Just imagine!And what if to reach that nirvana of consistency, all you had to do was follow the lead of business giant McDonald’s; having one way, “the right way”, to do everything in your business; having the right systems in place and the right people to run them.
What if you invested time to train and develop your people, to give regular feedback and help them see their potential in your business” What if they were given all of the information, skills and encouragement they needed to take ownership for their role, and see the value of their contribution?
What if you rewarded them for that contribution, and celebrated every success as the team’s success?
That’s how McDonald’s achieved its amazing consistency. That’s how it grew to be the 38,000 stores, and counting, global operation that it is today. If you want to achieve such levels of consistency, take a leaf out of its book and follow these ten steps.
Planning
(1) Be clear about your vision and values where is your business headed, what does your business stand for and what makes it special?
(2) Plan your route once you have your vision then all your plans will be focused on achieving it. Set a three year goal to take the business forward. Break it down into 90 day goals to keep you focused.
(3) Manage your own time develop a strategy that keeps you focused and on track, and success habits that keep you growing and developing.
Customer experience
(4) Easy to do business with are you” Look at your customer journey how complicated have you made your simple business?
(5) Look at the way you do things the things your employees do to support your customers along their journey. Make everything simple, logical and repeatable to ensure every task is done in a uniform way and to the same high standard.
People
(6) Hire the right people hire only people who buy into your vision and share your values.
(7) Train for performance train and develop your employees, from their first day to their last, then trust them! That’s how you build a high performing team.
Performance
(8) Give feedback measure and manage individual performance, and give feedback that helps your people to grow and develop.
(9) Know your numbers understand your critical performance indicators, those things that will make or break your business.
(10) Keep pedalling the four foundations of The McFreedom System” (planning, process, people, performance) form a cycle of continuous improvement, and you have to keep pedalling to grow your business and gain your own freedom.
The McFreedom System” was developed by Marianne Page, who started her McDonald’s career as a restaurant manager where, yes, she flipped burgers and fried fries, before joining the training team in Hamburger University and moving on to more senior leadership roles within the business.
She learned that in order for a business to be scaleable, it has to be consistent. There have to be systems in place in every area of the business, and importantly these have to be “simple, logical and repeatable”. It is this ability to take a step back from the day to day, to hand over responsibility to your team that Page now teaches to SME business owners, through her McFreedom System?, which is based on the McDon-ald’s model for success.
By putting The McFreedom System” in place, business owners can free up their time to grow their business, to spend time with their family or run their operation from a beach somewhere. They have the choiceAnd that’s the key.
To learn more about The McFreedom System” pick up a copy of Marianne’s new book Simple, Logical, Repeatable available on Amazon.
