Page 73 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Relationships

McDonald’s, Fred Turner himself has started a quest to build an
organization of those who “subscribe to Ray Kroc’s philoso-
phy.” The Evergreens (the alumni organization of McDonald’s
retirees), or McVets, those employees with 20 or more years,
stems from a comment made by Ray Kroc, who famously said,
“As long as you’re green, you’re growing.” The mission is sim-
ply “to maintain contact with McDonald’s friends and associ-
ates, keep up on McDonald’s news and developments, support
and preserve the brand, share memories and history with one
another and the Company through the Golden Archives, and
help sustain McDonald’s heritage of ‘giving back’ through com-
munity involvement and charitable activities.”
At the Worldwide Convention in April 2008, more than
13,000 McDonald’s licensees, vendors, and company people
gathered to celebrate, learn, and reach for the opportunities that
the business climate has for them. And starting a day before the
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convention, the McVets and Evergreens were more than 2,000
strong to welcome the current three-legged team and wish them
success in their respective journey.
Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great, writes: “Members
of the good to great teams tended to become and remain friends
for life. In many cases, they are still in close contact years or
decades after working together. These people had fun!”
In my mission to decipher just what those McDonald’s rela-
tionships were made of, I spoke to former McDonald’s CEO
Mike Quinlan. “You need to have relationships with people who
know enough to give you usable input,” said Mike. “Realistic
input, honest input from people who have no axe to grind and
who respect you for everything you are, the good, the bad, the
package that you offer them. But you really need someone who
can talk to you about the business both personal and profes-
sional. And give you food for thought.” Yet, as Mike pointed
out, what you do with that information is up to you.