Tomato Paste Leadership: Part Three

Tomato Paste Leadership Part Three: How to create more time with your family

by Domenic Chiarella, 7 of 7 BEST Business and Life Strategies, LLC

How to create more time with your family? And what does that have to do with…How to make Mouth-Watering Pasta Sauce?

Welcome to the last part of Tomato Paste Leadership. My favorite mom-in-law, Annuciatina aka Nancy, is jumping out of her skin to finish explaining her methods, the last steps in her secret recipe. It was one of her few possessions that was brought to you from a small town in Italy, Boville Ernica, some 72 years ago.

At the end of this post, Nancy has a treat for you. She promised to show you what magic she does with these jars!!!!!

Me? I enjoyed sharing the past two parts of leadership with you.

They gave me so much success and I made them a consistent part of my life and a part of my business.

Part One, I shared how to create your primary aims in life. A written guide that can help you to have great decision making powers and to lead the life of your dreams.

Part Two, Taking your primary aims and creating a written one page strategic objective for your business. Results? The ways for everyone in the company knowing the who, what, when, where, and why of the business.

This last part, I am sharing with you a quick, simple way to start / continue the delegation model of leadership. Going from command and control management to a more collaborative management system. Let's get started!!!

The year was 1947.

Living in Boville Ernica, Italy for the first 17 years, Annuciatina with her mom, Mamma Maria left their proud little town for a better life.

With everything they owned, they took a ship and a month later, landed in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her dad, Nicola worked in the coal mines and saved enough money to bring them to USA. There life was hard, working was dangerous, language barriers, and making ends meet. But the love of family, the culture of love, happiness, and delicious food.

She met her husband, Antonio, moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and away we go with jarring tomatoes!!!

They also brought with them, some 72 years ago was a vision, a happiness and a recipe....

What was that vision? She let you in on the secret of making one of the greatest Italian red sauce for her homemade pasta.

What does that have to do with leadership?

Think about it, a vision of making the best pasta and the best pasta sauce, year after year. So that your family can have the best!

Like a great business, making the best service to clients and employees, year after year.

So that your clients and employees can have the best!

It is the choices leaders make and how they follow through with leadership.

And Annuciatina made the right choices to bring it here in USA and to hone it to perfection. She made the choices over the years to hone her recipe, to use what works and keep it or change what doesn’t and improve it.

She discards what doesn’t work. Taking responsibly for correcting the course along the way. She knows what she wants and where she wants to end up.

She communicated what the vision is and helps us get to the success of jarring the best tomato sauce, and to find... Happiness!!

Now, let’s talk about the real reason you are reading this...

The next step is the sealing of the tomato paste jars. You will be heating the seal jars for twenty to thirty minutes to seal the jars. Not to cook the tomatoes, more just to seal the tomatoes from bacteria. You have to be careful not the have the jars explode while boiling.

An old Boville Ernica trick is putting some dish towels or in dialect Italian, mappina in the pan of water.

Remove the jars with the handle, shake the jar to mix the ingredients, and store upside-down, cooling them off before we store them.

Now you still must be wondering how leadership is related to jarring tomato sauce. I would be….

Let’s face it; the feeling of stress and overload can be synonyms with you, the business owner and your limited time. This infamous lack of time is the connection between the tools of system development and our limited time resource: which causes the feeling of stress and overload.

You only have so many hours in a day. And you can only

really complete a finite amount of work in those hours. That is it, period. This is one limitation that no matter what you do, or how you divide the work up, will not change. This one limitation also limits your success and the success of your company. What this limitation creates is stress and overload, both in your business and in your life. Systems and system delegation are the best ways to overcome time limitation. How well you delegate will dictate how successful you and your company are.

So how do you implement effective systems and then delegate?

System creation and delegation of the systems are the critical component in the development of your business:

It helps your team grow and develop. Therefore, doing more.

Allows the best use of everyone’s’ time and skills, most importantly, YOURS. More control of work and best use of all skills sets. "If you choose the right task to delegate, give to the right person to delegate to, and have the correct tools to do the task consistently, My company will have better odds of success." --Domenic A Chiarella

You have always done the many daily tasks as the owner of the company. Letting go of these tasks is downright frightening. But if you keep doing these tasks, most likely you may be trapped forever doing these tasks. I have added a little tool to start the delegation process. Something that will add more time to your life.

Steps to Create the Playbook

1. Start by using your computer / phone or for us old schoolers, carrying around with you a small spiral notebook. 2. Tab sections or on top of individual sheets of paper. Write the various areas that you work in and want to develop. Examples: Sales, Service/Production, Accounting, Repairs, Facility, Education, Personal, etc. 3. First column on each section, identify all the tasks you do in each section or department.,. 4. Second column, identify all the tasks you want to delegate. 5. Third column, Whom do you want to delegate this task to? 6. With each task, create a simple one-page step-by-step method to do the task. Make it one page for the KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid. Understand that if you can’t write it down, you can’t delegate it. a. Task Name: the what, b. Task Description: the why,

c. Steps of task: the how, d. Who is responsible for the task: the who, e. The resources to do task: the where, and f. A Clear result to task. 7. Train, Train, Train the who of the delegated employee.

Finally

Great leaders do the same thing: they have a vision and they teach and mentor to help all of us get to that vision. They make the course changes without pointing and accusing, without ego, without worrying about failure.

It is the success of the team that matters to the leader. There are alway the bumps and turns to get to happiness.

