Chick-fil-A Seminar 2011
We spent this past Sunday 20th through Wednesday 23rd in San Antonio, TX for CFA Seminar! We flew down Sunday and met my mom at the airport. She took Raegan so that we could enjoy seminar and they could have a mini vacation there in San Antonio.
Sunday we didn't check in at our hotel till after 3, tossed our bags in our room (which turned out to be a suite) and headed out to enjoy expo. Expo is essentially this huge room filled with Operator goodies! Vendors/companies such as Coke, Dr Pepper, AT&T, Simply Orange, Wells Fargo, MBM are there offering free samples and other knick knacks with their company logo plastered on them. Chick-fil-A corporate departments also have booths set up showing new product ideas & new service and business innovations. The Chick-fil-A real estate group is there and you can set up meeting with them to sit and look at google maps on these large flat screen tvs that show current and potential CFA locations. The corporate office health and fitness department is there completing wellness checks and offering free diet and nutrition advice. There was a CFA clothing and merchandise store, a place to take pictures on a Cow Spotted Trike, and all the cows and their costumes on display for operators to purchase. Anyways, expo goes on nearly every day at Seminar and its still hard to see everything you want to see because there is so much there!
After dinner we had a session from 6 - 8:30 which included a lesson on true friendship from Dr. Charles Carter, an interview between Dan and Truett Cathy talking about Truett's new book Wealth is it Worth It, Truett auctioning off his Timex watch for $4,500 for Winshape summer camps, a video about WinShape camps, and a video about Gen 3 (Truett's grandkids) and the steps they are taking to learn about the business, and then the entire auditorium standing together and signing the hymn "Count your blessings, count them one by one," it was so moving (made me cry).
After Sunday night's general session, Third Day performed. We spent most of that time catching up with some other operators from Philip's FRL class.
Each morning started very early! Monday we went down and had breakfast at 6:30 am and then walked over to my mom's and Raegan's hotel so we could spend a little time with her until about 8, when we had to head back for general session.
This seminar was the last of a three part series called "Built to Last." In 2009 (Long Beach, California) the focus was Broaden your Perspective, in 2010 (Washington, D.C.) the focus was Clarify your Role, and this year was Lead at the Next Level.
Monday morning in general session we learned about different structures of leadership teams and what it takes to create a high performing leadership team, including selecting talent, building skills, and creating community along with lots of tangible takeaways for Philip to apply in his store. I usually try to tailor these ideas to my job at EY, it worked well this year as we nearly always work in teams and not all are as effective as others. Pat Lencioni, author of Five Disfunctions of a Team, (i.e. the book I just started) came and spoke about managing through transition and the three stages of transitions. During general session we had a couple of breaks where performers (trampoline jumpers & karate/dance team) took the stage.
Monday afternoon we grabbed a box lunch and went back to our suite to take a nap, how nice it was to take a nap. Our hotel room was so quiet without Raegan who was at the San Antonio Zoo with Gigi all day Monday! After our short nap, we met up with Lesli & Justin Flowers and Carol & John Spenst to stroll around the river walk for awhile. We stopped and had Lesli take a picture of us in front of Boudro's (where we got engaged 12/31/2004!).
Monday night we met up with Joseph & Lauren Morris, Michael and Andrea Hancock, and Royce Ballard. Our plan was to walk along the riverwalk until we found somewhere good to eat. Craig Carter came up to Philip and asked if we would like to join him and a group of his friends on a riverboat dinner cruise! We were shocked, we had never been on a riverboat dinner cruise before and throughouly enjoyed the company and meal or and the fried ice cream for dessert! Well our first dessert after dinner we headed over to the convention center for more expo events and to celebrate Truett's 90th birthday, which isn't actually until March, but it was still fun to celebrate with cake and ice cream, white and red balloons falling from the ceiling, and dancing to music from over multiple decades!
Tuesday morning we woke up late (i.e. 7am) Philip had accidently set the alarm for 7 pm instead of 7am, so we rushed to get ready and stopped to have breakfast before heading to our first Learning and Development Session called 'Sun Stand Still.' Sun Stand Still is a book written by Steven Furtick, who spoke to us Tuesday morning. The book and his message are based off Joshua's prayer in Joshua 10:7-15. Steven was a very inspiring preacher one thing he said that really stuck with me was, "If the size of your vision for your life isn't intemidating to you there's a good chance it's insulting to God."
