Leadership and Organizational change in McDonald Valla TEIO13 Leadership and Organizational Change

TEIO13 – Leadership and Organizational Change

Daniele Abbatelli

danab467

Aurélien Hautekiet

aurha607

Nino Silvennoinen

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Elena LoredanaTerzea

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Leadership and

Organizational change

in McDonald Valla

T

ABLE OF

C

ONTENTS

4.2 Characteristics, way of dealing with changes and role in the team environment ... 6

4.3 Ms. Idmyr ’s role in the team environment ... 8

4. Conclusion ... 10

1

I

NTRODUCTION

Nowadays we think that everything is about certainty – having a good job requires to know your goal and dealing with the daily requests while maintaining it is about good knowledge and continuous adaptation. It is almost about being perfect: companies struggle to sell a “perfect” product, hire “perfect” persons, making a “perfect” forecast. But times are changing and the speed of the change is so high that sometimes we do not even perceive it. Changing times requires frequent adaptation, reinventing the products and yourself. In big companies, with hundreds/thousands of employees, changes may be a reason of failure if they are not correctly handled and implemented. Why so?

Let’s think for a second: if a change is going to be implemented, how many of us will say “I don’t like this change. I’m feeling vulnerable, I’m feeling unable to adapt it, and it’s too hard for me?” How many of our superiors will say: “I know it’s hard for you, but implementing this change, is ten times harder for me?” Will most of us be so honest? We do not think so. Every each of us will try to highlight the negatives parts of a change and will try to resist to the changes, either because we are afraid to lose our job or maybe because we do not want to deal with the uncertainty that every little change brings along. Not everything is black or white, but when comes to change it can be grey.

We can see changes like mountains. You need to start climbing it step by step, sometimes with a lot of effort (depends on its high, road accessibility, your energy resources, like in figure 1) but you can reach the top. Even if the landscape is breathtaking, you realize that in order to reach your destination, you need to go through some valleys and climb other mountains too. Nahavandi starts the 9th _{chapter of her}

book with a quote from Benjamin Franklin “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” This article tries to point out the personal reaction of McDonalds Valla manager when she faces changes, the reaction or action of her employees and some tools used within restaurant to deal with changes. Writing this article was a challenge for everyone in this group, because we faced a new side of what management means, what is the leader’s role and why it is so important to know how to manage change.

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1

M

ETHODS

The paper is centered on an interview with Ms. Evelina Idmyr, Restaurant Chief at McDonalds Valla, Linköping. No previous knowledge existed between Ms. Idmyr and any of the group members, but a telephonic contact was taken in advance to illustrate the purpose of the interview and to schedule a suitable time.

The general guidelines for the interview as well as more specific questions were agreed in advance by the project group. More specifically, each of the project members focused on specific areas in the field of Leadership and Organizational Changes and proposed questions that were suitable for the situation we expected to find at McDonalds Valla. All the group members had been customers of McDonalds Valla in the past and had a general knowledge of the company activities, structure and values, which helped directing the questions towards topics that were relevant for the specific case.

The interview itself took place in the common areas of the restaurant and was carried out by two of the four members of the team. Originally, the group members planned to register the interview, but Ms. Idmyr expressed discomfort upon this, so manual notes were taken instead. The interview was conducted in a relatively quiet environment and without any interruption, since only few customers were present in the restaurant. Ms. Idmyr extensively answered to all our questions and she sometimes touched some of the relevant topics spontaneously. She provided several insights of her management job and also referred details that she is not willing to divulgate, asking to keep them strictly reserved to the people directly involved with the present paper. At the end of the interview, Ms. Idmyr was asked to complete the test about “Building credibility” presented in Nahavandi (2009, p.324) and based on the concepts of Kouzes and Posner (1993, 2003) that has been used to determine her leadership approach. The interview lasted approximately 45 minutes, more than what was initially expected, but we didn’t perceive her as being in a hurry or impatient to terminate the interview, and there was time to discuss all the topics that were initially planned.

We can therefore assume that the collected data is of good quality, even though we must also mention some factors that may undermine their validity: none of the interviewer nor Ms. Idmyr are native English speakers, while both the interviewers have only basic knowledge of Swedish. This was sometimes a problem, and Ms. Idmyr repeatedly expressed her difficulties in expressing herself in English. To overcome this issue, we encouraged her to also express the concept in Swedish, noting down the keywords she used in order to obtain the best possible translation.

