Love Is Free. Guac Is Extra. (eBook)

How Vulnerability, Empowerment, and Curiosity Built an Unstoppable Team

Monty Moran (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
318 Seiten
Lioncrest Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-5445-1594-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Imagine you're one of 75,000 people working in a huge company, and the CEO wants to talk to you, one-on-one, to get to know and understand you. That's what Monty Moran did 20,000 times as he built the extraordinary culture that took Chipotle Mexican Grill from a regional burrito chain to a Fortune 500 superstar. In Love Is Free, Guac Is Extra, Monty shows how he used curiosity, vulnerability, love, and a unique understanding of the true meaning of empowerment to build a distinctive and wildly effective culture. From his teenage days befriending homeless people at a Colorado Dairy Queen to his nuanced navigation of a complex co-CEO relationship, Monty demonstrates a relentless humility and desire to understand the person across from him. This is not your average leadership book. This is a book about business leadership executed in a way you've never encountered before, by becoming the best version of yourself.

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Foreword

I am excited about the journey you’re about to embark upon with my good friend, Monty. This book is less of a textbook written by a leadership professor and more of a conversation with a transformational leader. I’m confident you’ll learn much more about leading—and loving—from this easy-to-read and easy-to-apply memoir than you would from reading a whole stack of leadership textbooks. While Monty rose to the level of international prominence and became a Wall Street darling in the context of the fast-casual restaurant industry, this book’s principles and teachings apply to every industry and sector. You’ll become a better leader—and a better person—simply by reading this book.

It’s full of hilarious and touching stories, thoughtful nuggets of wisdom, and loads of enduring truth. It’s always about the truth with Monty, and it has been since I first met him thirty years ago at Pepperdine University School of Law. We were in Professor Bob Brain’s first-year Torts class in Room E. Monty sat in the front row wearing a tank top and a huge smile. From the beginning of our friendship, Monty has reminded me of my dad—never met a stranger and always interested in talking about the other person. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always liked him. In fact, that’s probably why I flew out for his own father’s funeral many years later, as I knew Monty loved his father as much as I love mine.

That first semester of law school, Monty confidently and voluntarily engaged in class discussions while most of us sat in trepidation, hoping not to be called upon. He was, by far, the most curious person in the class. Some show-offs tried to answer every question asked. While Monty certainly had as many answers as the rest of us, he had more questions than anyone. And while some arrogantly asked questions in a misguided effort to prove how smart they were, Monty always asked with sincere humility—genuinely curious to learn more. In contrast, I was one of the quieter kids in the class who sat several rows back. I knew enough to know how much I didn’t know, but I lacked the confidence and vulnerability Monty demonstrated daily.

I studied harder than anyone. Final exams were brutal, but I felt like I’d put forth my best effort and thought I’d probably done well enough to keep my scholarship. Monty, on the other hand, was absolutely convinced he’d failed out. So much so that he talked his way into a meeting with Dean Ron Phillips and sought to withdraw from law school, reasoning that if he withdrew before the start of the second semester, he’d receive a full refund of that semester’s tuition. Fortunately, Dean Phillips was able to convince Monty to stay, explaining that because the exams were graded on a curve, perfection wasn’t required to receive a passing grade.

Not only did Monty pass his exams, he was in the top 10 percent of the class. Thereafter, his unquenchable curiosity teamed up with his unrelenting dedication to excellence to catapult him into the top few people by graduation time. Good thing I got an early head start, or I wouldn’t have been able to hold off his late charge in our friendly class rank competition.

Our quest for competition continued beyond law school. Monty and I both love poker, particularly Texas hold ‘em. The complex strategy, personal psychology, and social interactivity combine to provide an adrenaline rush akin to skydiving. A few months after Monty transitioned from leading a prestigious law firm to leading Chipotle, I flew out to Denver to visit corporate headquarters and met a few of his team. A few years later, Monty invited me to the annual ski trip and poker tournament he hosted for a number of his friends. I’m not much of a skier, but I leapt at the chance to join the tournament.

