Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Ray Kroc and McDonald's Secret Sauce

I know for time management reasons, I decided a couple of months ago to blog less frequently. But I find I am getting way ahead on my reading (or behind on posting my book reviews).

There was an interesting article in the Financial Post that quotes Machiavelli:

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things"

I recently read a book called, "Everything I know about Business, I learned at McDonald's: The 7 Leadership Principles that Drive Break Out Success" by Paul Facella.

I found the book to be outstanding, easy to read, simple, and right on target. What seems funny to me is that I have not eaten in McDonald's in over ten years and I am not an advocate of the products that they sell. That said, they have been incredibly successful as a business and the book explains what the author thinks are the key reasons.

There are seven chapters that sum of the seven reasons for McDonald's success.

The first one is honesty and integrity, all in a handshake.

It is not what you do, it is the way you do it -- Ray Crock.

I have often said that having a legal agreement is much less important than doing business with people of high integrity and I have long been an advocate of the handshake over anything else.

Second, the rule is relationships, he speaks glowingly of the great relationships amongst the MacDonald's staff and talks about the three legged stool. This refers to the relationship among the three partners as operators/owners, suppliers, and corporate staff. Each is dependant on each other to support the group as a whole.

The next point was, standards will never be satisfied.

The quality of the leader is reflected in the standards that they set for themselves
-- Ray Crock.

MacDonald's is the ultimate e-myth company. They set process and standards and expect everyone to religiously follow them. They have done a great job of communicating what those standards are and I love the never be satisfied philosophy.

One of the great lines that is totally simple is if you have time to lean, you have time to clean.

Lead by example: clearly this one is obvious and many people try to do this; however, actions speak louder than words. Never underestimate ones actions.

One of the things that I particularly liked in this chapter was in the lessons learned -- "achievers never stop learning" (this is one of the things that I always ascribed to).

The fifth point was courage -- telling it like it is. The gist of the message is, regardless of what the message is, positive or negative, people need to know what it is and the larger the organization, the tougher it is to get the get the truth. People tend to avoid the risk in telling people the truth.

Communications: It is not how often you communicate, it is how well -- Ray Crock.

There is an entire section on decentralization -- try to get the decision making as close to the customer as possible, of course all within a frame work and a philosophy. I am a big believer in decentralization as I believe this is the way to be the most efficient. It is also the way to get the little things to matter.

Recognition: there is no better way to inspire a team then with recognition. Deep down we create that recognition. I think I could use a little work on this one.

Its a good book. Good words of wisdom.

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