After the interview, the notes were reorganized by the two interviewers and divulgated to the rest of the team. Even though we were confident that all the discussed topics were present in the notes and that the interviewers placed a great effort in avoiding any personal interpretation, it exists the possibility that the notes were biased by the interviewers’ perception and thus are not completely representative of what Ms. Idmyr tried to express.

The data collected during the interview was then analyzed using a theoretical framework largely based on the book by Nahavandi (2009), introducing also concepts presented by other authors in the literature.

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R

ESULTS

Evelyna Idmyr has been working at McDonalds for 9 years now, since she started right before finishing the secondary school. During her career, she first took courses held directly by McDonalds to become chief leader, a managerial figure that in McDonalds is right below the Restaurant Manager. Three years ago she also took a course in Stockholm to become Restaurant Chief and after that she started working with that position at McDonalds Valla. Her main responsibilities are linked to the economy of the restaurant, but she is also in charge of scheduling the working shifts and controlling that everything works as it is supposed in the restaurant. Sometimes, she also helps out in the kitchen when the restaurant is crowded. The typology of her workload varies with the period of the year: sometimes, she has a lot of office work, while in other moments the office work is almost nothing and she spends a lot of time dealing directly with her employees.

Her direct superior owns 3 other McDonalds restaurants and she has a meeting once a month with him and the other restaurant chiefs, where she reports about her work. On the other hand, she is instead directly leading 85 employees working at McDonald’s Valla, and she uses the help of 8 chief leaders which are her direct sub-managers to do that. She gathers with the chief leaders the first Monday of every month, and she also tries to have a face-to-face meeting with each of them for about 1 hour every week. She also tries to provide direct feedback to all the other employees in the restaurant, even if communication with them is not as intense as with the chief leaders. Every year, the employees are also asked to answer an anonymous computerized form evaluating their work conditions: this year, the results were really positive, with over 90% of employees’ satisfaction and a large improvement over the past year, when the results weren’t as good. The results from this poll are also discussed together with the top manager and the other restaurant managers to find areas that may be improved, since they aim at achieving 100% satisfaction. Also, to promote team spirit, once a year all the staff from the 4 restaurants is reunited for one day and some team-building activities are carried out.

She also has the responsibility of directly training the 8 chief leaders, in a standard program formalized directly by McDonalds. The main focus of the training is related to the economics of the restaurant. The chief leader have instead the responsibility of the basic training of the rest of the employees, but she also mentioned that she often provide direct suggestions on basic tasks when she has the chance.

It is her belief that it is important to have a direct contact with the employees, but it is also important that they have a certain degree of autonomy; also, when asked, she said that somehow the employees perceive her both as a team member and a boss at the same time. She mentioned though that sometimes she needs to be authoritarian to have people do their work. Also, the perception changes for different people: those who have been working in McDonalds for longer time know her better and so they have a closer relation with her, while she has a more formal relation with new employees. She made clear, though, that she doesn’t have a friendship relation with any of her employees, asserting that it is important to have a good balance between personal relation and managerial duties.

“I don’t directly teach to the employees, but of

course when I am on the floor I give suggestions”

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When asked more specifically about changes in the organization, she said that people do not like changes: they want to have “always the same” and that “every little change takes months to be fully implemented”. To have the changes more easily accepted, her strategy consists in proposing a trial of one month, adopting a spirit of “let’s try it first and then we see”. This creates acceptance about the change: after one month, even those who were skeptical in the beginning can usually recognize an improvement, so the changes introduced this way are usually

implemented in a definitive way.

She also always receives a lot of suggestions from the employees, but these suggestions usually take into scarce consideration the economic perspective,

so they have to be mediated by her. When the change is proposed by the employees, it’s easier to get acceptance for it, while this is more difficult when the changes come from her directly. On the other hand, when the change is required by the headquarter; the staff has fewer difficulties in accepting it. Her explanation for this is that the staff is afraid of losing their job if they do not comply with the request. Given the characteristics of the job and the employees in the restaurant, the turnover of the employees can sometimes be a challenge: indeed, the workers in the restaurant have an age that varies from 16 to 50 years old, but most of them are in their twenties. Some people just stay 6 months, while some others stay 5 years. This generates a turnover of about 2 persons per months which can sometimes be a problem: it often happens that new employees show a lot of enthusiasm and are very motivated, ending up doing their job better than senior employees, that may have hard time accepting the new situation. According to Ms. Idmyr, “attitude is everything” and she supports people who show enthusiasm: at the same time, though, she recognizes that older employees have a lot of knowledge that is also important. However, in its personal scale, the knowledge comes after the attitude, since it’s much easier to train and help someone who shows enthusiasm. With those employees, she is very supportive and tries to encourage them to develop towards a managerial position. Indeed, some of her sub-managers only have limited experience (6 months).

