Irrational Kindness, The Crazy Pursuit of an Extraordinary Life by Kevin Williams
Recommendation
Chick-fil-A restaurants offer crispy chicken favorites, but their culture is based on more than the food menu. Decades ago, the chain’s late founder Truett Cathy established workplace and customer-service practices based on kindness. Like his founder and his restaurant crew, Chick-fil-A franchisee Kevin Williams believes in a benevolent approach to business. His book overflows with inspiring stories and encouraging messages, offering a perspective on corporate culture that unabashedly derives from his Christian religious beliefs.
Take-Aways
- In Kevin Williams’s three Chick-fil-A restaurants, employees can give away free food.
- Williams motivates employees to learn lessons from failure.
- Williams bases his management philosophy on irrational kindness.
- Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy was an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur.
- The chain’s franchising model enables people with little money to open restaurants.
- Williams began his entrepreneurial career early in life.
- Williams bases his actions on his “life chords,” including honesty, kindness and hope.
- Williams champions irrational kindness.
- If you’re not living your dream, start working on it today.
Irrational Kindness Book Summary
In Kevin Williams’s three Chick-fil-A restaurants, employees can give away free food.
Here’s an experience you won’t witness in most fast-food restaurants, unless you’re eating at one of Kevin Williams’s three Chick-fil-A outlet in Canton, Georgia, north of Atlanta.
A restaurant team member named Cooper carefully prepares a handwritten note – a Cooper Coupon – and gives it to a diner, a little girl. His one-of-a-kind note announces that she is entitled to a free ice cream cone, and it invites her to come back to the kitchen where she can prepare her special treat all by herself – a VIP pass to a memorable experience.
“People come to our restaurants to have their coffee cup and stomach filled, but they also want their hearts filled by smiles and respect.”
Was this a special promotion? No. Did Williams instruct Cooper to write the note and give it to a customer? No. Cooper thought it up and decided to do it on his own. Did he get in trouble for giving away free food or for inviting a child into the off-limits-to-customers kitchen? No. And did his kind gesture make a new Chick-fil-A customer for life? Sure.
Williams encourages his employees to be kind to everyone, most notably their customers. If that means giving a little kid a free ice cream cone, that’s fine with the boss.
Williams motivates employees to learn lessons from failure.
Williams regards his various failures as invaluable lessons that helped him move ahead. He and his team members recognize that the experience of failure can lead to productive and positive lessons about how to do things better next time. He encourages team members to consider failure from a fresh perspective, seeking the opportunities it offers, such as finding a second wind or a reason to persist.
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” (Winston Churchill)
This managerial attitude makes it almost impossible for an employee with good intentions to do something wrong. Cooper and his peers aren’t afraid to take chances or try something new, such as Cooper Coupons. They don’t have to look over their shoulders, worrying about messing up.
Williams bases his management philosophy on irrational kindness.
Williams believes in fostering optimism, curiosity and hopefulness. He explains that his approach stems from his Christian religious beliefs.
“If we want life to become an exhilarating adventure…we need to get our brains around the concept of being irrational.”
Irrational kindness means keeping an open mind, freeing yourself from the shackles of conformity and being more spontaneous in giving to others. A mind-set of irrational kindness leads to servant leadership, a sense of joy in your work and increased energy. It will open you to serving those beyond your immediate circle and make you a worthy role model.
Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy was an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur.
Williams points to Chick-fil-A’s late founder, Truett Cathy, as his role model. He describes Cathy as a bootstrapping entrepreneur with incredible drive, indomitable spirit and selfless devotion to serving others.
“Truett Cathy…ate risk for breakfast, failure for lunch, compassion for dinner and drank a milkshake for dessert.”
Cathy became an entrepreneur at age eight. As a small child in Georgia, he’d buy a six-pack of Coca-Cola for 25 cents. Then, pulling his wares around in a little red wagon, he’d sell individual bottles to thirsty customers for a nickel each, realizing a five-cent profit. Later, he sold copies of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Cathy joined the US Army during World War II, and after the war, he and his brother Ben – who later died in a plane crash – opened the Dwarf Grill, a 24-hour diner in Hapeville, Georgia. Business didn’t go smoothly for Cathy, who experienced 20 years of adversity, including fires and sickness. He made numerous bad decisions that often kept him behind the eight ball.
Cathy refused to throw in the towel. He continued to strive for business success. He developed the Grill’s signature product, a fried chicken sandwich. He cooked boneless, breaded chicken in peanut oil in a pressure cooker and served the chicken on a buttery bun with pickles. His tasty chicken sandwiches became the genesis of Chick-fil-A, now one of the most successful firms in the United States.
Cathy was in his mid-40s when he introduced the then-radical idea of selling food inside shopping malls. Mall developers found it even stranger that the devout Cathy refused to open his restaurants on Sundays, a busy day for shopping-mall retailers. He quickly proved to the skeptical developers that even though his restaurant stayed closed on Sundays, it made more money per square foot than their other shops.
