"The McDonald's French Fry"

(Grinding it out; the Making of McDonald's) By Ray Kroc

(About 1953, Ray is watching the McDonald's Brothers store preparing French fries):

            Now, to most people, a French-fried potato is a pretty uninspiring object.  It's fodder, something to kill time chewing between bites of hamburger and swallows of milk shake.  That's your ordinary French fry.  The McDonald's French fry was in an entirely different league.  The (the McDonald's Brothers) lavished attention on it.  I didn't know it then, but one day I would, too.  The French fry would become almost sacrosanct for me, its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously, the McDonald Brothers kept their potatoes-top quality Idaho spuds, about eight ounces a piece-piled in bins in their back warehouse building.  Since rats and mice and other varmints like to eat potatoes, the wall of the bins was two layers of small-mesh chicken wire.  This kept the critters out and allowed fresh air to circulate among the potatoes.  I watched the spuds being bagged up and followed their trip by a four-wheeled cart to the octagonal drive-in building.  There they were carefully peeled, leaving a tiny proportion of skin on, and then they were cut into long sections and dumped into large sinks of cold water.  The French-fry man, with his sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, would plunge his arms into the floating schools of potatoes and gently stir them.  I could see the water turning white with starch.  This was drained off and the residual starch was rinsed from the glistening morsels with a flexible spray hose.  Then the potatoes went into wire baskets, stacked in production-line fashion next to the deep-fry vats.  A common problem with French fries is that they're fried in oil that has been used for chicken or for some other cooking.  Any restaurant will deny it, but almost all of them do it.  A very small scandal, perhaps, but a scandal nonetheless, and it's just one of the little crimes that have given the French fry a bad name while ruining the appetites of countless Americans.  There was no adulation of the oil for cooking French fries by the McDonald's Brothers.  Of course, they weren't tempted.  They had nothing else to cook in it.  Their potatoes sold at ten cents for a three ounce bag, and let me tell you, that was a rare bargain.  The customers knew it too.  They bought prodigious quantities of those potatoes.  A big aluminum saltshaker was attached to a long chain by the French-Fry window, and it was kept going like a Salvation Army girl's tambourine.

(Early in 1955, when Ray opened his first McDonald's, Des Plaines, IL)

 A subject of much greater concern to me, however, was the great French-Fry flop.  I had explained to Ed MacLuckie (the first McDonald's manager) with great pride the McDonald's secret for making French Fries.  I showed him how to peel the potatoes, leaving just a bit of the skin to add flavor.  Then I cut them into shoestring strips and dumped them into a sink of cold water.  The ritual captivated me.  I rolled my sleeves to the elbows and, after scrubbing down in proper hospital fashion; I immersed my arms gently and stirred the potatoes until the water went white with starch.  Then I rinsed them thoroughly and put them into a basket for deep-frying in fresh oil.  The result was a perfectly fine looking, golden brown potato that snuggled up against the palate with a taste like...well, like mush.  I was aghast.  What the (heck) could I have done wrong?  I went back over the steps in my mind, trying to determine whether I had left something out.  I hadn't.  I had memorized the procedure when I watched the McDonald's operation in San Bernardino, and I had done it exactly the same way.  I went through the whole thing once more.  The result was the same-bland, mushy French fries.  They were as good, actually, as the French Fries you could buy at other places, but that was not what I wanted.  They were not the wonderful French Fries I had discovered in California.  I got on the telephone and talked it over with the McDonald Brothers.  They couldn't figure it out either.

 This was a tremendously frustrating situation. My whole idea depended on carrying out the McDonald's standard of taste and quality in hundreds of stores, and here I couldn't even do it in the first one!

 I contacted the experts at the Potato & Onion Association and explained my problem to them.  They were baffled too, at first, but then one of their laboratory men asked me to describe the McDonald's San Bernardino procedure step-by-step from the time they bought the potatoes from the grower up in Idaho.  I detailed it all, and when I got to the point where they sorted them in the shaded chicken-wire bins, which allowed the desert breeze to blow over the potatoes.  The laboratory man pondered this information and said, "That's it!! The dry desert breezes act as a curing agent for the potatoes, causing the starches to change to sugar.

 With the help of the potato people, I devised a curing system of my own.  I had the potatoes stored in the basement with an electric fan constantly circulating a "breeze" so the older ones would always be next in line for the air, which greatly amused Ed MacLuckie.  "We have the world's most pampered potatoes," he said.  "I almost feel guilty about cooking them."

"The Millwright Died"

By Max DuPree

From Leadership is an Art

  My father is ninety-six years old.  He is the founder of Herman Miller, and much of the value system and impounded energy of the company, a legacy still drawn on today, is part of his contribution.  In the furniture industry of the 1920's the machines of most factories were not run by electric motors, but by pulleys from a central drive shaft.  The central drive shaft was run by the steam engine.  The steam engine got its steam from the boiler.  The boiler, in our case, got its fuel from the sawdust and other waste coming out of the machine room-a beautiful cycle.

  The Millwright was the person who oversaw that cycle and on whom the entire activity of the operation depended.  He was a key person.

One day the millwright died.

  My father, being a young manager at the time, did not particularly know what he should do when a key person died, but thought he ought to go visit the family.  He went to the house and was invited to join the family in the living room.  There was some awkward conversation-the kind with which many of us are familiar.

  The widow asked my father if it would be all right if she read aloud some poetry.  Naturally, he agreed.  She went into another room, came back with a bound book, and for many minutes read selected pieces of beautiful poetry.  When she finished, my father commented on how beautiful the poetry was and asked who wrote the poems; she replied that her husband, the millwright, was the poet.

  It is now nearly sixty years since the millwright died, and my father and many of us at Herman Miller continue to wonder: was he a poet who did millwright's work, or was he a millwright who wrote poetry?

  In our effort to understand corporate life, what is it we should learn from this story?  In addition to all of the ratios and goals and parameters and bottom lines, it is fundamental that leaders endorse a concept to persons.  This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people's gifts and talents and skills.

  Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed.  It also enables us to begin to think about being abandoned to the strengths of other, of admitting that we cannot know or do everything.

  The simple act of recognizing diversity in corporate life helps us to connect the great variety of gifts that people bring to the work and service of the organization.  Diversity allows each of us to contribute in a special way, to make our special gift a part of the corporate effort.

  Recognizing diversity helps us to understand the need we have for opportunity, equity, and identity in the workplace.  Recognizing diversity gives us the chance to provide meaning, fulfillment, and purpose, which are not to be relegated solely to private life any more than are such things as love, beauty, and joy.  It also helps us to understand that for many of us, there is a fundamental difference between goals and rewards.

  In the end, diversity is not only real in our corporate groups but, as with the millwright, it frequently goes unrecognized. Or as another poet, Thomas Gray, put it, talent may go unnoticed and unused.

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And wasted its sweetness on the desert air."

 When we think about leaders and the variety of gifts people bring to corporations and institutions, we see that the art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.