There is often a great mystique surrounding success. We want to peek behind the façade, get the inside scoop. I have spent 23 years of my professional career in senior positions with the McDonald’s corporation – one of the greatest, and most polarising brands in the world. I have dealt with currency devaluations, coups and natural disasters all in a day’s work, and sometimes in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Tahiti and American Samoa. As my time with the Golden Arches comes to a close I have come to realise that the greatest successes can be attributed to the simplest of secrets.
Regardless of where I was working in the world, the question I was most often asked about McDonald’s was: “How can McDonald’s replicate the same experience in Hong Kong, Hungary and Hanover?” McDonald’s is often referred to as the most successful small business in the world. It started in California in 1940 when Dick and Mac McDonald opened McDonald’s Bar-B-Que restaurant. But it wasn’t until 1954 when a salesman named Ray Kroc visited the store, that everything really changed.