When I was a child, I used to watch my father get ready for work every morning. I would be sitting at the dining table eating breakfast just as Dad would be pulling on his suit, knotting his tie and getting ready to leave the house at half past six. Now, I know what you're thinking and I can tell you, that when I was young, I never wanted to grow up to be my father.
But what I did like, was that sense of power that his suit seemed to convey. It seemed to say “I’m important, so you're going to listen to me,” and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Twelve years later, my suit obsession had faded, but that desire for power hadn’t gone away. Oh no. Instead, it had morphed into a desire to be a leader, to be part of the student council, part of the executive team for the Entrepreneurs Club—basically, anywhere where I could boss people around and tell them what to do.
So of course, it made sense when I opened my first restaurant ... and it failed spectacularly. I spent more time fighting with the chef than I spent figuring out how to lure more customers to the place. The chef thought—and probably rightly so—that it was better to stick to a regular menu, but I believed passionately that customers would prefer an element of surprise each time they popped in. The chef thought his specialties brought the customers to the restaurant, but I was sure it was my mood lighting. The turnover among the wait staff, too, was high. I thought that speed was really the only essential element in keeping customers happy—a mistake that I came to realize only much later, after the most experienced staff who had cultivated friendships with their customers had been replaced with new employees who were perhaps more used to McDonald's style of cuisine.
It came as no surprise to anyone really, when I had to shut the restaurant down, just halfway into its second year. What I should have realized, was that unhappy employees made for unhappy customers. And unhappy customers made for a really bad business plan for a new business hoping to break even.
Questions:
- What do you know about the speaker's father?
- What did the speaker want to be?
- What did the speaker do?
- Which of the following is true about the speaker according to the passage?
Ten years on, after that terrible first attempt to run a restaurant business, I can safely say I've learnt from my mistakes. More importantly, I've learnt that there's always something to learn from other people. No one knew food better than the chef, and no one knew the customers better than the wait staff. If I had taken the time to listen to my employees, to pay attention to my customers, and to consult with my business partners, things might look very different today.
Being a business owner isn't glamorous in the least, not when you’re the owner of a new or small business. It might be tempting to believe that you know what's best for the company, because you're the one who had the vision and the one who had put it together. But that doesn't mean that your employees know less than you about their area of specialization. In other words, we should be following the example of Lee Iacocca, former President of Ford and CEO of Chrysler. As he put it: “I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way.”
As the graduating cohort of 2018 from the Wildes School of Business, I'm sure many of you will go on to chase your dreams and set up companies of your own. And you won't be alone either. Brazil has been growing at a breakneck pace and the people in her cities have proven to be daring and creative, willing to take on new challenges and experiment with new ideas. I believe that with the unparalleled opportunities available to you today, success is just within your grasp, so long as you learn to work together. I hope that you have learnt something from my experiences—just as I hope to be learning from you, in the years to come.
Questions:
- When did the speaker fail in running a restaurant?
- What did the speaker learn from the mistake?
- Who is Lee Iacocca?
- Who are the audience of this speech?
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