Five Loaves, Two Fishes and Six Chicken Nuggets: Urinations From Inside the Fast Food Tent (21 page)

Look, not everything is wonderful on Crete. There are too many top-heavy German ladies who insist on going topless, and these are sights that an impressionable Englishman should not be exposed to. Nor should Crete intrude on your own dreams of your spiritual home.

But try it sometime. And if you can’t make it, chew over Mama’s two lessons for today’s quick-service from the heartland of ancient civilisation.

51. At your service

T
he relationship between the letters that make up ‘QSR’ have fascinated, and confused, me for some time. R stands for Restaurant, and I’m happy with that – they are not ‘stores’. Q is for Quick, and I understand the importance of that. The S trips me up. I’m never quite sure if it stands for Serve or Service, but I don’t believe, whether it’s a verb or noun, that it gets the weighted credit it should get in making a winning QSR.

Service, and its possible importance (even in our industry), has been on my mind recently. Out of a bunch of travel reading, I picked up two thoughtful studies on the subject, which should give us all a lot to ponder.

The first put forward the thesis that, with the internet/web revolution now behind us, the last great business breakthrough opportunity will be around mixing product, service and price together in a way that blows the customer away. For sure, this is not a new idea, and it has come and gone as a business fashion many times over the history of commerce – but the difference is that, now, all the cards have been flopped and we have to play the hands we have. It’s fifty years since The Guru, Ted Levitt, pointed out that the only purpose of being in business is to secure and retain a customer – an idea whose time has finally come.
There are no more silver bullets.

A second study I read came at the same subject from a different angle. Imagine a graph with five points on the vertical axis, ranging from the ‘completely dissatisfied customer’ at the bottom, through the mid-point (‘satisfied customer’), to the top point (‘completely satisfied’). According to the study, if you want repeat purchases, an unsolicited word-of-mouth reputation and customer loyalty, the first four points on the graph won’t get it for you. Nope, that’s right, satisfied – or even very satisfied – customers won’t deliver those three things. Only those who are completely satisfied will. Now, read those three things again and figure out how much you would pay an agency to deliver those for you. Then face the fact that they can’t. You control the customer experience.

I digested these two studies then closed my eyes and thought. I went back as far as I could and tried to remember how many times in the past year I’ve been ‘completely’ satisfied. Our family buys a big bunch of products and services in the course of a year, and I ranged over as many as I could remember. Here’s the final score:
once
.

We were planning a trip to India and got a heads-up to use an Indian travel agency.
Wow
! The agency finished every e-mail with the mantra:
Long after the price is forgotten, the service will be remembered
. And so it will. Their total customer experience was stunning.

When I was a boy in England, the United States was the accepted role model for service. In 1989, I went to live there and found it wasn’t so. It was no better, and no worse, than anywhere else in the world. There was a lot of lip service and a lot of ‘Have a nice day’, but it was generally all ho-hum stuff.

After five years back in Europe, I recently hit the shores of the US again for a five-week, five-city visit, so I thought I’d put these two theses to the test. Car rental, hotel rooms, quick- and slow-service restaurant food and a whole range of other products and services – all were acquired during the stay. I was ready, even keen, to be completely satisfied by somebody, somewhere. It was a thorough test, conducted under rigorous trial conditions, and I have listed the complex empirical results in the following long and complicated format:

• Number of times ‘completely’ satisfied:
  None
  .
  

This is not to say I wasn’t occasionally overwhelmed. When we hit Maryland, I was told I absolutely must have the lump crab cakes at a specific restaurant, so we went to the place and I ordered them. I don’t know what I was expecting, but two soccer ball-size creations arrived, each containing the equivalent of Europe’s annual output of crab. I set off gamely. After twenty minutes, I was convinced there was more on my plate than when I started. I think they were breeding. I fought my way through one, but then I had to wave my white napkin in surrender. At this point our waitress asked me if I would like to take the other one home. I explained that I was from Planet Europe, where we go out to eat a meal, not adopt it.

Big is not necessarily good. Neither is quick on its own. Only good is good, and only completely is completely.

