Page 114 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

A Stumble
In the early years of the 2000s, McDonald’s was considered to
have lost its way somewhat. From decreasing sales to diminish-
ing consumer interest and increased competition, the company
had lost its luster. As the New York Times reported, by January
2003 McDonald’s reported its first quarterly loss. That same
month, when Jim Cantalupo was called back from retirement
and voted in as chairman and CEO, he immediately got to work
to get the company on track. He understood the need to get
back to basics and get the system back to its roots of QSC. In a
Nation’s Restaurant News article of February 18, 2003, he
stated rather bluntly: “Clean restrooms and hot fresh food
served in our restaurants would be a change.” The company
renewed its focus on the customer, and that shift helped the com-
pany boost earnings to $2.28 billion in 2004, up from $1.47 bil-
lion in 2003, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. This
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growth stemmed from the company’s “Plan to Win” strategy,
which boils down to five P’s: People, Products, Place, Price, and
Promotion. These attributes incorporated the company’s long-
standing commitment to QSC. As Harvard Business School
points out in a case study published in 2007, the new plan was
“framed around the customer’s every need and desire.” Though
I was no longer with McDonald’s by this time, the news reaf-
firmed everything I’d been taught by the system about the
importance of standards.

Spillover into Our Personal Lives
We lived and breathed so many standards that for many of us
there was a spillover into our personal lives. We organized our
homes and our private offices with precision. To this day, for
example, I always ensure that there is backup supply for per-
sonal care items like toothpaste simply because I grew up in a