Assignment 13A - Reading Reflection No. 1

The entrepreneur, Ray Kroc:

A couple of things surprised me about Ray Kroc, including all of the famous and influential people he knew even prior to his eventual rise to prominence. The most surprising was his acquaintance with Walt Disney, whom he met after joining the Red Cross during WW1. I was also surprised that he did not consider himself a scholar, and was not a reader, given his success. He instead considered himself to be more of a thinker.

Being a thinker is one of the things I most admired about him, and specifically how he used this ability to debate people and ultimately influence them to his way of thinking. And, when he couldn’t convince them, he demonstrated relentless determination until he got his way and achieved his goal by simply wearing others down into submission. I also admired his business philosophy about deals being made with a handshake. He was taken advantage of multiple times by multiple people because of this naive trust he admittedly placed in people. But I think it is a quality, a sign of integrity and character, that is lacking in today’s world.

I think I least admired his lack of commitment to certain things, and would easily give up or lose interest in them. One example the book gives is during his time in Boy Scouts when he played the bugle. I suppose my issue was the lack of respect he gave to these things, once he made up his mind he was no longer interested, after he committed himself to it. When he would give up, it had an impact on those that did take it seriously and that were expecting him to follow through. Maybe it was better this way, though, that he instead devoted his attention toward things that he was passionate about.

Ray Kroc encountered multiple types of adversity. This included his challenges with the McDonald brothers, trying to overcome their lack of cooperation in complying with language in their initial contract. He also had internal company conflict (especially with Harry Sonneborn), and financial difficulties. He always seemed to overcome by “biting the bullet”, usually at significant financial cost, and moving on from it. I think the key thing is that he never lost sight of the long-term vision of what he knew McDonald’s would be, and was willing to take significant risk (usually financially) to keep moving toward that goal.

Ray Kroc was wired in such a way that a couple of key competencies were obvious and routinely surfaced. He had a natural curiosity about things and how they worked, and in turn could identify opportunities. He describes this in detail in his first couple visits to the McDonald brother’s location where he would observe the behavior of the customers, employees, and how the location operated. He used this to set a vision of where the opportunity could grow to in the future. Another competency he had was a core philosophy about the business. He always put the customer first, [kept] it simple stupid (KISS), and could differentiate from his competition. For the latter, being able to make the french fry the “main attraction” instead of just a side dish was what helped to define McDonald’s.

What slightly confused me in the book is how he talked about in his earlier years how much he liked and wanted nice things, to the point that he came across materialistic, but at the same time talked about how frugal he and his first wife were and saved most of their money. Maybe he had a long-term goal in mind, but he didn’t explicitly state this and his actions at that point in his life seemed contradictory to his beliefs. I was also baffled (more than confused, I guess) as to why he would allow anger to impulsively prompt him to quit his job, given it was during the Great Depression, and he had a wife and child at home. His selfish inability to control his emotions had the potential to adversely impact his family and he didn’t seem to care.

If I were able to ask Ray Kroc anything, I would likely first ask why he would not have involved an impartial party in his earlier business deals when he self-admits his excitement would make him naïve to his contractual commitments, and be blinded to the implications of those commitments. The initial deal with the McDonald brothers is a perfect example of this, and the portion of their contract that required any approvals for changes to be in writing from the brothers, which they would refuse to do. I would also ask him what made him so confident that his intuition was right about people he hired into positions that did not come with the related experience for those positions. June Martino was a great example of this. With so much risk associated with hires like this, what was it that made him believe it was not a risk at all?

Ray Kroc viewed work as actually being play. He got pleasure out of it, and he explicitly stated so. Although, he did not say how he formed his way of thinking on this, or why. After reading his book I can infer that it was a sense of accomplishment that made his work feel more like play. Maybe being able to persuade people to his way of thinking and lead work toward his vision, a sense of control he needed to have and took pleasure in seeing “his way” played out. Or maybe even seeing his vision come to fruition. He believed this so much, that the book says he went into the California office multiple times a week, even up to the day he died. In some ways I agree with him. I have experienced this philosophy of work as play when I am able to be in control of driving work toward a goal, believe in it, and achieving it with the help of the team and resources I am put in charge of. While at the same time I also find pleasure in things that are not work related, and do not take all of my feeling of enjoyment just from my work related accomplishments.