Here’s a poser for you: ask yourself when you were last ‘completely’ satisfied by any product or service you bought. See? It’s hard.

But if you or your company could figure out some way to deliver a completely satisfying experience, the rewards would be such that no paid agency, discounting programme or new product could deliver them. So, pause for a minute and figure out what you could do to hit that jackpot with your operation.

I must go now. I’m going to take my lump crab cake for a walk. We brought him home, and we’ve christened him Jack. I’m sure we’ll learn to love him.

52. Oops! Sorry …

A
s you know, there are fundamental laws governing the universe. One of them, The Law of Unintended Consequences, is having a bigger and bigger effect on our lives. This law states that while many acts are committed with good intentions, those same acts can often result in unforeseen consequences that threaten to drown any positives.

This Law has been a big factor in my life. Here’s an example. My dad was a delightful man. Although we lived in a soccer-mad area of England, he was not a big fan. Still, he decided, one day, when I was about seven years old, to take me to see one of our two local clubs. I do not know why he decided to take me to watch Manchester City rather than Manchester United, but that act of paternal affection condemned me to a lifetime of tears and misery.

The incomparable Barbara Tuchman studied The Law of Unintended Consequences in her
March of Folly
(Ballantine Books, 1984). She actually tried to define the planet’s biggest-ever mistake, classifying them by the sheer weight of their unintended consequences. For the record, she came up with the decision, taken by the German High Command, to resume U-boat activity in the Atlantic in 1916. It had been halted after the sinking of the
Lusitania
, and its re-start effectively triggered America’s entry into the First World War. The result was a victory for the Allies instead of an exhausted peace. However, it doesn’t end there. That single decision brought defeat for Germany – but also reparations, war guilt, Hitler and the Second World War. Let’s be honest, that’s some mistake.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is in full flow today.

The internet has revolutionised our lives with many positives. It has also, however, provided undreamed-of opportunities for sexual predators, bomb makers, terrorists, identity thieves and copyright violators. Did Al Gore think about all those when he famously invented it?

The Law has also been at work in the quick-serve business, directly and indirectly. Consider the following developments:

• The general move toward using fructose corn syrup as a sweetener, particularly in drinks.
  
• The increasing mental correlation of food portion size with value.
  
• The restructuring of the traditional family: more single parents and/or more working mums = reduced home cooking and at-home meals.
  
• The emancipation of children.
  
• Cuts in school funding.
  

Each occurred over the past twenty years, and though there was no master plan, they are all related to one unintended collective consequence – the rise of obesity among children. Again, there’s no single big villain at work here. Many of these developments happened in pursuit of the perceived interests of taxpayers, stockholders, customers, families and communities.

Forget obesity for a minute. According to the (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (quoted in Greg Critser’s book
Fat Land
), of all babies born in the United States in 2000, one-third will become diabetic at some stage in their lives unless some or all of the unforeseen costs of the aforementioned developments are addressed. In the above sentence, you can probably substitute the UK for the US without changing the figures by much.

Let’s not fancy it up: quick-service played a part – albeit by no means the dominating part that many would have us believe – in creating these unintended consequences. It can, and should, play a part in creating some intended solutions.

My point here, however, is rather more mundane than what caused mass-obesity and a type 2 diabetes epidemic. I want you to focus on the idea that any decision has the ability to create unintended consequences.

When you take a decision that affects the future of your business, at whatever level you operate, there is a tendency to focus on the known and positive consequences. If you do X, you are pretty sure Y will happen. Sure, you will probably factor in a pessimistic option, the consequences of it not going quite right. What you won’t factor in are the possibilities that the ripple-effects of your decision will trigger something completely unintended simply because you don’t, by definition, know what they possibly could be. My advice is to spend a bit of time, just a bit, on some wild, off-the-wall thinking about what just might happen consequently. It could pay back in spades.

I am smiling now. My two grown sons have just popped around. They are also Manchester City fans, and we have just lost – again. For some reason, they are so, so angry with me.

