In this extract from his new book legendary retailer Feargal Quinn, founder of Superquinn, shares his thoughts on leadership.

Quinn says setting the tone for a business is essential for any leader

The very dignified gentleman who approached me in the hotel car park was unmistakable. The former President of Ireland, Dr Patrick Hillery, had been studying me intently from a distance, without my knowing it.

I had been absent-mindedly picking up some litter outside the Marine Hotel in Sutton, across the road from the Superquinn Support Office, when the President spied me.

“I used to do the same, at the Áras, you know. If I saw a piece of litter I would go around and pick it up myself.

And if I saw another bit a little further away, and another a bit further on I would pick them up too. Then I got ticked off by the security and the Áras staff. They told me I didn’t need to do it because I was the President.”

Of course, like the Áras, the Marine Hotel employed people to look after litter in its outside areas too.

So why on earth was I picking up the litter?

An American friend of mine, Fred Meijer, had a big supermarket chain in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until he passed away in 2011 at the grand old age of ninety-one.

Some years previously, a group of us went to see him, and he showed us around. Fred was probably in his eighties at the time.

His father Hendrik was a barber with a small grocery shop above his salon, and his mother started off selling groceries too. In the 1940s, when Fred decided to go into business with his father, they started selling groceries on a larger scale.

Fred was a true innovator, and the quintessential self-made man.

In the 1960s he was the first to introduce the concept of the hypermarket, combining a grocery store with a general discount merchandise store, to the USA. It was a model that would subsequently be copied by Sam Walton, founder of the giant Walmart chain, amongst others.

Take care of your customers

In time, the company successfully expanded, until it became a major regional employer. With over 200 stores and more than 170 gas stations in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, Fred Meijer’s company continues to handle its business based on the simple philosophy of Fred’s father, Hendrik. This was to “Take care of your customers, team members, and community… And all of those will take care of you, just like a family.”

It is not a coincidence that the company’s slogan to this day is “Higher Standards, Lower Prices”, while its motto since its foundation in 1934 is “Customers don’t need us, we need them”.

Quinn took care to send the right message to staff in his own stores

Quinn took care to send the right message to staff in his own stores

As we went around his warehouse during our visit, I asked Fred various questions about his way of doing business. At that stage, the company had 170,000 employees.

I asked him about the intricacies of how his delivery trucks worked. His response remains with me to this day.

“Feargal, I don’t know. When a company gets this big, sometimes all I can do is set the tone.”

Fred was true to his word on this, in everything he did. As we went around his shops together, Fred never parked in a good car parking space; he always parked at the back of the car park and walked up to the entrance.

He never walked up without wheeling a couple of shopping carts with him. He never walked past a piece of litter or paper on the floor, even in the car park, without picking it up (much like President Hillery and me).

And he never walked past one of his own employees without shaking hands with them, even though he couldn’t possibly know them all personally with such a huge number of people working there.

With his customers, he was known for giving out Fred Meijer-branded “Purple Cow Coupons”, redeemable for a free ice-cream cone, to remind them he was personally grateful for their custom.

I was thoroughly impressed with all of this, to such an extent that I even copied him by handing out doughnut cards of my own.

Because essentially what he was doing was setting the tone that he wanted others within his company to follow.

He was leading by example in the most wonderful way.

And it was fairly clear when you went to his competitors, despite the fact that they might have given just as good value, or had similar goods for sale, there was something missing.

They were not Fred Meijer!

Set the tone

More often than not, the overall tone of a company is set by the boss of the company. But this can have both positive and negative implications at times.

A few years ago, I was packing customers’ bags at a Superquinn checkout and a man came up to me. I asked, “Is everything OK?” and he said “Hmmmm.” Sensing there was something on his mind, I asked him to tell me more.

He explained that when he was at the butcher’s counter, he was upset to see knives being left in a wash hand basin. The sink had a sign over it saying, “This basin is for hand washing only.”

I said, “Oops, that’s an error. It was quick of you to notice.”

“Well, I’m a quality-control inspector in the construction industry. I notice slippage of standards,” he responded.

Seizing the opportunity to pick his brains, I asked him, “What’s the most important thing in maintaining standards?’ He replied straight away: “If the boss thinks it’s important!”

And he was absolutely right.

In fact, earlier in the day, I had gone to that same butcher’s counter to check on how it was doing. I had noticed a damaged package that I withdrew, and I noticed a customer being kept waiting, so I ensured she was looked after.

But I had missed the unhygienic knives in the wash hand basin.

The truth was that, for whatever reason, I had not put the storage of those knives high on the agenda when it came to our butcher’s counter.

And, because of my attitude, the manager of the shop, who had responsibility for 300 employees, also didn’t place it high on his priority list when it came to ensuring standards.

In turn, his butchery department manager didn’t make it a priority, meaning his thirty or so staff at the counter did not deem it of importance either.

Without knowing it, as the boss I was setting the poor standard that was being followed by the shop manager: if I wasn’t putting something high on the agenda, then my employees didn’t either.

This was a very important lesson for me to learn. By giving an example to his or her employees, the boss of
any business, no matter how big or small, sends out an important message. It is this: “This is how I want our
company and our employees to behave. See, look to me for your lead.” If, for example, a boss is surly or uninterested because he or she is stressed out by the recession, or is perhaps overly aggressive in their approach to business dealings, this will transmit itself to his or her senior managerial colleagues and right the way down through the organisation.

But when the tone is right it permeates throughout the company in a much more positive way. And, as in the case of Fred Meijer, it can lead to a distinct competitive advantage, too.

Sending a message

Another way of describing the tone of a company is the culture and the values that its leaders instil in their employees.

Once, during a visit to Japan, I was invited to the opening of a department store. We were invited in before the shop opened. The chairman, the managing director and all senior managers arrived down to the shop floor. There they met with the heads of each department.

You could see, right around this department store, with probably a few hundred employees, groups of managers huddled around getting the message that the general manager or chairman had for them at 8.30am.

The manager of each department then gathered his or her team around them at 8.45am. They were given the message for the day, a different one each day, which helped define the tone in-store. Then in turn they spread the message to their own staff.

They opened the doors at 9am, and everybody inside - the chairman, the managing director and all the other managers - began welcoming the customers as they came in with these messages still fresh in the employees’ ears.

Clearly, they were setting an example. And I was amazed to hear this happened every day in every shop.

Because of this, the opening of the shop each morning had become an important occasion for management, staff and customers alike.

It is a brilliant example of how to ensure that everyone in your company is delivering the same message, from the bottom up, while also showing your customers just how much you value their business.

  • Extracted with the permission of the publisher The O’Brien Press from Mind Your Own Business by Feargal Quinn, price £12.99 paperback. Available from booksellers nationwide