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12 FEDA News & Views continued on page 28 and running and making key decisions for the business." What separates the servant-leader from the leader-fi rst model is the empha- sis on the growth and well-being of the team. Meeting the needs of each associ- ate becomes the priority in the hope that they will become servant-leaders and lavish the customer with the same level of consciousness. In the end, every- one is content. The company is happy. Associates are happy. And as a result, the customer receives a superior level of service and responds with more repeat business. The cycle has proven to be tremen- dously effective for the Waukesha, Wis.- based, Boelter, currently ranked one of the top fi ve distributors in the country and inside the top 10 for years. Which is why nurturing it has been a mandate ever since then President Bill Boelter charged a group of managers with the responsibility of restructuring the com- pany's DNA in the late 80s. Just last year, management identifi ed key posi- tions that needed to be fi lled in the next 12 to 18 months and hired a vice presi- dent of Human Resources and Talent Management to continue the work of aligning the right talent with its core beliefs, in addition to grooming the assets already in-house. "We have a Boelter coaching system in place to mentor current and incom- ing associates," says Brown. "It's a good exchange that starts with an employee reaching out to their leader to discuss their career aspirations. Then, the two work on a personal development plan that includes the best training, knowl- edge, skills and abilities that would enable the associate to migrate toward that path. "A lot of times people want to go into sales, for example, and we pair them with a mentor or a coach. It could be a sales manager or going out on a ride- along with a salesperson, anything that gives them an opportunity to test the process and make sure that's what they want to do." Goal-Oriented With more than 450 associates, eight branches and three distinct divisions serving the foodservice, beverage and consumer product markets, Boelter is a big company with even loftier goals. "The challenge for any organization our size," says Brown, "is how to bridge the gap so that the employee on the third shift remains just as engaged and informed" as the one on the fi rst. Boelter accomplishes this by breaking down those shooting stars into manageable chunks of substrategies and KPIs. Both of which are disseminated throughout the year in a number of ways, starting with the distributor's semiannual all- associates meeting, where the executive management team unveils its Five-Year Forward Looking Plan. But true to the servant-leader model, a How Healthy continued great deal of the vision, and even more of the day to day, gets hashed out in huddles. Think of them as mandated clusters of collaboration that crop up in varying degrees throughout The Boelter Companies. "It starts from the top and cascades throughout the organization," says Brown. "Eric [the president of Boelter's Foodservice division] has hud- dles, our Contract offi ces have combined huddles, Customer Service, Distribution, and Supply Chain meet regularly. That's how communication is exchanged and metrics are reviewed." Some groups meet monthly, others twice a week. The frequency depends on the area of the business, says Brown. His Supply Chain team offi cially meets every Tuesday, although associates are encouraged to organically cluster when issues arise. But in the standard order of things, department heads take the lead and talk metrics and performance. Were they on target the prior week? If not, why? What should be done to correct the problem, or should the metric, itself, be adjusted to provide granularity or root cause analysis? "Right now, the leader facilitates the huddle but we want that to change," says Brown. "Ideally, we'd like the associ- ates to take the lead. Each one of them is responsible for a specifi c metric. So instead of the leader talking, we'd like them to talk about their individual met-