It has taken five summers for Dave Lynema, our Michigan Food Service Director, and I to find a day to do some fishing together. But we finally accomplished our goal this past week. I’ve looked forward to fishing with Dave because he’s an excellent fisherman and I appreciate him as a person and as a friend.

Because it turned out to be a slow fishing day we ended up talking “shop” while trying to figure out what we needed to do to catch some fish. At one point I asked Dave, “How did your summer go?”

He replied (as I heard a number of times in the past couple of weeks), “It was the best summer I’ve had at SpringHill.”

Of course I couldn’t let it go at that so I asked, “What made it your best summer?”

Dave provided two reasons that I could have anticipated, if I had only taken time to think about it.

First he said, “We did a better job in our pre-summer planning.” Then he explained, “We also had great people working on the food service team.”

 Good planning, preparation and great people working together as a team? Not necessarily a “high level strategy”. But as in any great day of fishing, it’s an absolutely necessary formula for a team, or a leader, who wants to have their “best summer” ever.

 What’s been the “formula” for your best work experience yet?