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When you’re in the Right Seat you “get it, want it and have the capacity to do it”. You know it and just as importantly, everyone on your team knows it. There’s confidence in your ability to deliver the goods, to get results. And, when everyone on the leadership team is in the Right Seat, there’s a foundation in place to build a great business.

With Father’s Day approaching this weekend I’m reminded of my dad who passed away almost 20 years ago. I miss him.

In an interview with Adam Bryant that appeared in the New York Times, March 14, 2010, Kip Tindell, CEO of the Container Store shared one of his foundation principles, “… that one great person could easily be as productive as three good people. One great is equal to three good. If you really believe that, a lot of things happen. We try to pay 50 to 100 percent above industry average. That’s good for the employee, and that’s good for the customer, but it’s good for the company, too, because you get three times the productivity at only two times the labor cost.”

On a recent return trip from Alabama where I had spent a week cycling, the instrument panel of my Subaru Outback Wagon suddenly began flashing and if the “Sub”could have talked it would have shouted “Warning! Warning! Warning! Will Robinson”. The window wipers slowed down, the power steering failed and my cycling buddy Chris started hypothesizing about the probable cause …Battery? Alternator? Cyber Attack? Chris quickly located the nearest service center with his smart phone and we pulled off the freeway into Montgomery, AL. It being Saturday morning we weren’t too hopeful that we would find a place that could diagnose the problem, make the repair and send us on our way without too much delay.

“… I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret and springy dark of our old green davenport; Omar knew that davenport; he knew from the Inside what I only sat on from the Out, and trusted his knowledge to keep him from being squashed by my ignorance. He survived until a red plaid blanket – spread to camouflage the worn-out Outside – confused him so he lost faith in his familiarity with the In. Instead of trying to incorporate a plaid exterior into the scheme of his world he moved to the rainspout at the back of the house and was drowned in the first fall shower, probably still blaming that blanket: damn this world that just won’t hold still for us!” Ken Kesey, “Sometimes a Great Notion”