Global Shared Services, McDonald’s Corporation.
As the world’s leading foodservice retailer serving nearly 70 million customers daily in
more than 100 countries, McDonald’s recognizes the importance of having good people in place
in order to deliver an exceptional customer experience. McDonald’s has a rich history of
developing leaders. Founder Ray Kroc, once said, “As long as you’re green, you’re growing.”
McDonald’s supports this philosophy and commitment to their people by providing opportunity,
nurturing talent, developing leaders, and rewarding achievement. This is evident in McDonald’s
tradition of promoting from within: nearly half of corporate managers and 60% of owneroperators started as crew members. For many people, McDonald’s represents a first job—a place
to develop basic skills that can help them achieve success in future life pursuits. For others,
McDonald’s represents a pathway to a long-term career that provides rewarding opportunities to
grow, contribute, and advance over many years. McDonald’s values state their belief that a team
of well- trained individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, working together in an
environment that fosters respect and drives high engagement, is essential to their continued
success.
Shared Services Business Challenge. McDonald’s Shared Services team began their
partnership with us in 2008. At that time, Shared Services was part of McDonald’s IT group,
which was decentralized in structure, but needed to function as a cohesive team to drive common global solutions. The CIO recognized the importance of developing teamwork and
alignment across IT leaders and engaged us to lead this effort. After the IT Leadership Team had
gone through The Leader- ship Circle process, the CIO asked each of the officers, including
Kelvin McLaurin, then VP of Shared Services, to engage their teams in the program.
Soon after The Leadership Circle was introduced, the Shared Services organization
evolved into Global Shared Services (GSS) and became the first global function at McDonald’s.
McLaurin recalls: “We needed to build a diverse, global team with leaders who could expand
beyond their current capabilities.” He wanted to establish leadership effectiveness as a priority
early with the team he was building and leverage the Leadership System to make this a reality.
In 2012, McLaurin transitioned to a role leading McDonald’s Finance Transformation.
Debbie Ballard, who had been a member of the GSS Leadership Team since 2005, took over
leadership of the GSS organization. Having experienced the value of The Leadership Circle, she
was already a supporter of the Profile and its benefits. Ballard explains: “The Leadership Circle
process helps me professionally and personally. It enables me to step back and see why I am
behaving the way I am behaving, and it helps me grow as a leader and to model the things that I
am asking my leadership team to do.” GSS continued their focus on leader- ship development
and further engrained The Leadership Circle program into its culture.
Strategic Solution: The Leadership Circle. When The Leadership Circle was introduced
in 2008, the GSS leadership team was skeptical. Introducing an exercise that required not only
getting feedback about individual strengths and opportunities, but then sharing publicly with
their fellow team members would not be easy. However, the team committed to the process,
knowing the first session would be hard, but trusting that outcomes would make it worthwhile.
Despite the initial hesitation, the GSS has become the group that applies The Leadership
Circle most holistically and consistently. While other groups at McDonald’s leverage the Profile,
GSS is unique in that they continue to use public feedback with each team member talking about
their strengths and weaknesses in front of the group. McLaurin explains: “The Leadership Circle
has become the common language across the GSS Leadership Team to onboard and develop our
leaders.” As new members join the leadership team, either from GSS or a sup- port partner, they
are expected to participate in The Leadership Circle. GSS also engages their high-potential
managers in the process. In 2014, GSS added The Leadership Circle Pulse Survey to hone in on
opportunity areas and ensure more frequent feedback to drive development in those areas.
McLaurin, who now leads Finance Transformation, brought The Leadership Circle
practice to his new leadership team as well in September 2014. In addition, the Finance
Transformation team also incorporated individual LCP assessment with team development
opportunities.
Outcomes. The Leadership Circle helped GSS to become a true, shared leadership team
and build a culture of openness, support, trust, and high performance. Ballard explains: “It is part
of our DNA, part of who we are. We have now done multiple offsite meetings with our
leadership team focusing on individual and collective effectiveness. As a result, we have forged a
cohesive, high-performing leadership culture and system.”
Team members are empowered to mentor each other, talk openly about their
opportunities, and gain support using a common language. Each leader’s candor, paired with
their support for one another, enables GSS to drive business results at an accelerated pace.
Instead of ignoring issues that could hinder progress, the team talks through them.
Since the team respects The Leadership Circle process and one another, gaining
awareness of strengths creates a culture of trust and support. Bal- lard notes: “Leaders were
afraid at first of publicly showing people their development opportunities, but then they see that
this supportive environment is designed to help you become a better leader, not discourage or
embarrass you.”
The culture that The Leadership Circle has helped to create in GSS contributes to their
success: “We achieved our five-year strategic plan in only three years, and then set in place the
GSS 2020 Strategy to continue our momentum toward our vision to be a world-class shared
services organization.” Both McLaurin and Ballard continue to be strong advocates for The
Leadership Circle process, driving application in their organizations and sharing their
experiences with others in the McDonald’s System
Read Case 2: Global Shared Services, McDonald's Corporation located in Mastering Leadership.
Include introduction.
Analyze the communication and group behavioral issues that might arise in an organization hiring employees for their first
job based on the discussion from your learning team.
Include a strategy to address these challenges.
Sample Solution