Page 41 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Honesty and Integrity

No Free Hamburgers
Early in my career, I saw that honesty and integrity were one of
the founding principles of the company and, by and large, per-
meated the organization down to the smallest detail. Ed Rensi,
a former burger flipper who went on to serve as president and
CEO of McDonald’s USA, put it to me this way: “You can call
my wife right now and ask her this question. When Ed was a
store manager, did he ever give you a free hamburger? Ask her.
She still talks about it. Because I would not under any circum-
stances take anything from the company.”
Still, many of us faced the pressure to give out free food. We
found ingenious ways to combat that. When I was a manager,
crew kids were challenged by friends for gratis hamburgers. I’d
reach into my pocket and hand the kids a dollar, offering to buy
them a burger. They got the message, and in most cases it embar-
rassed them in front of their friends and peers.
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Honesty and integrity were a natural to Ed, and he saw those
qualities all around him. “It was the culture, so it made it a lot
easier,” he said. “Fred had an abundance of common sense, and
that is what honesty and integrity is all about. Common sense—
the [ability to distinguish the] difference . . . between right and
wrong. Fred Turner had it, and he made sure we all had it. Fred
expected a certain level of behavior, and he got it. And Fred
would not put dishonesty around him.”
But unlike, say, standards, which can be taught, honesty and
integrity are innate—you either have it, or you don’t. As Willis
Smart stated to me, “I always go back to honesty and integrity
being something that you don’t talk about . . . you just do.” For-
mer McDonald’s zone manager Frank Behan offered this per-
spective: “It’s how you view yourself. There are people that are
honest to a certain degree but then can be bought past that
degree, and then they’re no longer honest.”