Page 71 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Relationships

But in recalling McDonald’s early history, Ted said, “The rela-
tionship was born because McDonald’s was a personality-driven
company, not a structure-driven company, and when you go
back to Ray and Fred, you talk about passion, you talk about
immediacy, all this can only happen when you have people-to-
people dependency.”
And, through that dependency, trust was born—the kind of
trust that gets recognized throughout the system. Ted pointed
out that “right from the beginning it started with Ray, but Fred
embodied the idea that if it’s not good for the units, the stores,
it’s not good for the corporation, the system, or the public. That,
again, is why he created such loyalty from the operators. When
Fred was wrong, they forgave him; they knew he was trying to
do something in his own mind that was right for the operator.”
Though Ted speaks of the relationship between the company
and the operator, it was really the system that benefited as a
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whole, with trust as the backbone that inspired confidence in all
three components of the three-legged stool.
These relationships are a phenomenon that many of us agree
is unique to McDonald’s. “Here’s the reason why you can’t
develop relationships in most companies, especially with sup-
pliers,” Ted said. “How many of these people have people in the
same positions, growing up in the organization during the
course of 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 years? It doesn’t happen in the real
world.” Ted’s comment on employee retention provides another
example of the depth of the bench of talent that is constantly
developed within the organization. Few staff actually leave,
allowing years of development for key managers as they move
up the career ladder.
And by and large, Ted added, corporate “understood how to
get people’s confidence, and they knew if there was a problem
somehow [they’d] make it right.”