Page 136 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

check out the competition with an entourage—you learn more
from checking out your competition when you visit discreetly,
something Fred has always made a point of doing.

Windshield Time and Other Key
Learning Moments
Personally, I enjoyed spending time in the field with staff. On the
road between store visits during what we would call “windshield
time” was time well spent, and more valuable than any meeting
or office conversation. I learned so much simply by observing
what interested them, and their responses to various situations.
This informal style proved to be very conducive to getting closer
to individuals with whom you worked. It also allowed an oppor-
tunity to get to know the individual on a more personal basis. It
was always interesting to see what interests they would have and
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how often it was similar to mine. As a young and impressionable
executive growing up in the system, I was eager to learn, at every
opportunity, always on the lookout to pick up cues from anyone,
whether they were formal or not.

Lesson Learned

Achievers never stop learning. They absorb every facet of an
organization, and as leaders we must nurture that, and never
forget that we are role models, even when we least consider
ourselves to be.

Field visits were learning experiences for everyone, agreed
Tom Dentice, a retired executive vice president, who mentioned
that “there was a lack of elitism, the feeling that none of us is
as good as all of us. And so everyone in operations really did