One sees the many weak leaders. The ones that look for very little real change and growth. They keep doing the same thing over and over but still get the same results.

They talk about what they want and and when things go wrong, they look for a scapegoat, for the reasons something didn’t work.

Failure to weak leaders is a major blow to their ego, a blow to themselves.

How do great leaders know what they are doing and where they are going?

Growing your business or creating success in your life starts with knowing what you want in life. What is important to you? When you end up where you want to be, is it what you valued. To find your values, you find out what your primary aims are in life.

And finally, the magic Annuciatina promised. Just what they do with jars of tomato sauce?

For now, the leader, Annuciatina aka Nancy, and I, her favorite son-in-law (her only one) have lead her team to another great client success.

For more than 40 years, Domenic has served as Director of Operations and as Director of Business Development at one of the most creative and collaborative organizations in the New York and Connecticut areas, From Nancy, the Italian leader, on the left, to her Ultimate Services mentored group of new tomato paste leaders: Professional Grounds Toni, Jessica, Angela, Rachael, Rosemary, Management Inc. Constantino, Jennifer, Anthony, Daisy, Dominick,

He is what people and me, Domenic-Tanti Auguri!, Ciao Ciao Tutti call a perpetual student. An alumnus from the University of Connecticut with a BS in Computer Science and the University of Florence, Italy with a BA in Italian. And then at a ripe young age of 53 returning to the halls of higher learning of Fairleigh Dickinson University with a Master Degree in Administrative Services.

Contractor Focus: Sietsma Landscape

Sietsma Landscape is a family-owned and operated business that has been a trusted name in Bergen and Passaic counties for over 30 years. Founder and President, Glenn Sietsma, established Sietsma Landscape, Inc. in Midland Park in 1987. Glenn started the company with his wife and one truck.

Today, Sietsma has over 50 employees and has expanded its operations to be able to accommodate all of their client's landscape needs. While the company continues to grow each year, they have always maintained a hands-on feel. "We have earned the trust of our customers and employees, we take pride in our many long-term relationships, and we value each and every client we work with." says Glenn.

In 1997, Sietsma Landscape purchased their sister company, Green-Way Irrigation. Green-Way is a full-service residential and commercial irrigation company. This allows Sietsma's customers to receive consistency and one point of contact for all of their landscaping services.

Sietsma is a family run company that continues to stick true to its motto – “BIG enough to SERVE – small enough to CARE!”

Sietsma provides services such as landscape design, installation, maintenance, irrigation installation, custom stonework and hardscapes, landscape lighting, plantings, lawn installation and renovation, hydroseeding, and commercial snow removal.

For more information, visit www.sietsmalandscape.com.

Associate Focus: Cambridge Pavers, Inc.

whether there is a favorite son amongst the two, that has already been covered in one of their commercials, but we will give you a hint…ArmorTec® is a face mix that has become synonymous with Cambridge. This unique process has been perfected over the years by every employee who has had a hand in the mix design that consists of superfine sand granules and cement of the highest quality. Cambridge now consists of 254 dedicated employees and five production facilities, which include locations in Lyndhurst, South Amboy, and a brand new one in Lakewood, New Jersey. Charles's dream is to change America's Landscape with Pavingstones and Wallstones. He wants towns It was the early eighties when Charles H. Gamarekian came across an ad in a concrete products magazine that all over the United States to upgrade their sidewalks, downtown areas, and municipalities with products that will outperform concrete and asphalt. Cambridge’s outdoor components including fire pits, fireplaces, outdoor Chris Gamarekian, Charles H. Gamarekian and Charles Gamarekian Jr. would ultimately change the entire trajectory of his life. At kitchens, pizza ovens, pergolas, pavilions and more, are althe time he was involved in residential and commercial real lowing people to extend their living space beyond their four estate development. The ad was for a paver making machine walls so that they can enjoy time with family and friends and for some reason or another, Charles found it fascinat- throughout the year. This is about something larger than ing and needed to learn more about this machine and the a pretty driveway or patio. It is about an investment that durable concrete products it could make. He got in touch makes people feel good about coming home or taking a with the company that made the machine and scheduled walk in their local community. Cambridge's mission is to a tour of their facility in West Palm Beach, Florida. After encourage positive change in the environments we utilize Charles spent the day looking at these behemoth machines each day. Cambridge is proud to be a part of this change, and asking every question under the sun regarding pavers one paver, and one wallstone at a time, and can continue and manufacturing, he flew home with a fire in his belly. to experience growth and success with the support of asso The moment he got home he devised a plan that would ciations like the NJLCA and the highly experienced profesinvolve getting his hands on no-name pavers and setting sional hardscape contractors who are out in the field recup shop at home improvement tradeshows to see if there ommending and installing our products.was any real interest from homeowners and contractors in For more information, visit www.cambridgepavers.com.regards to paving stones bringing added value to a property. After this six-month experiment and a lot of interest shown at these shows, Charles knew he wanted to manufacture pavers and he did so from 1984-1994 as the president of another paver manufacture. He got that company up and running in regards to the paver end and after ten years decided to venture out on his own to create Cambridge Pavers.

In 2006 Charles was joined by his twin sons and current Vice Presidents of the company, Chris and Charles Junior who brought their ideas and innovations to the table in regards to products, colors, manufacturing, and the overall growth of the company. They all realize that although it is not always easy working with family ,they would not want it any other way. Whether sitting together at the conference table or in the car on a way to a trade show, there is always a balance between business and bonding. As to