Page 98 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

over percentage of crew, and a dozen other areas. This constant
review of key metrics helped to develop many of our staff mem-
bers into competent, effective managers. Ray Kroc was famous
for asking what your volume was and how business was per-
forming. He was genuinely interested, and that kept us on our
toes. You never knew how he, or other executives after him,
would question you. We always knew our numbers. And it made
folks like me understand that the key to running a business is to
understand how it’s performing. And in the final analysis, that
is done by clear, objective metrics.

Lesson Learned
Measurement. Always insist that goals have key metrics. Define
them. Explain them. Measure them. Celebrate their
68 achievement.

Measurement also served to disprove any falsehoods in the
field in the occasional struggle to get operators to comply with
standards. It was a tool Ed Rensi used when determining why
owner/operators tried to avoid keeping up with new equipment
requirements. “When we first got into the new shake machines
the franchisees were concerned about it. They said it was hard
to tear down, it’s this and that.” As Ed tells it, he set out to assess
precisely why the franchisees were having so much difficulty with
the shake machines: “I roamed around the stores, and the crew
wasn’t having any trouble with it. It seemed the franchisees didn’t
want to spend the money, and they were using the fact that it was
difficult to set up and tear down as an excuse not to make the
investment. So I started a contest at Hamburger University to put
the machine together blindfolded! All of a sudden we had folks