Sometimes it doesn’t matter what it is; it matters how you frame it.
Bobbi Kahler

Back when I was a store manager for McDonalds, I was faced with an exciting challenge. My store was one of the first to be in a food court at a mall (for our region). The day after Thanksgiving – the busiest shopping day of the year – was approaching. Because we were in a food court, our store was not as big as a free-standing store so our capacity should not have been as great. I kept talking to the crew ahead of time about the day and what we should expect. If my projections were right, we would be attempting to do more business in a few hours than any of the other stores in our area would do for the whole day (or, in some cases, the whole weekend). I hand-picked the employees that I wanted to work with me that day. Surprisingly, no one requested the day off. More surprisingly to me was that when the schedule came out, the employees who were working that day were excited and proud to be part of that crew.

The day came and we even exceeded my projections. The crew were amazing! I have never seen a team work like that together. Everyone helped each other. They truly rocked! I remember that our owner and supervisor came and stood out in the food court, watching our progress, ready to jump in should we need help. Needless to say, they didn’t have a thing to do that day. At the end of the day, everyone was exhausted but we all left with a sense of pride, excitement and achievement. We had set a record for the most business in a single hour in our region (and we broke our own record the following hour and just about tied it the third hour!).

I’ve looked back at the day many times and have always been impressed by my crew. No one who worked that day (other than me and my assistant managers) was over the age of 17. In reflecting on the experience, I think that we did a good job of creating excitement instead of dread over the impending challenge. I also think that we used the challenge as a way to really motivate the team to want to be part of something special. To them, this was a historic and exciting event. In truth, they made it historic by their efforts. Going into that day, I wanted each and every one of them to know that I believed we had the ability to create that together. We could have viewed that day as just another day at McDonald’s serving hamburgers and french fries. No one who came to work that day thought that it was just going to be an ordinary day; their efforts ensured that it wasn’t.

How do you help your team turn the ordinary into the extraordinary?

To Your Success,

Read More Success Builders Weekly™
See past issues in the Success Builders Weekly™ Archive.

About Success Builders Weekly™
Success Builders Weekly™ is an email series with short, fun success stories and quotes. To subscribe to Success Builders Weekly™, simply submit your email address with the form in this message or on our web site at http://www.bobbikahler.com/resources/successbuilders/index.php

Reader Feedback
If you have a comment (or even a criticism) about the Success Builders Weekly™, we'd love to hear it!