By Rick Grbavac
Industry award-winner Jim Skinner has led McDonald’s to amazing performance over the past year using a formula that sounds identical to what we teach every day:
- Rebuild purpose
- Realign talent with a return to the company’s fundamental principles
- Focus on leadership development to strengthen internal talent
- Hands off management style, empower the people
- Set high expectations
- Demand accountability
- Be better, not just bigger
His simple assessment: “With 32,000 locations around the world, you need to have a good team aligned with a solid plan, with very simple expectations about what needs to get done.”
And here’s a refreshing idea: Skinner’s first goal was to set long term growth.
Long term. I love to hear a CEO talk about long term vision and then actually execute a plan to achieve it. During the 5 years he has been CEO, McDonalds’s has experienced a compound average growth rate of 19.2% with an increasing operating margin.
CEOs can learn a lot from a close reading of Skinner’s methods and philosophy. He’s a straightforward and plainspoken leader who leads!]]>
