Page 47 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Honesty and Integrity

there. “I would say, ‘Thank you very much, that’s all I needed
to hear; we are going to try to make this work.’ It was the notion
of individuals believing in each other, and that was always the
fabric of the company. With company efforts, it inspired trust
in the operators, and the people in those roles inspired trust. As
the company did well, it translated across the counter.”
But that doesn’t mean there were not abuses, where trust was
questioned. Jim Lewis, a multistore operator in Manhattan, retold
a story of how his well-established and successful store felt the
impact of a new store opening, which was granted to another
operator. As Jim shared with me, he was promised that his largest-
volume store would not be negatively affected like that again.
Much to his amazement, a number of years later, another new
store was being built, threatening to have negative impacts again.
And he wasn’t being offered the new store! He wondered if lead-
ership had forgotten the conversation; ultimately, though, the issue
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did eventually get resolved. “The company as a whole had the
integrity to fix what needed to be fixed. And it happened through
different channels, and over more time than perhaps everyone
wanted, but in the end it did get fixed.” Jim received compensa-
tion for his situation to rectify the loss in revenues in a number of
ways, and since that episode, his organization has now grown to
a total of 12 stores that he runs. Jim’s operations continue to be
successful, and the relationship with McDonald’s is solid.
During my tenure, I observed that honesty and integrity were
demonstrated in some unusual ways. One interesting scenario was
the “operator-only” meetings that were held in the corporate
offices during the year. The National Operators’ Advisory Board
(NOAB) had representation from all of the regions around the
country. They would meet during the course of the year to hear
committee reports and to generally work on various issues that
the operators felt were important. While there was much collab-
oration and communication between the corporation and the