Be sure you have a Ringo Starr, advised COEX keynoter Tim Sanders

Tim Sanders has worked with some of the biggest names in business—from titans like Mark Cuban to brands like Yahoo, where he served as Chief Solutions Officer. But he drew from a much different group of celebrities for a major point of his opening keynote address at COEX: John, Paul, George, and, most important, Ringo.

An expert on the benefits of business collaboration, Sanders said the question he gets most frequently from businesses looking to foster collective action is how many people to involve in the give-and-take. 

“’How many people should be on the team? Wrong question’,” declared Sanders. “It’s not ‘How many?', it’s ‘Who are we missing?’ How many perspectives should be in the room?” 

Which brought him to The Beatles.

He explained that he’d once spoken with the Fab Four’s gifted producer, Sir George Martin, about how the band became a rock legend. To Sanders’ surprise, Martin said the key move was replacing drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr early in The Beatles’ rise.

Best was John Lennon’s closest friend, so he sided with the lyricist on every question the band addressed. That dynamic changed when Starr, the better drummer, was recruited to replace Best. Ringo brought a different orientation: “Let’s have some fun.”

It also gave the Beatles four distinct perspectives, the ideal for a collaboration, according to Sanders. 

“When you have four different perspectives, 80% of the time you walk out of the room with success,” he said, citing research that showed as much. “Yet most of the time, someone is collaborating with only one other person.”

Because of that miscast, “meetings are the root canal of our corporate experience,” Sanders remarked.
 
He offered several examples of how collaboration had delivered head-turning results, from the production of the original “Toy Story” movie to a healthcare facility’s successful effort to perform more colonoscopies.

Sanders differentiated collaboration from cooperation. He likened the difference to what’s represented on a breakfast platter of bacon and eggs: “The chicken is involved, but the pig is really committed.”

With true collaboration, he continued, “people come together as equals,” without the consideration of where they might be in the corporate hierarchy.

“You gotta share the risk, you gotta share the rewards,” he said.

Sanders urged the supplier-heavy audience to keep that dynamic and the Rule of Four in mind in working with potential foodservice customers. For sure, he stressed, the operator should be involved in true collaboration. 

When suppliers make that party one of the four involved, “You bring in a Ringo,” he concluded.

Sanders’ message was consistent with a major theme of this year’s COEX, “Stronger Together: Fueling Innovation.” 

The conference, whose full name is the Chain Operators EXchange,” drew hundreds of suppliers and operators from the food-away-from-home industry to this year’s host city of Kansas City, MO.

The annual conference is presented by IFMA The Food Away from Home Association.

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