Page 134 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

No Hierarchy
This basic tenet of leadership was hard for any manager worth
their stuff to ignore. It was a classic understanding that you had
to be on the floor. And this meant working with the crew, the
customers, and, when needed, the stations. All McDonald’s staff
had this burned into their heads. The more you understood that,
the greater your respect within the organization. As Vivian Ross,
vice president of labor relations, said to me, “The field is the
system.” And she made sure that her team of lawyers could
adapt to the store environment and that the crews in the field
were comfortable with her team.
“I have always been schooled at McDonald’s that it’s about the
restaurants, and I have always valued in my lawyers, the ones that
have worked with me, in their ability to be able to be as comfort-
able in the crew room as they are in the board room,” Vivian told
me. “ So, my guys have for the most part, been able to sit in the
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basement of a McDonald’s restaurant crew room and be able to
engage in a conversation with a crew person and make them feel
comfortable and then be able to come back and report back to top
management. To conduct yourself in a way that crew people would
find offensive is counter to our culture.”

Showing, Not Telling
Sometimes lessons are best taught with the fewest words possi-
ble, as Ed Rensi shared with me. He recalled in the early 1970s,
working in Columbus, Ohio, “We were constantly being clob-
bered by companies starting new restaurants in Columbus. I
mean, you name it, they started it there,” Ed said, referring to up-
and-comers including Arby’s and Arthur Treacher’s Fish and
Chips. “At the time we didn’t serve fish, and the Catholics were
eating fish on Fridays. They were kicking our ass because they
had really great fish. In Ohio people eat a lot of fish, plus Proc-