Page 122 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

“I was training with operators, you know, working the store,”
Fred told me. “On Saturday morning Ray Kroc came in with a
toothbrush. He got up on the sink, and he was scrubbing the
holes in the mop wringer with this toothbrush. I saw him do
that. It’s true, he’d go around with his knife and scrape the gum
off the cement. He certainly set the tone on appearance and pro-
vided a smarter way of doing things. So he looked at McDon-
ald’s more or less from the customers’ point of view. Or the
public’s point of view. That’s how the public viewed us and how
they looked in on us.”
And there are other stories as the former chief marketing offi-
cer Paul Schrage revealed. One involved Ray getting off the
train, walking to the store, and picking up trash off the street
along the way. “That had to resonate amongst all the people in
the company,” Paul said. And Bob Vidor, a former store man-
ager at the time, shared a tale in which Ray, touring the New
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Jersey region, stopped at the store. “Let’s go look at your lot,”
Ray said, and walked with some of the team members showing
them what to look for, including cigarette butts. “The lesson was
this was also our ‘dining room,’” Bob told me. “Ray wasn’t
afraid to pick it up, so why should we be? It took about 15 min-
utes, and he said that the store looked good. He got in the limo
and left.” Ray fastidiously set the tone for cleanliness. These
images are hard to dismiss, even today.

Lesson Learned

The most effective way to pass down a legacy is to work side by
side with the future generation of leaders. Studies show that
people absorb twice as much through hands-on learning as
opposed to simply attending lectures or reading. Teach through
your actions—it’s the surest way to transfer knowledge.