Page 36 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

as opposed to signed contracts, it really attests to the fact that
we have to have honesty and we have to have integrity,” Bob
told me. “And I think that with McDonald’s and being as com-
plex as we are, we are actually pretty simple in the aspect of
what you see is what you get. And there is not a lot of unnec-
essary depth that goes with it, and I see it in interesting ways.
You know, people that are honest and have integrity tend to be
open, so I go into a McDonald’s Worldwide Convention
recently, and there are 13,000 people, of which probably about
4,000 are suppliers, and they hear exactly the same thing that
the company people hear, they hear exactly the same thing that
operators are hearing. So I think there is a transparency there
that you can only get when you are honest. If you weren’t, you
would have different messages for different constituencies. And
I think that the fact there is the openness and the honesty and
the transparency really makes it pretty interesting. I go into
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meetings frequently and I’ll sit down, and there will be regional
people, there will be suppliers there, there will be operators
there, and there’s lots of times that if you didn’t know better,
you wouldn’t know who is who,” Bob said, referring to the typ-
ical McDonald’s environment where all the stakeholders are
truly treated as equal partners. He added: “And the only way
you could do that is by being open and honest.”
Those I spoke to agreed readily with Bob. Consider for exam-
ple, the perspective of Jeff Stratton, McDonald’s chief restaurant
officer. “The honesty and integrity that has been part of the cul-
ture of our company in my 35 years has really never changed,”
Jeff told me. “I think throughout the course of my experience
with the company, whether it has been with Fred, to Mike [Quin-
lan], to Ed [Rensi], to Jim [Skinner], the honesty and integrity is
something I think we have consistently been able to hang our hat
on. We are a principled company and one that believes in doing
things in a right and proper way, and I think there are a million