When she was asked to mention the most difficult change that she had to implement as restaurant manager, she brought up a change in the shift composition: earlier on, there was only one chief leader for each shift, and this sometimes resulted in difficulties for him to handle the employees when problems arise. Now there are two chief leaders for every shift and this composition works much better, because the two managers can back up each other.

Another consequences of working in shifts is that a lot of smaller groups with their own informal leader are created: indeed, it is usually easier to collaborate with a colleague that sometimes knows the process better or shows that he is open to help the others: this is normal to Ms. Idmyr, but sometimes the different groups have conflicts between each other. It may also happen that some of the informal leaders do not show commitment to their work and have a bad influence on their followers, encouraging them to operate in a different way from what McDonalds want. In these cases, the strategy adopted is to transfer the person with a bad influence to another restaurant. This case is however an exception, and usually Ms. Idmyr tries to support the informal leaders, sending cards to the top management to praise the employees that are doing a good job. In this regard, she specifically mentioned one of the chief leaders who she considers being her “personal assistant” and that she continuously praise.

“People want to have always the same, and every

little change takes months to be fully implemented”

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To conclude the interview, Ms. Idmir was asked to complete the test about “Building credibility” presented in Nahavandi (2009, p.324) and based on the concepts of Kouzes and Posner (1993, 2003). She scored 46 points out of 48, which means that her behaviors are highly directed towards building credibility. In particular, ironically asked if she could give a rating of 5 (even if the maximum for the test is 4) in a question about providing frequent positive feedbacks and encouragement, indicating that that was an aspect that she considered to be particularly relevant.

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D

ISCUSSION

3.1

G

McDonalds is a worldwide company with many traditions. The basic principle is that every restaurant works as a franchise company. So basically, McDonalds provides the restaurant owner/manager strict, detailed and clear rules and behavioral models to follow and the organization is highly standardized and bureaucratic with strong back ground culture. As a result, the managers of the restaurant are not able to express individuality or show their own individual characteristics as a leader. It is not appropriate to make own changes to the concept (Barrick and Mount, 1993; Mischel, 1973; Weiss and Adler, 1984; in Nahavandi, 2009, p.113). Individual characteristics, like demographic characteristics, values, abilities, skills and personality traits, do not determine how effective a leader is, but they have an impact on the way the leader thinks, behaves and approaches problems. Every person is a unique combination of these factors. (Navahandi, 2009, p.111)

This can of course be also seen in McDonalds Valla. The restaurant looks the same as any other restaurant and you can order the same food as any restaurant all around the world. Ms. Idmyr’s responsibilities are defined beforehand by McDonalds Corporation. Ms. Idmyr has in her team 8 sub-managers and her direct boss owns 4 restaurants excluding the one in Valla campus. She could be associated with the concept of Micro Leadership. Indeed, several elements from Nahavandi (2009, p.226-227) are linked to the type of management used by McDonald Valla restaurant manager.

First, the manager we consider is clearly the leader and is the person in charge of the restaurant team. Secondly, as micro leader, she has impact on a specific group, almost 85 people. But she is depending on a manager who is leading 4 restaurants which implies 4 managers in total. Thirdly, she is focusing on internal issues that affect her team. In opposition to that, a strategic leader requires attention on the one hand to internal issues and on the other hand on external issues, which is not the case here. Finally, the “effectiveness criteria” is different from strategic leaders. As micro leader, she is focusing on the

productivity of her team, the quality of the products sold and the services, and the motivation or morale of her team. (Nahavandi, 2009, p.226-227)

She took courses in Stockholm where she has been thought her role as a manager and her main responsibilities as handling the economy, budgeting and scheduling of the restaurant. She is also bounded to share her knowledge about the economics of the restaurant forward to the eight sub-managers and teaching changes to them as they occur. She can make some changes considering the staffing and budgeting but she can’t change the concept or her role as a leader.

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3.2

C

,

Ms. Idmyr can be characterized as a driver according to the framework provided by Tonnquist (2012) and represented in figure 2, and thus she is strongly results oriented. She is also provided with

self-confidence: she was young and she didn’t have developed yet managerial skills, but still she wanted to have a higher position in the hierarchy and she took courses in order to become a manager.

