Page 151 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Courage

started with Ray, who was known to say, “Success is not free.
Neither is failure.”
Fred told me that “Ray loved risk takers—people who had
the courage of their convictions who took the initiatives. I took
on projects even if they flopped. And I always felt bad, and he’d
say to me, ‘Well, Fred, that’s why they put mats under cuspi-
dors,’” Fred said, referring to what was also known as a spit-
toon in earlier days.
And so we were all encouraged to take risks. Maybe we were
so grounded by the standards of McDonald’s that we knew
when to reach—because we all did it, in both big ways and
small. We pulled from within ourselves to navigate whenever we
found ourselves in predicaments that weren’t covered in the
manual. And on the restaurant floor, there are times when you
find yourself without a script. You certainly can’t script human
behaviors. The crew and your customers look to you for direc-
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tion—so you had better be ready to take a stand.
Although it helped to look to the system’s standards, you
needed a certain amount of guts to push for what was right,
especially when breaking from the status quo. For example,
when I first took over as regional manager in 1988, there had
been seven new owner/operators in the last seven years in the
entire region. True, there was an average of one new operator
per year, but these were all next generation—sons and daugh-
ters of current franchisees. I thought the system would benefit
with an infusion of new blood. I wanted to bring into the sys-
tem individuals who had success in other areas and could
enhance and challenge the group. And with such a diverse pop-
ulation as New York, it only made sense to embrace the idea of
diversity within the operator ranks. They were part of the com-
munity, and our customers, and if they had the right skills, and
the passion, they would thrive personally, as would the restau-
rants. This was the direction I was introducing, and it upset