Page 63 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Relationships

economics. “You didn’t start out as crew,” her coworkers would
say, adding, “We could tell.” What gave Kathy May away was
that her procedures were a little too by-the-book; it was obvious
that her practices were not handed down. Still, she said, when
owners hear that she ran a $3 million restaurant, or that she
remembers when Chicken McNuggets were launched, they say,
“Now you’re okay. It gives you credibility,” she pointed out.
You had to have a close relationship with these folks, many
of whom were running million-dollar businesses at nights and
on weekends, when owners were not present. Ed Rensi noted:
“I treated people the way I wanted to be treated. I’d impress
them that I knew as much about operations as they did. I’d
quote from the operations manual.”
And you had to build a foundation where your faith in them
was obvious. As Frank Behan recalled: “Ray Kroc believed in you.
He always tried to make you reach further than you could grasp.
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He said, ‘I know you can do it.’ All you have to do is prove it to
yourself. [You tell yourself] maybe I can do it if he thinks I can.”
And you might even let your guard down, just a little. Frank
remembers this conversation with Fred Turner: “One time I said,
‘Fred, I feel like I’m cheating the company. I don’t know what
the hell I’m doing, and I’m getting paid for it.’” As Frank pointed
out, it was the bumblebee theory, where the bee doesn’t know it
can’t fly, so it does. Fred Turner, as Frank recalls, turned to him
and said, “Guess what? I don’t know what the hell I’m doing
either, and I’m the president of the company!”
Arguably, they knew what they were doing. Yet they were
also immersed in the auspicious endeavor of transferring what
they already knew into running and growing what was becom-
ing a very large and complex company. But they had enough
faith in each other and in their relationship to kid about their
own vulnerabilities. And they each knew they put their trust in
very capable hands. We all did, more often than not. This
echoed Ray’s sentiment: “None of us is as good as all of us.”