Slide 1 – Title Slide

Slide 2 – About the movie

The biopic is about a businessman named Raymond Kroc and how he came to be the head
of the huge success that is McDonald’s.
It begins with Kroc as a salesman of a milkshake machine where he later meets with The
McDonald brothers who wanted to purchase his product.
Mac, the older brother, takes him on a tour of the restaurant, Kroc sees the brothers’
operation. They serve only burgers, fries, Coke and shakes, with the goal of serving each
order to the customer within 30 seconds, which they called the revolutionary speedy
system.
Kroc is struck by this and pitches the idea that this needs to be franchised. He tells the
brothers that McDonald’s needs to become the new American church.
Dick McDonald does not want to do this. The concept was his idea, and he does not want to
lose control over it.
Mac persuades him by saying that they can draw up a contract that gives the brothers
control and right of refusal of anything they do not like. Kroc signs the agreement with the
brothers and goes off to build his first McDonald’s.
As the story moves forward, we see that conflicts starts between Kroc and the brothers as
He does not like to be told, “No.” He also does not quit because he is never satisfied.
Therefore, he reneges the contract to take full control of the entire brand and oust the
McDonald brothers.

Here are few of the scenes for you to see form the movie.

Slide 3 – The case of questionable ethics

As it is evident from the movie, Kroc manipulated his position of strength to essentially take
the company away from the two brothers that created the concept of fast-food. One could
wonder how could he violate the trust of the very people that gave him a chance? If we are
to believe Kroc’s quote during the telephonic conversation, then he was not a very good
leader because his own ethical standards were sub-par.

However, another viewpoint can be that he was a persistent and tenacious leader and that
had vision. McDonald’s became an American and later International household name
because of Kroc’s idea to put each restaurant at rest stops along highway routes throughout
the country. There is no question that Kroc was a dynamic leader who created an
international empire. He worked very hard and was relentless. But what happened to his
code of ethics? Arguably, Kroc did not believe that what he was doing was not the right
thing to do. Rather, he made a very clear decision to breach his contract with the original
founders of McDonald’s, knowing that he had deeper pockets and could defeat them in
court if necessary. What was even more troubling was his blatant misrepresentation to the
original creators during his purchase of the business. At the eleventh hour at the closing
table, he switched terms on the Sellers and essentially “lied”. Kroc had no intention of ever
sharing any percentage of profits of the company with the two brothers, yet he promised he
would. He made a “handshake” deal and asked the brothers to believe him and trust that he
would honour his word.
Kroc never gave any profit of the company to the two brothers as he had promised them at
the closing table.

It is also depicted from the movie that it’s the people who have the integrity and those who
are not willing to step over the line are the ones who lose at the end like the McDonald
brothers. We have seen so many cases in the past where people resorted to violating their
ethical conduct to get ahead. Like SATYAM where they cooked books to grab shareholders
money or Facebook which was a stolen idea.

Slide 4 – Closing slide

Today’s leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas daily, if not hourly. How can we inspire
managers to create a culture of compliance? We believe that it starts with a culture of
conversation where we create a safe space for organizations and ourselves to discuss
compliance issues and ethical challenges. We must empower ourselves to think through
scenarios that could present ethical dilemmas in our daily lives and consider the reasons
why a certain action or response would be the ethical and best one.

Maybe if only Kroc had listened to his inner voice and had done an ethical reality check.
However, do you think McDonald’s would be as successful today if Kroc had acted more
ethically in his business dealings with the McDonald brothers?

At the end, we would like to quote Mr. Ratan Tata from a recent interview where he said
that Chasing profits is not a bad thing. The question is what do you do to get there, how
much value you're adding to your customers and shareholders, and how ethical that journey
has been?

This is something for all us to ponder

Thank you