Every company has an inside, an outside, and an engine.
This is why successful companies have a Mother, a Trumpet, and a CEO.
The CEO chooses a destination and builds a machine to take us there.
The Mother looks inward to the people in the company.
The Trumpet makes beautiful noises for the public to hear.
The Mother in your company is the person everyone goes to when they are frightened, angry, or confused. The Mother keeps your family traditions alive and makes sure that everyone feels included. (“Mother” refers only to the role in the company. It can be a man or a woman.)
If your company has a strong culture, your people will deliver exceptional customer service. They will do it because their Mother has convinced them of who they are. Your company culture and your customer service will be average at best if your people don’t have a strong Mother to comfort, encourage, and motivate them.
The Trumpet is the person who makes the public think highly of you. Your company will become the one people think of first – and feel the best about – when your Trumpet plays the kind of music that people love to hear.
Let’s review:
The CEO is the visioncaster who is building a Rube Goldberg machine of systems and procedures and vendors and processes and levers and pulleys and profit margins represented by all those flow charts and diagrams and spreadsheets.
The Mother makes the internal business strategy come alive through employee feelings and actions.
The Trumpet makes the external business strategy come alive by using media to deliver stories that will bond future customers to your company.
The Mother and the Trumpet must know, like, and respect each other, because they are the left and right hand of a person playing basketball.
Back in the early 2000’s, when McDonald’s had lost their way and was circling the drain, they asked their original Mother to come out of retirement and help them get back on track.
In a June 27, 2004, story called “McDonald’s Finds Missing Ingredient,” Chicago Tribune staff reporter David Greising wrote:
“Fred Turner did not need to look at financial statements to know McDonald’s was in trouble. He could taste it. The man who worked alongside founder Ray Kroc to turn McDonald’s into a global colossus, Turner noticed when penny-pinchers at corporate headquarters changed recipes to cut costs.”
The article ends by saying,
“The return of the special sauce is one of hundreds of changes, big and small, that McDonald’s made after they made a return to ‘Inspect What They Expect,’ and the result was one of the most stunning turnarounds in corporate history.”
Fred Turner’s ‘Inspect What They Expect’ program taught and encouraged McDonald’s employees to make sure that customers received the happy experience they were expecting.
Fred Turner was the “inward-facing” Mother who made McDonald’s operationally excellent.
Keith Reinhard was the “outward-facing” Trumpet who made McDonald’s famous.
Keith Reinhard told us that a trip to McDonald’s would be a transformative experience:
“You deserve a break today, so get up and get away, to McDonald’s” and that famous advertising jingle for the Big Mac, “Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun… You deserve a break today, at McDonald’s.”
When Keith Reinhard wasn’t busy writing McDonald’s ads, he wrote, “Just Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There.”
Reader, do you trust me enough to let me to offer you some insanely good advice?
- Tear up your mission statement. It’s just a collection of aspirational words on paper. The hearts and minds of your people are not guided by that paper, but by the mother whose face they see and whose voice they hear. Do you know who your Fred Turner is?
- Quit looking for an
