I had an opportunity recently to catch up on some podcasts. One of my current faves is Problem Solvers, by Entrepreneur magazine. This is often a great source of business tips for me.

On a recent episode, Entrepreneur senior editor Jason Feifer interviewed long-time Dunkin CEO Robert Rosenberg. You can listen to the whole thing here.

Rosenberg took over Dunkin from his father while he was fresh out of MBA school. He went on to serve the company for thirty-five years as CEO and brought a lot of growth to the company. He also recognizes that he made his fair share of mistakes along the way.

Business tips

Here are a few insights Rosenberg shared with Feifer, which are also profiled in Rosenberg’s recent book, Around the Corner to Around the World:

• “A young business can starve to death by not having enough resources but it can also die from indigestion by having too much. The business was too broad for the resources we had.” Rosenberg worked with the leadership team to narrow the focus of his dad’s company. They previously offered multiple food categories, but narrowed into just donuts. He said they chose “one design, one menu, one business” and then get out of all of the other categories. Within five years, the company went public and grew revenue 700%.
• He learned early “the importance of strategy: what you want to be and what you want to have. Which four or five levers are you going to pull to bridge scarce resources to the achievement of those objectives?” When the company grew so fast, Rosenberg decided to try diversifying into different categories for franchising. He found himself making the same mistakes they had made before. Thankfully they realized it quickly and backed up to focus on their narrow niche.
• “Trust is at the heart of all successful relationships… and the way people trust you is if you’re authentic. I don’t find vulnerability a thing to be ashamed about.” Rosenberg identifies four tests of trust; one is “are your public and private conversations the same?”
• “Most successful enterprises… you will often find not one person on a white horse that saves the day… you will find a few people working together, complementing each other.”

What should be the role of the CEO in a growing business?

Rosenberg suggests that there are four things the CEO should do.

1. First, shepherd the strategy
2. Then, build your organization. “Recruit, retain and motivate people to execute your strategy.”
3. “Serve as Communicator in Chief. Try to align all constituencies around the strategy.” You will need to do this over and over again.
4. Handle crises when they come up. Prepare in advance by assessing crisis risk and planning for anything you anticipate. When a crisis comes up, pick a small team of experts who can work with the CEO. This team addresses the crisis while everyone else focuses on the everyday business activities. Lastly, increase the communications across the organization. Everyone is feeling the instability; build trust by communicating early and often.

These are meaningful principles all of us can use in our teams and organization. What stands out to you here?