Maintain high standards, spend time with your team

We received some positive feedback from my February column on business and faith, where I explained my lifelong conviction that faith (business ethics) and success in business are not only not at odds with each other, but that being a faithful Catholic helps one to be a better CEO. The practical business advice offered seemed to resonate with readers, so I thought I would share a couple of additional thoughts on the topic.

Have high standards: It would certainly be an understatement to say our country is experiencing a workforce shortage. In such an environment, employers are tempted to lower their standards in an effort to get help. I believe this is actually counterproductive. My experience tells me that people (employees) actually want to be held to high standards – be it timeliness, grooming, meeting deadlines, etc. Deep down, people want to be proud of where they work and the work they do.

In the early days of Domino’s, I remember getting into many heated arguments with store managers when I insisted that they follow and enforce our policies. At the time, if you did not know better, you would have thought they were upset with me. However, I cannot tell you how many of those managers later asked me to be the best man in their weddings — which told me that deep down they realized that high standards were good not only for Domino’s, but also for them personally.

Spend time with your management team: Every good CEO understands how critical it is to not only have a great management team, but also for that team to work well together. I believe the health of a company’s (or organization’s) senior leadership is one of the most important indicators of its future success. As CEOs, we want to promote teamwork, transparency, and trust among our team, but how do we do this?

One way to do this is simple: spend time together. At Domino’s, I started a practice of having quarterly retreats with my senior vice presidents. Usually they entailed going on some kind of trip together. Sometimes it was focused on learning something from another company, like when we visited the Coca-Cola headquarters (where we were hosted by the chairman and his top executives), but other times the focus was just doing something (unique and memorable) as a team, like when we were hosted by Louisville Slugger at the Kentucky Derby.

This is also the origins of the annual trip to Cooper Clinic in Dallas. I placed a high value on health and fitness, so each year one of our quarterly retreats would be to go to Cooper Clinic, where the whole team would get executive physicals. I carried on this practice of quarterly retreats when I was CEO of Ave Maria University, and in this setting the retreats could take on a spiritual component – like spiritual retreats or attending the March for Life together.

The bottom line, though, was that the team was spending time together – outside the normal office setting — and building rapport and trust. Fortifying these relations was good for the team and good for the company.

TOM MONAGHAN is Legatus’ founder, chairman, and CEO.