat them someday. My father emphasized the need for respectful communication. Once we say something, it is very difficult to take the words back. Harsh words can be destructive to a team. That doesn't mean that Chris wouldn't say something critical, he would just find a respectful way to say it. When we would have our occasional disagreements, he would sometimes say "you don't have to be disagreeable to disagree." And you know, he was right. 8. If someone helps us make money, then they should make money too. We believe in this Win-Win approach at Table Talk, both for employees and for business partners. Chris loved when we gave out our quarterly profitability bonuses to employees, because it meant we were making money too. Strong partnerships have been, and will continue to be, critical to the growth of our business, and we think that this mutually beneficial approach is how to build such partnerships. 9. If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade / Don't saw sawdust. These two proverbs come from my mother, the Chairman of the Board of our company and the oldest daughter of my grandfather. At a particularly tough time in my personal life, my mother sent me a letter with these two sayings, which helped lift my spirits. To me they meant that when plans don't work out the way we wanted, don't waste time bemoaning the fact that things didn't go our way, but rather get to work on figuring out another way around the problem. 10. Failure isn't falling down; failure is not getting back up again. This saying, which I saw on a subway wall in New York City and found it to be very inspirational, also addresses adversity, and more specifically failure. We all make mistakes; we all have failed at something. The important thing is how do we respond to this adversity, how do we fix the mistakes, how do we react to the failure. Persistence is key, that is, not letting setbacks knock us off course. We need to be strong in the face of adversity and not let it keep us down. We need to know that when we make a mistake or face a setback, it is time for us to get back up, dust ourselves off and start making lemonade. As you can see, proverbs are very important to me. There are even more, as I haven't had a chance to talk yet about the need for hard work and for passion. But this is enough for now. The lessons these sayings hold have been key factors for me in becoming a more effective leader of our company and our leadership team. Hopefully they will be helpful to you as well.