Page 194 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

estate. Our real estate team, under director of development Ernie
Annibale, had been working on the possibility of selling air rights
to developers within the specific areas of some of our locations in
Manhattan. These were quite valuable to the developers, as it
allowed them to “buy” the rights to develop a larger and taller
building within our market. A block was regulated as to how
much “mass” could be developed in a particular parcel. We found
the solution to our immediate problem by working collaboratively
and communicating with our leadership team. And that also led
the way for additional deals from properties owned throughout
the region, which over the years returned millions of dollars in
previously unfound revenue to both the company and the opera-
tors whose stores were involved and who subsequently received,
in many cases, a proportionate share of the monies for remodel-
ing or upgrading in the process.

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“Hotter, Faster”
I was reminded of a unique example of communicating an impor-
tant issue by Willis Smart, who recalled a time when McDonald’s
focus was redirected toward a back-to-basics agenda. Ed Rensi,
then the president of the company, solved it in his own way. “It
was symbolic,” said Willis. “Ed wrote a book, called Hotter,
Faster, and the entire book had only those two words. It was very
grounded in the importance of operations and that we were an
operations-driven company.” Ed knew the value of finding a new
way to communicate important messaging, and as crazy as the
format was, it sure got our attention.

The Ability to Challenge
One of the more interesting anomalies within the scope of com-
municating in the McDonald’s system has been the pervasive
encouragement to challenge and to question. In a seemingly