Before Jerry Calabrese became one of the leading experts in accountability at McDonald’s Corporation, he began his life deeply rooted in an Italian-American upbringing. In this interview, he shares how the early values he was taught in compassion, family, and hard work influenced his great success over 35 incredible years at McDonald’s. As the former Vice President for Global Restaurant Measurement, Jerry set a monumental global standard at McDonald’s in establishing accountability. Today, Jerry continues to keep himself immersed in his talents working as a part-time consultant with organizations like Starbucks and the One Acre Fund.
Can you tell me about where you grew up?
We lived in Melrose Park, Illinois. It is a very, very Italian neighborhood. Everything was Italian in my early upbringing. My dad spoke Italian, and my mom spoke a little bit. My mom’s dad lived with us for a bit and he spoke Italian also. Every Sunday we had pasta dinners and in the middle of July there is a carnival that runs for a week and ends on Sunday with the procession of the Virgin Mary.
What was your favorite tradition?
My favorite tradition in the community was Christmas Eve at my mom’s house and then we always did Christmas day at my uncle’s house with all of the cousins. We had maybe 30 to 35 people together on both Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Christmas Eve was really interesting to watch how my father and mother prepared the seven fish meal. It was a good time because we were all together.
Which family member would you say had the largest impact on who you are today?
It’s a very easy answer for me, my mother. I was very blessed. Everyone feels that their mother is the best, but she was the nicest person in the world. Everything she did was to help people. She always went out of her way to do nice things. My son was saying at dinner the other day that whenever he had a bad day at work or at school, he’d go directly to Gram’s. He said just being around her made him forget all of his problems and relax. She would make him whatever he wanted to eat. When I retired from McDonald’s, I had a very successful career there, but thinking about who had the biggest influence on that, it was my mom.
I was always known at McDonald’s for treating people right and going out of my way to help people create an environment where they felt safe. I started programs like flex hours so working moms could be with their kids and children. It was all ingrained from her, the way my mom lived her life. That was the biggest influence, no question. There were a lot of people who were smarter than I am, but couldn’t develop the trust that I had with my people.
My dad was always a hard worker. He was a handy guy, and he never missed a day of work. I started working at 12 years old delivering newspapers and then in the summers at the plant where my dad worked. I was delivering the paper and shoveling soot out of the furnaces which impacted me to make sure that I got an education. I was the first one that ever went to college in my family and I would say that it was influenced by the jobs I had.
Can you talk about your greatest accomplishments at McDonald’s?
During my 35 years at McDonald’s there are three significant accomplishments I can talk about. The key enablers to help drive performance improvement in all of these accomplishments were trust, quality people and training, creating an open and honest environment at a high-level, and holding people accountable to performance.
The first accomplishment I would say was building a strong, working relationship between store operations and the accounting staff. This was critical because the store operations management had a very stressful job dealing with customers on a day-to-day basis and so it was our goal to do anything that could make their jobs easier. The next accomplishment was consolidating the McDonald’s accounting center staff from seven centers to one which was 400 people down to 150 over a five year period. While this was a significant accomplishment for me and my team, it was also the hardest thing I had to do. So many other people in the accounting centers that we consolidated were friends, not just employees. However, we handled this task with class and made sure to be extremely fair to all the people that left McDonald’s and weren’t willing to relocate to the remaining accounting center.
Finally, the most significant and impactful accomplishment that we were able to implement was the restaurant operation improvement process (ROIP). This was designed to help bring store specific measurements around customer expectations and hold restaurants accountable to performance. We implemented it globally and when completed, was in 110 out of the 115 countries we were in. One metric that truly showed how successful this initiative was is that before we implemented it, our strock price dropped to $12 and in five years after implementing the ROIP, our stock price grew to $115 per share. There were other initiatives that helped drive this improvement, however the ROIP was the foundation that ensured other initiatives were implemented correctly and effectively.
Can you share some advice on how to build trust?
First, to always follow the Golden Rule. Treat people like you want to be treated and make sure that when you give someone your word on something, that you follow through with it. Before you show someone how much you know, first show them how much you care. Also to communicate, communicate, communicate. Try to make sure everyone is on the same page on what you’re trying to accomplish.
It’s also important that when you’re holding people accountable to performance, make sure that you’re praising them in public and reprimanding in private. In general, stay consistent with your behavior and don’t overreact. Remember that leadership is a privilege, try not to abuse it.
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