This way she also got the knowledge of the business. She has also the desire to lead her employees. Besides her formal duties, she also likes spend time on the floor to check what is going on and give direct suggestions how to make the sandwiches or any other product, even though it is her sub-managers responsibility.

“I don't directly teach them to employees, but of course when I am on the floor I give suggestions”.

She is practicing empowerment leadership and one of the reasons is because McDonald’s restaurants work is based on standardized processes. Other actions that shows the fact that she is practicing empowerment management are related with delegating the jobs and decisions to the sub-managers, things that helps in making them self-motivated, present a lot of information regarding the work environment. Ms. Idmyr takes the time to recognize the individual differences of her employees and use them in a constructive way (Truskie, 1999). She is giving her employees the full-control of their own operations, using the sub-managers to train their co-workers.

Involving the employees in the management process, offering them control on their operations can minimize the resistance when changes occur. In McDonald Valla forces of changes can be seen from two points of view: external influences as social ones (different types of clients, various flows of clients),

internal influences as low performance (in average a new employee stays in McDonald Valla for 6 months, and this can reach a turnover of two new employees per month – it is hard to maintain a high performance in this conditions), low satisfaction (linked directly from Ms. Idmyr points of view with a low performance and conflicts).

Ms. Idmyr mentioned that is relevant that people do not like changes and this because they want to have

“always the same” and because “every little change takes a month to get fully implemented”. So, the main cause of resistance in McDonald Valla can clearly be individuated in organizational inertia. Another cause of resistance that may contribute to this reluctance in accepting changes may be related to the group norms: indeed, McDonalds organization tends to be highly regulated, and norms are well established in the everyday work: as described by Judson (1991) in Nahavandi (2009, p.307) strong norms present many advantages, but can also become an obstacle to changes. Individual characteristics, such as fear of failure also play a role. According to the model of change elaborated by Lewin (1951), we can recognize here two components of the model, the inevitable presence of resistance to change and the need to support new behaviors. Nahavandi (2009) sustains that the process of change which is driven

bottom-up meets less resistance, more involvement and is essential to success. Ms. Idmyr knows the importance of her employees’ suggestions, but they tend not to take into consideration the economical

Figure 2 - Drive characteristics, (Tonnquist, 2012, p.176)

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aspects, so these suggestions must be “transformed” by her. Nahavandi (2009, p.307) also speaks about changes that take place top-down and this type tends to force a rapid change and of course can meet more resistance. This situation can be identified in Ms. Idmyr’s words, since she said that changes that are proposed directly by her tend to meet more resistance. On the other hand, when the change is requested by the headquarter, the staff accept it better and doesn’t seem to be a problem related to resistance. Which can be the explanation? Well, employees are afraid of losing their job if they do not comply with the request of the headquarter. Indeed, Nahavandi (2009, p.307) also mentions the job security as cause of resistance to change: in our case, this factor plays instead in favor of the change when this is proposed by the headquarter, while it is not present in case of changes proposed by Ms. Idmyr.

The solution that Ms. Idmyr found, in order to make the employees deal better with change, was to propose a “trial” of one month of the new processes that are going to be implemented. According to Nahavandi, this is related with manipulation and cooptation. So, she proposes “let’s try it, and then we

will see how it works”, but after this “trial period”, she said that the changes are usually implemented in a definitive way because the employees “get used with this”. This creates acceptance about the change and after one month of “trial” even those who were skeptical in the beginning can usually recognize an improvement and finally agree with the change. So, she focuses employees’ attention on other factors and gets them on-board in time.

If we take a look at Lewin’s model of change, we can identify the three steps in getting employees’ acceptance of change -

unfreezing (preparing people and get them to understand the need for change) - the one month “trial” period; changing (implement the actual change) – after the “trial” the change is recognized and refreezing (when Ms. Idmyr stays near the employees, receive daily feedback from sub-managers, in order to assure that the change is becoming a permanent one). (Lewin, 1951; in Nahavandi, 2009, p.302)

Lewin’s model of change presents four characteristics that leaders like Ms. Idmyr must consider. One of the most important one and which was specified for several times during the interview is “focus on people as the source for learning and change”. During the interview Ms. Idmyr spoke a lot about how she has a

special relation with her employees that is based on trust and recognition. She mentioned of personalized cards that she makes and gives it to employees after they are doing a good job, like good managing of a crises situation created by some clients. According to Nahavandi this a way for motivating

and inspiring the followers by offering them personalize recognition. Another way of an exemplary leadership is to pay attention by being present, walking around. Ms. Idmyr specified about the importance of her presence. She doesn’t wait for crises period to occur for being present, she is in the restaurant every day, and after she finishes the bureaucratic work, she stays on the floor. (Lewin, 1951; Brazil, 2007; Hindo, 2007; in Nahavandi, 2009, p.303-304).