Our second learning and development session was called 'The Essential Skills of High Performing Teams.' In this session we did an exercise where we thought of an end/future goal and then wrote down where we were now (current behaviors) and where we want to be (future behaviors). In between those two points we wrote down ESRC which stands for Expectations, Skills, Resources, and Consequences (ways to change behaviors. The idea was focused towards operators, but I believe it applies to parenting as well.
Before the Southwest Region breakout, Philip spent some more time at Expo. At the Southwest Region breakout there was a special tribute to Ed King (Philip's first Chick-fil-A Operator). It was very touching and even brought tears to Philip's eyes (not such an easy thing to do). The Southwest Region has the only 2 CFA stores with >$6M in sales this year! Next we had dinner with the Kings, Melissa, Barb, Michael, and the Clarks. Right after lunch I did a wellness check. Philip did one last year and they told him his real age was older than his actual age. I was pretty terrified that the same thing would happen to me, but thankfully (most likely because of my 20 impressive pushups ;) my wellness check age was the same as how old I really am, 25! yea! Also my good and bad cholestoral and all that stuff looked good to, which considering I haven't really been on a workout schedule in a long time is surprising to me.
Tuesday evening we had dinner with a group of Philip's FRL friends, it was great to talk with their wives over dinner. After dinner we headed to the awards ceremony which started with entertainment from an iband, if you've never heard one look it up on youtube, pretty awesome. After the awards ceremony, Tim Hawkins came on stage!
This guy made me laugh so hard I almost fell out of my seat! I'm glad he likes Chick-fil-A!
Wednesday morning was another general session from 8 to noon. Where we talked about our 2020 vision and Tim T. gave us 7 key takeaway points and then Dan gave us 3 more, I took good notes so I wouldn't forget them! We met my mom and Raegan at the airport and flew home Wednesday afternoon. Raegan was quite a handful on the plane rides home. She enjoyed calling our friend sitting behind us 'papa' and even went and sat with them in the row behind us for awhile. She also threw baby cows (moos) at people on the plane and cracked up every time. The people on the plane found her entertaining, Philip and I were exhausted!
Our second learning and development session was called 'The Essential Skills of High Performing Teams.' In this session we did an exercise where we thought of an end/future goal and then wrote down where we were now (current behaviors) and where we want to be (future behaviors). In between those two points we wrote down ESRC which stands for Expectations, Skills, Resources, and Consequences (ways to change behaviors. The idea was focused towards operators, but I believe it applies to parenting as well.
Before the Southwest Region breakout, Philip spent some more time at Expo. At the Southwest Region breakout there was a special tribute to Ed King (Philip's first Chick-fil-A Operator). It was very touching and even brought tears to Philip's eyes (not such an easy thing to do). The Southwest Region has the only 2 CFA stores with >$6M in sales this year! Next we had dinner with the Kings, Melissa, Barb, Michael, and the Clarks. Right after lunch I did a wellness check. Philip did one last year and they told him his real age was older than his actual age. I was pretty terrified that the same thing would happen to me, but thankfully (most likely because of my 20 impressive pushups ;) my wellness check age was the same as how old I really am, 25! yea! Also my good and bad cholestoral and all that stuff looked good to, which considering I haven't really been on a workout schedule in a long time is surprising to me.
Tuesday evening we had dinner with a group of Philip's FRL friends, it was great to talk with their wives over dinner. After dinner we headed to the awards ceremony which started with entertainment from an iband, if you've never heard one look it up on youtube, pretty awesome. After the awards ceremony, Tim Hawkins came on stage!
This guy made me laugh so hard I almost fell out of my seat! I'm glad he likes Chick-fil-A!
Wednesday morning was another general session from 8 to noon. Where we talked about our 2020 vision and Tim T. gave us 7 key takeaway points and then Dan gave us 3 more, I took good notes so I wouldn't forget them! We met my mom and Raegan at the airport and flew home Wednesday afternoon. Raegan was quite a handful on the plane rides home. She enjoyed calling our friend sitting behind us 'papa' and even went and sat with them in the row behind us for awhile. She also threw baby cows (moos) at people on the plane and cracked up every time. The people on the plane found her entertaining, Philip and I were exhausted!
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