Page 67 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Relationships

I never forgot Fred’s letter. So, when I had the opportunity, I,
in turn, wanted to encourage my staff to think longer term. As
a regional manager, I pulled out Fred’s letter and reviewed it
with my department heads. The essence I wanted to convey to
them was still the same: work toward making the company suc-
cessful, hold on to your options, and keep the stock so that when
it is exercised it can have a positive impact on your financial well
being. This kind of mentoring was not job related, but a pow-
erful way to nurture staff. Sure, it’s the right thing to do. But
there’s another side to the strategy. Nurture your staff, and you
develop the loyalty and trust within the team. Help the staff to
work toward financial security, and your workers will become
engaged in the goals within the organization and boost their per-
formance. Everybody wins.
When I served as regional manager, I learned a lot from my
immediate boss at the time, Rob Doran, the zone manager. Our
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personalities clicked, and we had a lot in common that nurtured
a great friendship as well as business relationship. He immedi-
ately came across as genuinely interested in my success and being
a true mentor. Besides the everyday support of decisions, he
talked about how he, like many of us, started in the stores as
crew and was able to move up the organization and what it
meant to him, not only professionally but also personally. He
spoke about how to manage future family finances. It was yet
another sign of how pervasive the notion of wealth management
was to the culture of McDonald’s. Rob’s sincerity and his abil-
ity to talk about things so personal as family and finances won
me over. He also won over many others and is credited (not
often enough) with helping to develop huge numbers of man-
agement and executive level staff over his career. And like many
McDonald’s alumni, he still is active as a consultant and men-
tor to many within the organization today.