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Ms. Idmyr knows also how much importance has the participation of her employees in the process of management for keeping people focusing on the organization needs and policy. Haley (2004) was cited in Nahavandi (2009, p.270) with the following issue: “If you want employees to be productive, you have to create a nurturing environment and let them to be creative.” In a workplace like McDonald creativity

may seem something useless, if you think just on following up the processes. But when you are dealing with clients then the creativity becomes a MUST. To involve 85 people in the process of managing isn’t easy and this is why Ms. Idmyr has a close professional relation with the 8 sub-managers, who take care not just about the good working of the processes and reporting, but also of scheduling and be in touch with the rest of the employees. If we take a look in Nahavandi’s (2009, p.270) criteria of participation we can identify that the tasks developed by the employees within McDonald Valla are “multifaceted and

quality important” and this is why Ms. Idmyr respects the point of view of all the 8 sub-managers, in order to reach a qualitative decisions. All of this shows that Ms. Idmyr way of decision making is more

consultative or based in delegation. (Haley, 2009; in Nahavandi, 2009, p.270)

Ms. Idmyr believes that handing off tasks is the best way to provide for employees the possibility to learn and develop, to be involve, to increase their motivation, but just after they show interest in the work field. It doesn’t matter for her if it’s a new employee, if he/she is young and without experience. The most important thing in sustaining their careers is to show that they have attitude. “Attitude is everything”, this is why she supports people who show enthusiasm. Of course that it is also important not to forget about the older employees’ actions who have a lot of knowledge about the processes. She also mentioned that knowledge comes after the attitude, since it’s easier to teach and help the people who show enthusiasm and to support them to develop towards a managerial position. Some of her sub-managers only have limited experience (6 months). This is one of the four characteristics that leaders must show in a process of change “the need to support new behaviors and allowing them to take hold” (Nahavandi, 2009, p.304). If we look closer to the sub-managers responsibilities, control over the staff, doing the schedule, monitor the quality of the process, implement decisions, seems more like self-managed team, but the point is that Ms. Idmyr selected them carefully for their skills and provided them with the resources that they need.

3.3

M

.

I

’

She could be compare to an orchestra conductor. She facilitates and coaches, takes care of her team, provides them instructions, manages conflicts, encourages when needed, offers resources. Ms. Idmyr assists the team by obtaining the resources needed to solve problems and to implement solutions, and only interfere when needed. (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; In Nahavandi, 2009, p.284)

She is continually coaching her sub-managers when comes of economical parts, share the power with them and tries to make them be passionate about their work, like she is. Education and communication is one of the practical ways of dealing with change that Nahavandi (2009, 284) was speaking about in his book. Those are some characteristics of visionary leadership and Nahavandi (2009, p.308) states that it provides guideline for managing change. Ms. Idmyr also thinks that sharing the power and providing continual training for sub-managers helped a lot in the past and still does now, when comes of decreasing the resistance when changes are happening. (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Nahavandi, 2009, p.284)

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Continually coaching means that she is also

supporting the informal leaders and the way of doing this is offering them some rewards when they are doing a good job as “card rewards”. She also takes care to present to the top manager the good job that has been done by the employee. This type of management, by contingent rewards, is beneficial to the leader and the followers, and also the organization (Nahavandi, 2009, p.205). But having informal leaders doesn’t necessary mean that they have the right skills and that they provide for the rest of the employees a clear vision of the McDonald Valla policy. For example, when she needs to handle a problem with an informal leader who doesn’t want to work according to McDonalds’ values and rules and encourage others to not do so also. Transferring him to another restaurant will solve the problem, because he will be “the new guy” there, and he won’t be able to influence people in the same way.

Moreover, Nahavandi (2009, p.205) explained why is good to provide “contingent rewards, reinforce appropriate behavior, and discourage inappropriate behavior “(characteristics of reward and punishment leadership style). This type of management is also a good way to increase motivation within her staff. She mentioned one of the sub-managers that she uses as “personal assistant”. In parallel to that she still writes cards to show her appreciation about his good results. Nahavandi (2009, p.205) explained that transactional leadership “can provide structure and lead to positive outcomes”.

