David Fairhurst – ‘Leadership Training in the Internet Age’
Vice President, People for McDonald’s Europe, David Fairhurst explained to me that things have changed dramatically for their restaurant managers over the last decade, which has resulted in fundamental changes to the company’s approach to career development. Its training programmes, amongst the best in our industry, have always been designed to develop the management skills of the employees, but now they must also include the leadership ability necessary to take decisions in a more complex, transparent world.
The business is growing, which means that its managers could be responsible for forty per-cent more staff in restaurants offering customers a broader menu than ever before. Moreover, they increasingly have to be conscious of the needs of a wide range of other interested parties including: the local community; government at local and national levels; those having environmental concerns; other pressure groups; the media; as well as the ever-rising expectations of restaurant customers. All this in addition to the manager’s delegated responsibility to manage the P&L account!
Company training strategy must now enable managers to deal with these multi-dimensional set of challenges on a daily basis, often without delay. Hence, they are now given the skills to build trust, not only with their workforce, but also with the community at a local level. They must be ambassadors: representing their business to all its varied stakeholders. The old days when the operational manual held all the answers are long gone: leaders now need a broader set of skills and thinking that can determine and deliver solutions at a speed required of the modern communication age.
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