Unit 1- Lesson 1Audio Script：McDonald’s Corporation (MCD) is one of the leading fast-food restaurant chains in the world, touching the lives of people every day. As the world’s largest chain of restaurants, it primarily sells hamburgers, chicken, french fries, milkshakes, soft drinks, etc.The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald. Initially, they just owned a hotdog stand. But after establishing the restaurant they served around 25 items, which were mostly barbecued. It became a popular and profi tabl e teen hangout.Their introduction of the “Speed Service System” in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc on April 15, 1955.In effect, Kroc opened his first and the overall ninth restaurant in Chicago, Illinois, and gave birth to M cDonald’s Corporation. In 1958, the restaurant chain sold its 100 millionth hamburger. In 1960, Kroc renamed his company as “McDonald’s Corporation”. In 1961, Kroc convinced the McDonald brothers to sell the business rights to him in the company. Thus he purchased the brothers’ equity for a sum of $2.7million and led to its worldwide expansion.As McDonald’s expands successfully into many international markets, the company became a symbol of globalization and the spread of the American way of life. Its prominence also made it a frequent subject of public debates about obesity, corporate ethics and consumer responsi bi li ty.Video ScriptTanya: It’s the fast food chain with the iconic golden arches that have been spotted all over the world. Yes, we are talking about McDonald’s. But did you know McDonald’s, year after year, is voted one of the best places to work? We’re looking today at this all-American company and what we can learn from its success. We’re joined by Paul Facella, author of the book, Everything I Know About Business, I Learned At McDonald’s: The Seven Leadership Principles That Drive Breakout Success. Paul was a former McDonald’s executive who has the behind-the-scenes story on the world’s most successful restaurant organization. Hi there, Paul. Thanks for joining us. Paul: Thank you, Tanya. Nice to be here.Tanya: Now, while you no longer work for McDonald’s, I understand that the company has had a huge impact on your life. Tell us why you decided to write a book on business lessons that you learned from a fast food chain.Paul: Sure. Well, not only myself but literally hundreds of thousands of people that went to the McDonald’s system and were guided by a lot of the principles. When I left McDonald’s, I went into consulting and, and one of the surprises I had was many of the organizations, both large and small, was the fact that some of the basic principles, some of the foundations that good organizations need to be successful, weren’t there. And I was constantly being asked about, “Well, tell me how you did in McDonald’s”. And my thinking was, “Gee, I’ll write a book about it and help my client base and I’ll be able to help them move forward with it.” So that was the thinking behind it. …….Tanya: Well, we’re gonna get into some of those secrets of success. I wanna start by asking you, you know, obviously a lot of people know McDonald’s for their burgers and Big Macs. But, I’m sure a lot people will be surprised to know that it has one of the highest corporate employeeretention rates of any company, I mean people assume, fast food chain, people just want to get in and get out. What makes McDonald’s so successful?Paul: I think, I think there’s a number of factors, but I think the retention piece is about McDonald’s, when you work, there it’s really about a meritocracy. It is about advancemen t that is based on achievement. And from the first crew person moving in all the way up to store manager, all the way up to the present CEO, Jim Skinner, who was a crew person 35 years ago and moved into, after 35 years, moved into the CEO ranks. So it’s a lways been a progression of opportunity for people, and I think that's one of the great things that keeps folks there. Every CEO has gone through the ranks.Tanya: Is there any crossover from those who work on the server side to the executive side, or you have to go back to school for that?Paul: Oh, no, all the time, I mean, I started as a 16-year-old crew person. Mike Quinlan, who’s a CEO for 14 years started in the mail room, so there’s plenty of crossoverUnit1- Lesson2Audio Script：Since setting up the first McDonald’s in China, the Western r estaurant chain has been expanding steadily and successfully. So far, other than the home market – the United States – China is the No.1 growth market for McDonald’s, with over 1000 restaurants and over 60,000 employees.China also represents one third of all capital expenditures in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region, where the fast-food giant is in 37 markets. According to Skinner, vice-chairman and CEO of this world’s lar gest fast-food company, “We’ve been steadily growing with China for the past 20 years and are very excited for what the future holds,” he says.In 1990, McDonald’s chose Shenzhen, a pio neer Special Economic Zone in Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong, to open its first 500-seat store in the developing market. McDonald’s quickly won over the local consumers, due to its many attractions like its Ronald McDonald clown, Golden Arches or t he yellow “M” logo, Big Mac, the smiling attendants and the quick service. The success of the Shenzhen outlet prompted McDonald’s to expand its chain nationwide. And McDonald’s has not stopped from aggressively increasing the number of its outlets in China. The mainland’s fast-food market is growing at a rate of 16 percent per year.“We are going to continue our growth at a faster rate in China. China is a huge market with great opportun ities for businesses around the world, and it's no different for McDonald’s,” Skinner adds.Video Script：Tanya: A nd in your book, you’ve broken down some of the keys, the fundamental keys of McDonald’s success, in terms that can be applied to other companies. So, let’s go through these one by one. The first you say is honesty and integrity, and this obviously comes at a time when so many people have lost trust in Wall Street. How can we apply this?Paul: Yeah, I think, it’s, well, honesty and integrity started very early on with Ray Kroc who started the McDonald’s system in 1955, and back then franchises were just sta rting to proliferate, and there were not a lot of laws about how they would conduct businesses. And one of the things was done, sadly, was that many of those franchisors would take commissions back from suppliers that supplied the franchisees product. From the beginning, that's now how we’re gonna do businesses. We’re gonna have integrity, we’re gonna be honest with our franchisees, I wanna thefranchisees to make the first dollar, I’ll make the second dollar, and that kind of got into the DNA very early. And to this day, there is a wonderful relationship of integrity and honesty with our relationships with our operators, with our vendors.Tanya: And I would imagine that motivates everybody because you feel like if you do well, you will get rewarded.Paul: That’s correct. Absolutely, no question about that. How important everybody working together as a team is!Tanya: Right, and another secret to McDonalds’ success, I understand, is relationships, and the company apparently promotes the idea that relationships are sort of the secret sauce, as, if you will, and everyone who works for the company is a part of an extended family, is that right?Paul: The Mcfamily!Tanya: Yeah.Paul: It's a great safe way from honesty and integrity. If you start with the foundation of honesty [and] integrity, it goes right into relationships. And Fred Turner, who is still to this day, 54 years later, is active, was actually the one that coined the phrase “the three-legged stool”. What it really meant was, that there were three legs in our relationship: the franchisees, the suppliers and the company people. And all of us pulling together, and working together as a team and the synergy of that team, is how it will be successful. And if you think about that, you know how important that is, that you really don’t want to let your team members down and you want them to be successful.Tanya: Sure, and every leg of the stool is only as strong as the other leg, right?Paul: Absolutely.Tanya: And another secret is the idea of standards. One of the McDonalds’ mottos, apparently, is never be satisfied? [Yes.] Tell us about the company’s no excuses working environment.Paul: Yeah, well, standards are very important and you know is – in order to have a standard, you have that measurement, and if it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring. And every time you measure something, performance improves because people have a guideline –they know where they’re going, and that, that’s actually part of even the people side of that. The meritocracy wasn’t based on anything, but clear metrics on how you advance through the ranks on that. But it was never satisfied, we always felt we could do it harder, quicker, faster. And that stayed one step ahead of the competition and kept our franchisees the best in the system.。
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