While I won the tournament (and over a thousand bucks), what I remember most about that weekend was staying up half the night after the tournament talking with Monty about the leadership philosophy he’d developed at his law firm that he was implementing to great effect at Chipotle. It was all about inspiring and empowering those around you, and I’m eager for you to spend the next few hours reading this book and learning what I learned that night.

By that time, I’d also left the full-time practice of law to become a Torts professor at Pepperdine and was teaching in the same classroom where I’d first met Monty. I was so taken by what Monty shared with me that I wanted my students to hear the same thing. Monty readily agreed to come. The students may have initially showed up for the Chipotle burritos we served, but they were transfixed the entire lunch hour and left with so much more than full stomachs. Monty was so good that we invited him back to keynote a conference on entrepreneurship a few months later.

Since then, I’ve invited Monty back to Pepperdine every few years so each new generation of students could learn from him. He was the first speaker at a new leadership lecture series we created, he was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year in 2008, and he gave the keynote commencement address at the law school and business school graduation ceremony. He also served as host to Pepperdine’s annual law dinner in 2018, which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of our graduation from law school.

In his role as president and co-CEO of Chipotle, Monty traveled the world. One such trip brought him to Rwanda with Bono (yes, that Bono). That trip led to a conversation between us about my ongoing work in neighboring Uganda to assist the judiciary in providing access to justice to those imprisoned in this East African nation. During that conversation, I let Monty know that I’d just finished writing a book about how my life and that of a Ugandan teenager had not only been transformed by our meeting in a rural juvenile prison, but that my representation of him in Ugandan court had led to major changes in the criminal justice system there. Without hesitation, Monty offered to read the book while it was under consideration by publishers.

A few weeks later, Monty called and let me know that he’d cried throughout Divine Collision. Not only did he offer to endorse the book, but he made me promise to take him with me on a future trip to Ugandan prisons so he could join in this work. He confessed, however, that it might be a while before the pace of his work at Chipotle would slow enough for him to take ten days away.

But that day came, and I greeted Monty as he landed with a small team of American lawyers at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Despite the multi-leg, punishing journey, Monty was beaming as he stepped out into the humid midnight air and gave me the same big hug he always gives me when I see him. Six months earlier, Monty had decided to retire from Chipotle after an incredible and transformative twelve-year run at the helm. This had cleared the way for him to join our annual prison project, during which a group of lawyers and Pepperdine law students partner with a team of Ugandan lawyers and law students for intense work inside several rural Ugandan prisons.

I watched amazed as Monty quickly befriended the Ugandan lawyers, law students, and prisoners. His infectious laugh, his quick mastery of Ugandan criminal law, and his intense interest in the personal stories of the Ugandan prisoners served as a compelling example for the Pepperdine students on how to lead and how to love. When negotiating a plea agreement on behalf of the prisoners with the Ugandan prosecutors, I often have to admonish other American lawyers to observe local customs by speaking softly and sitting with—rather than standing over—the Ugandan prosecutors. None of this was necessary with Monty. I often saw him sitting next to, rather than across from, the prosecutors as they smiled and shared personal stories with each other. Where negotiations are the norm for lawyers seeking fair sentences for prisoners, with Monty, there were never any negotiations. Instead, Monty explained to the prosecutors that he knew they were fair and wanted justice more than anyone. He walked them through the individual cases and explained that their desire for justice would be fulfilled only by the terms that he was offering. They always agreed!

At one of the prisons, Monty pulled me aside and asked me a surprising question. “How much is 15,000 shillings, Jimmy?” he asked.

“About five bucks.”

“That’s it? OK. I need to borrow 15,000 shillings.”

“OK, what for?”

“The prosecutor says that if I give him this money, then my client can go free.”

I stared at Monty in disbelief. “Are you serious? The prosecutor is soliciting a bribe? And you want to pay it?”

“No. The prisoner is accused of stealing a bushel of bananas and the charges will be dropped if he pays the owner the value of the bananas.”

“I understand,” I explained, “but our role is to assist the Ugandans in implementing the new criminal justice procedures they have launched. We are not here to buy freedom for individual prisoners.”

While he understood, Monty was having none of it. “OK, Jim. Can I borrow 15,000 from you? I will then...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.10.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-10: 1-5445-1594-4 / 1544515944
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5445-1594-6 / 9781544515946