What Makes for Success?

by
Dave Thomas

The Library Catalog

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Dave Thomas is the founder and senior executive chairman of Wendy's International. He is also the recipient of the Center for World Capitalism's 1996 International Prize.

There are all kinds of success and all kinds of ways to achieve it. I know bus drivers who are as successful as bankers. I know anonymous computer programmers who are now more successful than some of the biggest sports celebrities. I also know glamorous Hollywood stars and leading political figures who are failures. Success can take many forms, but one thing's for sure: There are certain ingredients that are necessary in any recipe for success, and they may be applied by anyone.

Honesty

Many good people may look at honesty backwards. They think that it's okay if they don't come forward with the whole truth until someone challenges them with the right questions. But honesty doesn't mean hiding in the weeds; it means stepping out and telling the whole truth. Honesty means being sincere. It also means being fair in all your dealings with others.

Honesty is the number one ingredient for success.

Faith

Honesty doesn't come from out of nowhere. It is a product of your moral convictions. But what do you do when your convictions are challenged? It is faith that gives you the strength to go on believing. Don't wear it on your sleeve; roll up both sleeves and do something about it. When I was 11 years old, my adoptive grandmother took me to Michigan's Gull Lake to be baptized by immersion. I really felt that I was accepted by God when I was baptized. But what I remember most about my baptism was that my Grandma Minnie made it happen. For her, Christianity meant more than doctrine you talked about on Sundays. It meant working hard in a restaurant, seeing to the lodgers she rented rooms to, tending a big garden, doing the canning, and taking care of the farm animals every morning. And it meant teaching her grandson about faith.

Discipline

Routine lies at the heart of discipline. Routine is what keeps us focused on the main things in life. But routine doesn't have to mean boring. Unless you have a strong, healthy routine, I doubt that you can live a successful life. Discipline means keeping things and people in their proper places. For example, I think that taxpayers should discipline their politicians so that they don't get too uppity! Children need discipline, too -- plenty more than most of them get -- and that's the fault of their parents. Discipline means direction -- clear and firm direction -- not physical or mental abuse. Discipline helps you keep track of your own thinking and also keeps such thinking simple and to the point.

Outward: Treating People Right

Success may start inside, but it doesn't mean anything until you draw other people into the picture. If you are to treat people right, you have to master three fundamentals: caring, teamwork,and support. Most of us are lucky enough to learn these basic ideas from our parents and should be pros at them by the timewe are in nursery school. (But I have met some Ph.D.s and millionaires who have never learned the words or have forgotten what they mean, and I bet that you know people like that, too.) Not taking people for granted is a great way to steer a straight outward course and to do right by your fellow human beings.

Caring

Caring is the rock that love is built upon. Caring is feeling what another person feels. Some people call it "empathy."Genuinely caring about people usually leads to success. And really successful people widen the circle of people they care about more and more as they grow older. Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once told me something I'll never forget. She said the one suggestion she got in life that helped her most was to "pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, 'Make me feel important.'"

Teamwork

Teamwork is the starting point for treating people right. Most people think that teamwork is only important when competing against other teams. But competition is only part of the picture. In most things we do in life, people have to work with rather than against each other to get something done. Win-win situations and partnerships are the most important results of teamwork. The best teams in the world are the ones that help people become better and achieve more than they ever thought they could on their own.

Support

Many people believe that support is something you give to someone you feel sorry for or that it means propping someone up who would fail unless you were there to give him a boost. But that's not the way I see it. Support is the boost you give someone who can help himself, but who needs a partner to open a window, or topush aside a roadblock. Support isn't a bunch of reckless advice, either. It's real help -- commitment and effort.

Upward: Going for Excellence and Beyond

If you have your own act together and get along well with others, you're ready to reach for another goal, that of excellence. Nothing is as tricky in the world of success as excellence. From our earliest days, we are taught that it is snazzy, glossy, bigger than life. It's that three seconds of glory when a major leaguer puts one out of the park or a figure skater completes a triple jump, not the constant training or workouts. But that's just false. Most people think excellence in business is sitting at a big desk and making power decisions, but true excellence is really the years beforehand making little and big decisions and learning from mistakes.

Motivation

Without a doubt, motivation is a key ingredient of success. Know what motivates you, and prove to yourself that this motivation is honest and worthwhile. But don't let too many different things motivate you, or you'll be tangled up in a maze of all kinds of conflicts. Stay focused. Figure out what your motivations are going to be in the next step of your life before you arrive at it. Keep dreaming, but don't daydream.

And don't do anything just to earn praise, or you are likely to short-change yourself in the end. Look at success first hand so that you really know how it works and what it costs to achieve.

Creativity

Creativity means change, but if you don't use common sense when you change things around, you are likely to end up farther behind than when you started. Not everybody can be creative. Accept it as a fact of life that if you aren't creative yourself, your challenge is to learn how to work with people who are. And being creative doesn't always mean doing new things. Sometimes, it's using a creative idea that worked in one instance and applying it to another. I'm a disciple of reality. Successful, creative dreams have to be realistic -- within man's laws as well as God's -- and within the realm of common sense.

Leadership

Everybody is saying that we need to stop putting leaders on pedestals. I'm not so sure. The real problem is finding leaders who truly deserve to keep their pedestals. What knocks off more leaders than anything else is failing to practice what they preach. Of all the things leaders are supposed to do, nothing is more important than setting a good example. Ben Franklin had it right when he wrote in Poor Richard's Almanac, "Well done is better than well said." I don't think we should do away with pedestals; we ought to be putting a lot more 'little people' -- people who have really achieved something -- on them so that ordinary folks have a better, clearer idea of who's doing the job and who's setting the pace.

Onward: Putting Yourself Second and Others First

If going upward and reaching for excellence is where success gets tricky, going onward by putting yourself second and others first is where success really gets tough. Most books on success tellyou that you have really "arrived" when you win the race. That's wrong. Truly successful people are the ones who help others cross the finish line. People who make this last big step toward success really have three things: responsibility, courage,and generosity.

Responsibility

We try to teach children responsibility, and that's good. But, as I have already said, most of us don't learn the full meaning of responsibility until we are older and have gained solid experience, made some decisions, and learned from our mistakes -- not the simple mistakes we make when "following orders," but mistakes we make when trying to do something really hard, or trying to excel. Making these sorts of mistakes teaches us judgment, and it helps toughen our backbone. Mature responsibility means realizing that no single person can be responsible for everything. You can't be successful if you are stumbling around trying to juggle the whole world on your shoulders. Responsible people refuse to take shortcuts, even though they are almost always available. They make sure that others with duties act responsibly, too. And they use whatever recognition or honor they may have earned not to further their own ends, but on behalf of good causes.

Courage

We tend to make courage too dramatic. Courage is often doing something simple, unpleasant, or boring again and again until we get itdown pat. People who are physically challenged and who have the determination to get around their handicaps are great examples because their courage makes them test their limits every day in a way that the rest of us write off as small-time or insignificant.

Generosity

A person who has modest means and won't share may be considered stingy. But rich people can give until they're purple and still not be truly generous. You have to give of yourself, not just of your wallet. One of the things I'm proudest about in the Wendy's family is that so many franchisees make significant donations to the community -- and they contribute leadership as well as dollars. When you give people help and understanding, you truly learn what they are like. And those who understand others better are certainly the most likely to succeed.

This article was reprinted with permission from Imprimis, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College. It is excerpted from Well Done! by Dave Thomas and Ron Beyma. Copyright © 1994 by Dave Thomas. It was used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.