53. Ever since I could talk …

S
o there I was, in the Air France lounge at Mumbai Airport, waiting for a delayed flight, as you do. I wandered over to the magazine rack and there was a copy of
Fortune
. On the front cover was a list of business ‘Celebs’, and the headline referred to an article inside in which these Warren Buffett ‘wannabes’ were to tell us what advice had influenced them most in their lives and careers. Thinking that would pass half an hour, I filled up with coffee, grabbed the magazine and headed for a chair – only to find that somebody had ripped the article out completely.

I never did find a full copy, but I spent the rest of the time waiting for my plane reflecting on my version of the article, on what seminal advice I had received over the years. Here’s the list, straight from the Air France napkin:

• My dad was hugely influential in shaping my approach to life – but in ways he wouldn’t recognise. He had a horrendous decade in the 1940s – being whisked away to war just weeks after he married, and then being captured by the Japanese (with all that entailed). He survived that, returned and I was born, but then my mum died. As he rebuilt his life, I learned from him
  not to look backwards
  . Indeed, I had my rear-view mirrors surgically removed when I was eighteen. History fascinates me, but I have found that any substantive and/or objective analysis of the ‘good ol’ days’ usually reveals them to be anything but.
  
• Number two came from the same source. My dad had every reason to feel sorry for himself –
  but never did
  . I have heard it said that they whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make angry, but that is not so in my book. A good temper is a healthy thing. But I have witnessed self-pity destroy good people. It can be cancerous.
  
• When James Taylor was awarded an honorary degree at some university, his acceptance speech was beautiful: ‘Rehearse every day, and don’t do drugs.’ With that, he walked off. It was obviously pertinent and personal to him, but it reminded me of Tom Peters: ‘If you got more than one priority, you got none.’
  The most complex challenges sometimes can – and should – be boiled right down to a few mission-critical priorities.
  
• Charles Handy’s thinking on modern life structure had a big influence on me. His idea that the three-part life structure (dependence, occupation, dependence) had changed into a four-part script (dependence, occupation,
  something else
  , dependence) shook me up. His premise is that many people either choose, or are forced (e.g. by losing their life job)
  to find something else to do well before the accepted age of retirement
  . At forty-eight years old, when I read this, I had known nothing but big business, so I chose to do something completely different. After twelve years of doing it, my wife’s still trying to figure out what it is.
  
• Many years ago, working for Shell, I was having a performance review. My boss was a wizened old Scotsman. He rambled on, and I was becoming seriously bored, when he stopped and said, ‘I’m only appraising 75% of you. There’s a quarter of you that is dark, and I don’t want to go in there. It’s where your best stuff and your worst stuff comes from, and it’s best left alone.’ Wow. Ever since that day,
  I have had faith in my dark quarter
  , although it has landed me into the soup on occasion. I have also never appraised anybody or been appraised without remembering this guy doing his Braveheart impression.
  
• Hiring people. There are millions of books on this subject, and if there’s one thing you must get right to lead a business, it’s this. Allen Sheppard, my old boss at GrandMet, the company that acquired Burger King, gave me the best, shortest and clearest advice possible on this subject.
  Never employ anybody who is not capable of hitting you
  . I have nothing to add. You can’t improve on the best.
  
• When I first joined GrandMet, I came in over the head of a veteran. Consequently, he had every reason to want me to fail. He acted in quite the opposite manner and gave me a piece of advice I wish I’d had years earlier. When you are going into a new business, if you really want to understand it,
  sign every cheque and initial every bank deposit for a month
  . Understand the flows of cash. Whatever the size of business, I could pass on no finer advice. In fact, if I had my way, we would abandon GAAP and all these dubious restructuring charges, extra-ordinary items, and Enron-style, off-balance sheet drivel and concentrate on cash-accounting.
  
• One last one, and it’s to do with writing. We all need to do it, and a lot of us do it badly. If you want to improve your style, let me pass on the advice of Ernest Hemingway, who echoed Winston Churchill.
  Write short sentences in short paragraphs
  . Then, when you’ve finished, go back through it and
  rake out all the adverbs
  . I’ve written six books, and it is advice that has proved gloriously helpful (but I’m weak on the adverbs – see ‘gloriously’).