Page 140 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

was persuasive in getting the operators to act. He would be pre-
pared to make decisions.”

Money Talks
It’s true. Sometimes you have to put your money where your
mouth is, as Frank Behan recalled. One of the operators never
changed the shortening in his fryers, and the situation was so
bad that Frank, during a store visit, went to the filtering machine
and dumped the vats. Upset, the operator threatened to call the
police. “Go ahead and I’ll turn you in to the health department,”
Frank said. Then the operator pled that he could not afford to
replace the shortening, so Frank reached into his pocket and
gave him $10 and said, “Here, replace it.” That did the trick.
“He never had a problem with that again,” Frank said. Show
them what practices you won’t tolerate, and they’ll get the mes-
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sage, loud and clear.

Not Always Fool-Proof
Of course, even the best leaders won’t succeed every time. No
matter how good a leader you are, you will run into your share
of folks who won’t follow your guidelines, regardless of how
many models of excellence you put before them. The McDon-
ald’s system accounted for that too. “Everyone has that passion
in common, and I think you were flushed quickly if you didn’t,
an incredibly strong work ethic,” former McDonald’s divisional
president Debra Koenig noted.

A Backup Plan
Despite the system’s propensity for leadership, the company had
its flaws—as any company does. Take the company-operated
stores, which were created to generate profits for the company