Mats Lederhausen at ID

Last Monday (04072008) Mats Lederhausen, former CEO of McDonald's, spoke to us in Larry Keeley's Advanced Design Planning class at the Institute of Design . Mats spoke about the power of purpose. You can find out more about Mats's new adventure Be-Cause here.

His simple of leadership is convincing a group of people on one side of a room to move to the other. How do you do it? How do you get from here to there?

These are the 10 points Mats finished on.

1.
Purpose bigger than products
crystal clear: passion: fuels purpose: purpose fuels results

2.
Who really matters
- bet on people, not strategies. bet on the horse, not the rider.
- inside very person there is a philosophy
- finding who can execute that strategy better than anyone else?

3.
Brand harmony
- design is the fundamental soul of a man made creation. everything communicates
- "all the little ingredients must amplify each other in a solution. All the critical solutions must sing from the same hymn."

4.
80/20
- concentration is key is to economic results
- if your priority is not your bosses priority then help make them make it one. - Hijack one

5.
Think big, start small, scale fast.
- people are more likely to act themselves in a new way of thinking than to to think themselves in a new way of acting
- art of the smart start
- people worry about a big scary starting point. how do you make it easy to start?
- help them start
- how can it fail?
- find low political and financial risks to make a smart start, de-risk the starting point and maximize learning.

6.
Under promise and over deliver
- early victories breeds momentum
- under sell the process and over sell the vision

7.
Only the paranoid survive
- noah started building the ark before it began to rain
- embed continuous design
- companies that seem like they are doing well are usual not doing well. companies that are doing great act like they are doing poorly.

8.
Decentralization
- choice beats force, accountability beats bureaucracy
- define critical aspects of solution that can bring change

9.
Minding your mind
- placebo is real. is you believe more then you can do more than you believe
- what is placebo effect in leadership?
- placebo effect is around 30-40%
- A.G. Laffley - "identify disciples, throw out the nay sayers and convince everyone on the fence."

10.
Disciplined execution
- god is in the details. you can never talk yourself out of a problem you behaved yourself into.


Examples of successful purpose change in Mat's history:

McDonald's:
Sweden:
hamburger company serving people -> people company serving hamburgers

U.S.
- confused success with size, this was the measure of success
- from growth by being bigger to growth by being better.


Chipotle:
born great
challenge was never to compromise quality for quantity
focus on people, food and r/e
Great results:
10 years of double digit comps
from 12-700 restaurants

"Problem with fast food isn't the fast, its the food."
- fast is not enough

Tags: design, leadership