John McDonald is, by his own admission, a strategy nut.
It’s fitting, then, that when the nation’s economy started to nosedive last year, he looked to strategic planning as his main weapon in defending his company, Service Brands International LLC.
McDonald began his tenure at Service Brands last year, coming on board just as the economic news started to take a turn downward. If he wasn’t thrust into crisis management mode immediately, he was certainly thrust into a maintenance role, having to reaffirm the goals and objectives of every business under the Service Brands umbrella. At the same time, he needed to buoy the confidence of an organization that comprises 5,200 people, including in-house employees and franchisees.
McDonald, president and chief operating officer of the franchisor of cleaning and maintenance brands such as Molly Maid and Mr. Handyman, says a business crisis or challenge is almost always met and overcome due to the planning accomplished beforehand.
“If you have a solid strategy and you’re flexible enough to understand what is coming, you can make adjustments to the strategy,” McDonald says. “If you go through an economic downturn or another type of challenge, you need to know that your strategy will still support your business, make your business stronger, and allow you to develop people and keep them motivated — which are all keys to staying successful.”
McDonald and the rest of the Service Brands leadership focused their efforts on enabling the employees at the brand level to chart their own course based on their needs, while still keeping a hand firmly on the rudder through communication with franchisees and brand managers.
The ultimate goal has been to create viable brand-level strategies that can roll up to the corporate level, giving the entire Service Brands umbrella a blanket strategy for enduring the economic downturn.