Cathy put his employees, his customers, his good name and good food above profits. Once Chick-fil-A became a success, he embraced philanthropy. He built kids summer camps and numerous homes for children in foster care. Cathy invested in his company and his employees at every turn. All of his corporate employees could eat lunch for free at his restaurants. He sponsored fun annual trips for franchisees and their spouses, gave top performers Lincoln Continentals and spent millions on scholarships for employees.
“[Cathy was] a disrupter in the marketplace and completely dangerous to the competition.”
Cathy retained his incredible drive throughout his 64-year business career. In his 90s, he was as busy as ever, planning a new concept eatery – Truett’s Luau.
The chain’s franchising model enables people with little money to open restaurants.
In 1967, Cathy created a special franchising business model that enabled people like Williams to open new Chick-fil-A restaurants even with minimal financial resources. Cathy’s bold idea was that ambitious individuals would work extra hard to make their restaurants successful.
The opportunity enabled Williams to set up his first Chick-fil-A restaurant in 1991. Cathy’s faith in people like Williams, as evidenced by his singular franchising model, continues to pay off greatly. Williams now owns three Chick-fil-A restaurants.
Williams began his entrepreneurial career early in life.
Williams will never forget the advice Cathy gave him when he signed up as a new franchisee: People will remember how they feel about their experience in a restaurant.
“Remember how important your job is. The responsibility we have to treat the customer right every time is huge. If an employee mistreats a customer, or serves poor quality food, then you could lose that customer for a lifetime.” (Truett Cathy)
Like Cathy, Williams had become an entrepreneur at an early age. He was always a hard worker, as was his father, who picked cotton in Georgia to earn a living. When Williams was 12, he cut three to four lawns a week in his Summertown, Georgia, neighborhood. He planned to buy extra lawnmowers, so he could expand his lawn-cutting enterprise.
Williams bases his actions on his “life chords,” including honesty, kindness and hope.
Williams learned that even a person with limited assets or advantages can attain lofty goals. Consider this analogy: A budding musician can create beautiful music with only a few chords. Similarly, you can live a wonderful life with only a few “life chords.” Williams’s lists his life chords as, “kindness, hopefulness, gratefulness, curiosity, courage, creativity, peace, patience, persistence, joy, rest, fun…freedom [and] honesty.”
“We can do more with generosity, purpose and kindness than we can with the quick cheap responses we are often pulled toward.”
Courage, creativity and gratitude are Williams’s foundation. He constructed his life and his business around these life chords. He attributes his success to them, including more than 25 years as a restaurant franchisee. And, he maintains a down-to-earth view of life and prioritizes what truly counts. He recognizes that no one ever dreams of turning burgers on a grill and regards all of his employees as potential future franchisees.
Williams champions irrational kindness.
As a champion of irrational kindness, Williams tries to be kind to others, and he does many good deeds. For example, Williams, his wife Gwen and their three daughters adopted Terry, a foster care child, even though that journey has proven tough at times for their family.
“Adjusting to the way adoption changes life in an instant is a tremendous challenge.”
Terry joined the Williams family when he was 13 years old, and Williams’s daughters were 9, 12 and 14.Moving a teenage boy into the midst of all these girls was a challenge for the family and for Terry. But they made everything work, though Williams and his wife had to retool themselves as parents to manage their new family dynamic.
The FARM is another of Williams’s ambitious undertakings. Originally, he began scouting for a large business meeting space, since Chick-fil-A dining rooms were always too crowded for this purpose. After several months, Williams found a rundown 106-year-old house near his restaurants. It included a barn and about 15 acres of farmland. With the assistance of civic-minded local people, he helped lead the restoration of the dilapidated property. The FARM, which includes a lengthy Kindness Trail for quiet reflection, now serves as a facility for the community.
Williams and his colleagues have big plans for the FARM’s future. They hope it can serve as a helpful resource for troubled youth, adoptive families, cancer patients and people battling addiction. Williams and his colleagues aim to use it to conduct financial management classes for young people at the facility. Chick-fil-A team members can even grow gardens on the extensive property.
If you’re not living your dream, start working on it today.
As an entrepreneur and a successful franchisee, Williams is living his dream. He asks you to consider your dream and what you need to do to live it. He urges you to never let the day-to-day urgencies of life get in the way of pursuing your dream.
“It’s by the diligent work of tireless grinders that cities get built.”
Regularly stake out time to realize your ambitions and make your goals a reality. Yes, this will be a tough grind.But grinders put points on the board.
Keep the big picture in mind. Get your priorities – and your head – straight. And then, be kind to everyone as you grow and advance.
About the Author
Chick-fil A franchisee Kevin Williams is donating the proceeds from Irrational Kindness to benefit foster and adopted children and families in crisis.
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