Simplification is So 2004!

It's very encouraging to hear that recent McDonald's Operator Pulse Surveys included Operator concerns about the growing complexity of the McDonald's restaurant operation and that Operators feel the regional staffs are "disconnected" from the restaurants.

It seems like yesterday that one of the components of the original Plan to Win was "Simplification". That was back when the McDonald's menu was about one-half the size it is today.

I don't know if a conscious decision to expand the menu exponentially was made at some point in time or the menu just evolved from a lack of discipline. McDonald's decision makers appear to believe that efficient operations are old hat and McDonald's restaurants must now be All Things to All People.

But don't the long-time operations people in McDonald's upper management know what they are doing to the capacity of the restaurants and the effectiveness of the people running the restaurants?

They might, but there are now so many Oak Brook decision makers who have no real restaurant experience that the people with real operations knowledge must get drowned by the new product pipeline and ignored. Or they may be told (by non-ops people) they are becoming obsolete and don't understand the realities of today's marketplace. That would be pretty intimidating.

In many ways McDonald's veterans have been to  this movie before.

In the late 1990s McDonald's USA was on the ropes and Jack Greenberg staked the system's future on the Made For You cooking system. While millions of customers refused to wait in the long lines created by MFY no one would tell Jack Greenberg they'd created a huge problem. McDonald's USA went through another four years of sales problems and Operator failures.

At that time Greenberg was one of the few decision makers in McDonald's USA who didn't have decades of real restaurant experience. Because he lacked that operational background Greenberg apparently refused to listen to those who had such experience (or they were afraid to speak up).

Today, according to the corporate bios, there are only a couple of people on McDonald's upper management team who've ever run a real McDonald's restaurant. In addition there are the corporate marketing people running OPNAD who live in their own fantasy world and will never understand operations.

The danger is that these non-operations people are under intense pressure from Wall Street analysts who expect constant "Innovation". These analysts know McDonald's by the numbers but have no idea what they're seeing if they ever visit a McDonald's restaurant. I've been working with the analysts for more than 15 years and I know that they'll keep pushing for "Innovation" until McDonald's menu is the size of a Denny's menu.

And, while not as influential, the press is constantly hassling Oak Brook for "New Product News". The corporate PR people know that the easiest way to get a positive headline is to announce a new product line.

So who's going to tell the decision makers with no real restaurant experience about the damage they are doing to the growth prospects of McDonald's USA? It won't be anyone working in Oak Brook. Their career path will grind to a halt if they admit to their bosses that McDonald's can't be All Thing to All People.

It will have to be McDonald's Operators who stop the insanity through Co-Op and OPNAD decisions, surveys, public comments, and other activism. It's a long road back to a sensible menu and a workable kitchen system - only McDonald's Operators know the way.
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