The Hard Word

APPLICANT NAME: PETER BUSH
APPLICANT NUMBER: 032
POSITION: MANAGING DIRECTOR/CEO McDONALD'S AUSTRALIA LTD
INTERVIEW DATE: SEPTEMBER 30, 2005
TIME: 11.30AM
INTERVIEWER: CHRIS SHEEDY

Talk me through your career so far.
When I left university I worked for Johnson & Johnson and grew up in fast moving consumer goods. I was at Arnott's during the extortion and I was involved in the 1998 Sydney-to-Hobart recovery. I started my own consulting business in 1998 and became involved with McDonald's that year.

What attracted you to apply for this job?
I didn't apply. I got a phone call saying, 'Can you be in the chairman's office on Wednesday morning?' I was offered the job in May, 2005, and I readily and willingly accepted.

Describe the culture of McDonald's.
They talk about McDonald's as 'the McDonald's family', and it does have a real family feel. It is a big part of what McDonald's is all about and they say you get 'ketchup in your veins', which is to do with the passion for the business. The family feel is infectious in a positive way.

Corporate responsibility is important to McDonald's. What do you see as the organisation's role within society?
As a business we've set out to be an integral part of the community. Our restaurants are owned and operated by community members. We have a charity that provides fabulous help for sick kids. We've got Ronald McDonald Houses attached to hospitals around the country. We have four beach houses where the sick kids and their families can go for a holiday after they've recovered from a long illness. We sponsor local sporting events and all those things. We really like to be a great member of the local community.

With the healthier image and the new style of restaurants, McDonald's has gone through enormous changes in the last five years. What has been the driver of these changes?
If you go back five years the defining consumer proposition was 'I grew up and McDonald's didn't'. People were saying McDonald's is still the same as it was 15 or 20 years ago. The world had moved on and we had to move on with it.

What has presented the biggest challenge during these times of change?
I think it was the move to becoming very customer focussed. That has paid dividends. There was a recognition that customers were saying they would like to have some food variety, they would like different atmospheres to sit in. They'd like to be treated differently by the crews. For instance, we no longer say, 'Do you want fries with that?' Customers told us they didn't want our staff to say that. I'm sure there's still some old timers who can't help themselves, but by and large it hasn't been part of our training for at least three years. We set out very aggressively to deliver a great customer focus and as we started to deliver those things we started to see customers coming back.

What is the most effective way to manage change?
The organisation was right to say we need to be doing something different for our business. One of the things we did very well was creating a blueprint, a framework for change, so everyone had clear visibility of where we wanted to get to. We made sure that inside the organisation everyone knew and understood that. Everyone knew how they could contribute to those changes and what we expected of them. It was very much a team effort.

Having been through so much in the last five years, are McDonald's staff now experts at handling change?
Change is now a fact of life. At McDonald's we're on a program to say we can't stand still again. We'll always seek continuous improvement whether it be in restaurant design or food quality – everything we offer the customer needs continuous improvement. When we come in to work every day everything is going to change because everything we do is about continuous improvement.

How difficult is it when the media and public are sceptical?
When we started on this journey there was a huge amount of incredibility amongst customers and some media who said, 'Can you believe McDonald's is doing this?' One of the headlines I loved was, 'Do You Want An Apple With That?' Then people suddenly realised our business was committed to the change in terms of offering different foods, changing restaurants and doing whatever we needed to do to win customers back. As people recognised how genuine the business was in what we were setting out to achieve, that's when people started to say this really is change.

Does media and public cynicism affect your staff?
Most definitely! Our franchisees and staff often take negative press quite personally and get quite upset, particularly because a lot of the reporting is hearsay. I get quite a lot of phone calls from our franchisees and management team around the country, they're very pissed off about it. It makes them ready for battle.

What management style do you best respond to?
We always respond to money, but that's not the true answer. The thing I respond to most is getting results, but most of all I respond to the team around me – having really good people, highly motivated and focussed who are all playing a role. I'm playing the team leader, but everyone in the team plays a different role and as the team leader alone I'm not capable of taking this business where it needs to go.

How's your work-life balance?
That's a terrible question and I refuse to answer it! I'm probably the worst person in the entire company in terms of work/life balance. Part of my dilemma is that I draw a lot of my energy from work and the people that I work with. I have an awful lot of fun at work because work has to be about fun. As a consequence my work-life balance is appalling.

Describe yourself in five words.
Passionate, driven, intuitive, sensitive and fun-loving.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
On my boat sailing around the Pacific … but I'm a realist, so I'll still be working 80 hours a week contributing somehow to the greater success of McDonald's.

What's your greatest weakness?
Right now it's spending too much time at work. Friends tell me that I really have to get my work-life balance in shape.

What are your hobbies outside the office?
I ride a bike to keep fit, but I haven't been for nearly two years since I did the cartilage in my knee. My real passion is sailing. I try to get on the boat every weekend and spend a few hours going for a sail, or just pottering – a man's got to have a project.