Page 116 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

ald’s—for those, it should be stressed, who adhere to McDon-
ald’s rigorous standards.
That adherence to standards is something I’ve brought into
my professional life, post-McDonald’s. In my consulting prac-
tice today, we are always looking at how a task is measured and
where the bar is set. It’s important to clearly delineate what is
acceptable, be that behavior, product quality, customer relations,
marketing—that’s part of the culture of any organization. It
articulates what level of product you will accept. And I’m hardly
alone in this practice. For instance, Debra Koenig, former divi-
sional president, in her stint as CEO of Vicorp, said McDonald’s
commitment to QSC and also V (value), were attributes worth
bringing to her next professional position. “I tried to take what
McDonald’s provided—great training at the service level and
crew level, food that had to be served hot and tasty—and tried
to apply those concepts to Vicorp,” she says. “We applied a lot
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of those learnings from McDonald’s around food and value to
the menu.”

A Final Thought
The passion for high standards is still prevalent within the sys-
tem today—more than 50 years after Ray Kroc opened his first
unit in Des Plaines. I’ve been asked many times in conversations,
“How is it continued, how does the legacy stay strong?” While
there is no simple answer, it seems that a number of actions con-
tinue to foster the legacy. One is the stories retold to numerous
staff over and over again, exaggerated or not, giving credence
to the notion that McDonald’s values high standards. Another
is the current executive team, including CEO Jim Skinner, which
comes from a deep operations background and continues to set
the pace and example for the entire organization. Also, the addi-
tion of “mystery shops,” which are unannounced visits that are