Put a face on leadership
There’s a new hit at Burger King, and it’s not anything on the
menu: It’s The King. The forever-smiling, bling-covered mascot is
becoming as popular for the restaurant as the famed flame-broiled
Whopper.
And while Fallon doesn’t don the big mask or wear quite as much
jewelry, there is one culture-building lesson he and the other leaders
at Burger King have learned from the mascot: Sometimes you have
to give the company a face. That’s why all 11 members of Burger
King’s global leadership team make it a priority to schedule trips
spanning their respective areas.
“We’d be foolish if we didn’t ensure that we were out there in the
field seeing how it works,” he says. “So we ride markets, and we
engage employees all the way down to the restaurant level.”
When you’re trying to build a company culture for 23,000
employees, putting that face to the message is key. Fallon knows
that it’s easy for a corporate vision to get lost if it isn’t given the
proper context and human touch, so he tries to make the personal connection, even if he can’t sit down with every employee.
“The advantages to traveling are that you are a real person, you’re
not somebody from headquarters who thinks up crazy things in an
ivory tower to burden people in the field,” he says. “The other thing
is, we all have a very healthy respect for where the tip of the spear
is, and the tip of the spear is right there in the field, and those folks
have to filter through all the messages that are coming to them, and
they have to influence the business. Respecting that from their perspective and being truly inquisitive about how things are going, asking them, ‘If you were king for a day, what would you change?’ And
consistently being there furthers that cultural message and gets
them to open up and give honest feedback. People will tell you what
they think you want to hear but not always. They’ll tell you what’s
really on their mind if you’re out there enough to build up a relationship.”
Similarly, Fallon keeps lines of communication open much further down the chain than his direct reports. While he respects the
hierarchical system at Burger King, he’s not afraid to go directly to
the source for an answer.
“I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call a field leader at the
local level in New Orleans or Denver,” he says. “I always circle
back with their boss and their boss’s boss, but I think that’s part of
being close to the action and making sure that you’re getting a
good feel for what’s going on.”