If we sum up the parts from the interview, we see that Ms. Idmyr insisted in telling us that she is the one who communicates what is important for McDonald Valla, she repeats over and over again about the importance of satisfying the client. Another important aspect that came up was about the fact that she is trying to show to the sub-managers, and also to the other employees, that she can let behind the bureaucratic work and do the daily work when she feels that the employees need a push for doing a better job. Even so, for her the most important thing, for a good way of working, is the allocation of the sub-managers for the shifts.

She said that the most difficult change she faced was when she implemented a new shift composition. Earlier on, there was only one sub-manager for each shift that sometimes, created conflicts between the employees and the manager, since the sub-manager had difficulties to handle the employees who were too many. She created a schedule with two sub-managers per shift and this works much better, because the two managers can “back

up each other”. Also, in McDonald Valla exits almost a continually change - the turnover of two employees per month. This requires being Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Orientated (FIRO) model. This is really energy demanding and consists in assuring the development of her team through conflict

Figure 5 –FIRO Model, (Tonnquist 2012, p. 119)

Figure 4: New Roles for Leaders in a team environment. (Nahavandi, 2009, p.281)

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(easily to come up when you have two new person that need to be integrated in the team for each month) (Tonnquist, 2012, p. 119). This sum up shows the role of Ms. Idmyr in McDonald Valla as a leader: communicating priorities, be a role model, allocate resources that Nahavandi also founded as ones of the roles that a leader has in changing organizational culture.

Her way of managing changes shows emotional intelligence. Self-awareness, regulation, self-motivation, empathy for others and interpersonal and social skills are considered as emotional intelligence and all this were presented in Ms. Idmyr’s behavior. (Goleman, 2004; Goleman et al, 2002; in Nahavandi, 2009, p.122-123) For example, she can form close relationships with workers but she prefers to keep it on a professional level. She has the authority over others which is power related to a specific position. Ms. Idmyr holds legitimate power in her position at McDonalds Valla but she has also the power to reward or to punish. This is the reason why changes are implemented with small resistance or compliance rather than accepted right away. (French & Raven, 1968; Yukl & Fable, 1991; in Nahavandi, 2009, p.163-165). Employees can see her as authority. Anyhow, she feels herself as a member of the group or as a leader rather than an authority.

“It is important to have a good balance between personal relation and managerial duties”.

4.

C

ONCLUSION

A leader who deals with changes like turnover of two employees per month, with new processes almost every year, who has to take care of awareness of the change among 85 employees, is a leader who needs to be trust and who needs to have a clear vision. Asking Ms. Idmyr to make the “Building credibility test” helped us to understand more about her approach to leadership. Rating yourself is a good way for a better understanding of your own way of working. Ms. Idmyr took the self assessment test of Nahavandi very seriously and when she reached the 10th _{(“I provide frequent positive feedback and encouragement”)}

question she asked: “Can I rate myself with a five here, even if the maximum is just a 4?”. At that particularly moment it seemed more like a joke and we laughed, but indeed this made us to understand what is truly important for her. She realized that when comes to deal with changes which involves new co-workers, new processes, it is really important to stay in touch with your people and to understand their needs. A clever way to do this is to practice empowerment, thing that Ms. Idmyr is doing with responsibility, because she knows the importance of making the others feeling important when a change is going to be implemented.

Being a manager in a McDonald restaurant isn’t easy. Ms. Idmyr begun to work there in a period when the fast food era was really successful and nobody complain about the lack of vegetables in the meals. The idea of organic food exploded and McDonald trust needed to reinvent most of their meals. Ms. Idmyr understood what people new needs are and she adapted to this change. The first step in being a leader who successfully leads through change is to accept the change and have a vision about it. Even if now she is caught in bureaucratic work, she has the advantage of being educated to see everything from an economical perspective, thing that can represent an advantage when dealing with change, and this is: adopt the changes just when they are truly needed and when they are made according to the McDonald’s policy.

We understood that involving theory when comes of practical work isn’t so easy. You need experience, a clear approach, and a really good understanding of the theories. An interview like this one made, can show you ways of a better understanding, or the need of a better knowledge. Even so, the way of dealing

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with change, is related with the kind of leadership that one practice, but because there are several types of leadership, there are for sure different ways of dealing with change. It is all about “adapt to the situation” and take the best decision, based on your own experience, others experience, your opinion, and of course, your followers opinion, when there is time to do so.

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