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The Achiever Newsletter

Some of the Many Hats He Wears

Like many business leaders in the world today, Dr. Jeffrey W. Drake plays many roles in the AchieveMax® company ... and he has the actual hat collection to go along with those roles.

Any seminar participant knows that Jeff's hat collection is a key part of his presentations. But the original idea for having hats related to seminar themes surfaced just two years ago.

The hat collection started at an E&A Credit Union seminar, "Getting Back on Track." Since E&A had recently gone through a merger, this seminar dealt with getting the credit union back on track, using railroad paraphernalia to stress key points. For the occasion, Jeff wore a railroad engineer's cap, focusing on getting the credit union back on track and explaining what reengineering is. That's where it all started.

From then on, Jeff has continued to collect hats for seminars as well as receive them as gifts from participants and clients. The collection currently consists of more than two dozen caps/hats, including the coach's cap for discussing managers as coaches and empowered employees. Other hats include a three-cornered revolutionary hat for describing business revolutions and the baseball cap with two visors detailing why leadership can't go two ways. (Leaders need to decide if they will cling on to traditional "command and control" tactics or adopt "coaching" tactics to use with their empowered employees in self-managed teams.)

And now even the audience is getting into the act! Recently, the Controller's Office staff at Michigan State University surprised Jeff with their own cap collection. On the second day of the C-Team seminar, Jeff walked into the room to find everyone in the audience wearing a hat! The hats ranged from cowboy hats to hard hats to baseball caps.

It was a delightful surprise for Jeff. "It was then that I realized how much of an impact the hats have made for the audience. They're always wondering what type of cap I'll be wearing next."

Publication Date: Spring 1996

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