{"id":478,"date":"2013-02-19T10:39:22","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T15:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=478"},"modified":"2013-02-26T08:15:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T13:15:29","slug":"fish-rot-from-the-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=478","title":{"rendered":"Fish rot from the head….."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/a><\/p>\n

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I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to either work for, or with, many of the industries leaders in all segments: supplier, wholesaler and even retail.\u00a0 When I first started out, many industry leaders were part of the “greatest generation” and veterans of World War II.\u00a0 Today, many on the supplier side, are young entrepreneurs, some very successful, some just starting to sell beer.\u00a0 Even at the wholesaler level the next generation(s) are taking their place in family owned companies.\u00a0 These leaders\u00a0 on the brewery and supplier side include, but are not limited to, Harry Jersig, Bill and Pete Coors, Russ Cleary, Peter Stroh, Jim Koch, Bill Hackett, Mike Mazzoni, Frank Spinosa, Carlos Alvarez, Jack Joyce, Diane Fall, Albert Cramer, Lutz Issleib, Stan Mace, Glenn McDonald, Mike Mitaro, and Kim Jordan.\u00a0 Obviously, I could also go on with hundreds of names\u2019 of leaders of distributorships I have known.<\/p>\n

As a young man in the beer business, I\u00a0watched how these\u00a0people led their companies and I followed how well they did.\u00a0 Of course, some were more successful than others.\u00a0 \u00a0I also studied their failures, too.\u00a0 As the years went by, I watched with less interest in their successes or failures, but was more in tune with how\u00a0the companies I was responsible for responded under my leadership.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, this past year, I read multiple books about the great American Generals and Admirals of WWII.\u00a0 Some of the generals that I studied in detail were, Patton, Nimitz, Leahy, Hasley, and King. \u00a0Others that I did not spend as much time researching were Bradley, Rommel\u00a0and Eisenhower.\u00a0 I was interested in what made these leaders great.\u00a0 Was there a common thread each exhibited?<\/p>\n

One thing\u00a0I saw that separated these leaders from others was their willingness to take risks.\u00a0 They put themselves out there, time after time, sometimes failing, but they always did what had to be done and did not take the easy way.\u00a0 When you look at the word “leadership,” each of these great generals had the ability to make others admire them. Additional qualities each of these great leaders possessed included:\u00a0 a commanding presence, the ability to communicate effectively\u00a0in front of all\u00a0parties, \u00a0and of course, they all followed the timeless adage that adversity\u00a0doesn’t build one\u2019s\u00a0character, \u00a0adversity reveals one\u2019s character.<\/p>\n

As of late, there has been much discussion on\u00a0 the beer\u00a0industries leaders or, lack thereof.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 There have been some thoughts that it is due,\u00a0in\u00a0part, to the\u00a0large breweries being managed by foreign \u00a0interests.\u00a0 Perhaps it is the self-interests of senior management, \u00a0and if it is, is it entirely their fault?\u00a0\u00a0 Do today’s leaders really have the experience or skill sets that are\u00a0needed?\u00a0\u00a0For many people, twenty years of experience is really one year of experience repeated twenty times!\u00a0 \u00a0Do these leaders really know the business from the ground floor up?<\/p>\n

While I was at Warsteiner, the company brought in a new export sales director who had no knowledge or understanding of the industry, just a model idea of what he thought the business model should have been.\u00a0 This individual didn’t last long, but the damaged was done. The question remains, what makes a great leader? \u00a0Or as my ex boss used to say, “fish rot from the head.\u201d<\/p>\n

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      I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to either work for, or with, many of the industries leaders in all segments: supplier, wholesaler and even retail.\u00a0 When I first started out, many industry leaders were part of the “greatest generation” and veterans of World War II.\u00a0 Today, many on the supplier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-7I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}