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2 Relationships
McDonald’s was like a surrogate family.
—Frank Behan, former zone manager and
senior vice president, McDonald’s
While relationships matter in all organizations,
they are the very basis for the entire system at McDonald’s. They
run deep from the heart, driving McDonald’s forward. “Rela-
tionships are everything in business. You cannot function as a
highly successful organization without maintaining relation-
ships,” said Ed Rensi, a former president and CEO of McDon-
ald’s USA.
The Three-Legged Stool
These relationships were the basis of what Fred Turner famously
refers to as “the three-legged stool”—a phrase that comes up
again and again when McDonald’s culture is examined. This
term refers to the relationship between the three partners to the
system’s success: owner/operators, suppliers and corporate staff.
Each is dependent on the others to support the group as a whole.
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