Page 168 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

Steadfast and Focused
Like Ray and Fred, and like all of us in the system, you needed
that strong identity to have the courage to do the job you set
out to do, as Mike Quinlan reminded me. “People sometimes
used to accuse me of pandering to the shareholders’ stock price,”
he said. “That was unfair, but I knew down deep that at the end
of the day it was my job to maximize the long-term returns of
the shareholders. Now, there are a lot of things that need to get
done to accomplish that: the operators needed opportunities to
grow; suppliers have to get a raise. Nobody wants to work in
an atmosphere where they aren’t rewarded for their efforts. They
have to see the opportunity to get a raise, to get a promotion.
At the end of the day, you can only serve one guy . . .”
But in keeping Wall Street and investors happy, we had to keep
our eye on the customer. In corporate, the customer wasn’t only
the consumers ordering burgers and fries, it was also the
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owner/operators. Our primary goal was to support them in their
efforts to serve consumers. They valued that face time with cor-
porate, and as a regional manager, at times that got difficult—
even when it came to standing up to the higher-ups. On one
occasion, when Ed Rensi, then the president of the company,
came to visit New York, I arranged for a tour of stores and oper-
ators that spanned a full day, with a dinner that night as well.
Tours were tough to coordinate, particularly with the president—
you never knew how much time he was going to spend in each
store. And no one was better than Ed at taking the time to talk
with the crews and management of every store we visited. So it
was up to me to keep to the tour schedule, which often meant
cutting a visit short. The one thing you wanted to avoid was
missing an appointment if a visit was planned; that would dev-
astate the crew, management team, and operator. The chance to
have the president of the company visit their store meant a great
deal to everyone involved. Besides the normal bragging rights a