In 1952, a 52 year old salesman selling milkshake machines going about his business walked into a hamburger stand in California to sell milkshake machines.
As soon as he entered, he noticed something remarkable in how the hamburger stand worked in delivering their services.
He watched the employees working with precision under the supervision of the stand’s owners, happily responding to the long queue of customers in front of the stand in a very identical way.
It was an amazing experience how quick, efficient and identical the process was.
The systems used in the stand was one that made it very easy to work on to the extent that anybody can come in and work there.
This stand was owned by Richard and Maurice McDonald, and that milkshake seller was Ray Kroc who later franchised this business system.
That hamburger stand is what became today, McDonalds, the most successful small business in the world.
McDonalds is the largest retail prepared food distribution system in the world with over 36 thousand outlets in over 100 countries.
What amazed Ray Kroc was not the hamburgers, not how delicious they were, not the people working there, but the working system putted in place to work on.
What you need to make your business work is not the most experienced employees, neither is it the most technical workers nor is it how good the commodity you are selling is.
What you need is a working system, where it can be easy for anybody to work in, even the person with the lowest technical ability.
And it must be built from the startup, if you are just starting, no matter how small you are starting.
If you are already running, you need to incorporate a working system.
I once heard a story of Tom Watson, the founder of IBM when asked about what attributed to the success of IBM, he said; IBM is what it is today for three major reasons;
“First, I had a very clear picture of what the company will look like when it was finally done”
“Second, I asked myself how a company that looks like that would have to act, and then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done”
“Third, Once I had the picture of what IBM would look like and how it will have to act, I then realized that unless we began to act like that from the very beginning, we would never get there”
And that is exactly what you needs to do, and mind you, you have to start today.
You think you’ll get to the top? Then I’ll definitely see you there.
I love you.
