Page 60 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

But trust doesn’t come without really knowing a person. For
this reason, to this day, Ed Rensi, when interviewing someone
in one of his current business ventures, starts the conversation
with “tell me about yourself.” Inevitably, the person responds
by talking about where he or she graduated. “No,” Ed likes to
tell them. “I want to know about your parents. I want to know
about what makes you laugh and what makes you cry.” What
he wants, Ed said, is to get to the heart of the person’s value sys-
tem. It’s the very foundation of trust.

Relationships Based on Service
At McDonald’s, add to this Ray Kroc’s philosophy of the rela-
tionship between the company and operator, where, as stated in
Chapter 1, the operator made “the first dollar and the company
made the next one,” and you have a culture where supporting
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the operators has long stood as a primary function of the cor-
porate staff. They were our customers. Those of us in the cor-
poration served the operators. You got back to them within 24
hours; you tried your best to accommodate their needs. Frank
Behan, former senior vice president and zone manager, called it
a “butler mentality.” “You love to serve. People make you happy
to see that they were satisfied. You have a need to satisfy that
person’s needs. It’s an inner thing, not really learned.” All of this
has helped to build the vital relationships of the three-legged-
stool concept.
“It’s basic to who we are and how we do business,” Fred
pointed out. “It’s an owner on premises. They have equity.
That’s how we’re structured.”
Relationships between the regions and the corporate office
have been another key to the organization’s success, and I
believe that started with Ray. There are many stories of him call-
ing real estate reps in California and Chicago and asking about
a specific site or how a location is doing. In New York, I dis-