VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HO CHI MINH CITY

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT

Final Report
MCDONALDS FOUNDER RAY KROC’S
VISIONARY LEADERSHIP

FUNDAMENTALS OF MANAGEMENT (IM1007)

Instructor: Le Thi Thanh Xuan

Student’s name: Nguyen Ngoc Cat Tien
Student ID: 2053490
Class: CC01
Group project: 04

HO CHI MINH CITY, AUGUST 2021

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………3
. 1. About My Project: “Choose a leader: Introduce a leadership portrait
(a successful leader)” ……………………………………………………3
2. About My Topic: “McDonalds Founder Ray Kroc’s Visionary
Leadership” ...............................................................................................3

II. LITERATURE REVIEW ……………………………………...4

1. What is Visionary Leadership? ……………………………………….4
2. What is Visionary Leader? .………………………………… ………..4 .

3. 3 Qualities of Visionary Leader ………………………………………4

III. HOW MY TOPIC IS CONDUCTED IN MY PROJECT ……6

1. Big Vision of Ray Kroc that changed McDonald’s Destiny ………….6
2. The battle for Controlling ……………………………………………..8
3. Success provides Ray Kroc’s Visionary Leadership ………………….8
4. What Learned from Ray Kroc’s Vision and the Role of my topic ……9

IV. EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION …….……….………10

V. REFERENCE ……………….….……….……………………11

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I. INTRODUCTION
1. About My Project: “Choose a leader: Introduce a leadership portrait (a
successful leader)”
Our group topic project is: “Choose a leader: Introduce a leadership portrait (a successful
leader)”. After a period of studying and researching, we finally choose Ray Kroc, who
was famous as the Founder of the McDonald’s Corporation. He was an American
businessman, who brought about a revolution in the fast food industry, making
McDonald’s the biggest fortune fast food chain in the world. Ray Kroc was grinding it
out throughout his life. He thinks that “Work is the meat in the hamburger of life”. To
achieve such success, he spent a lot of effort researching, researching and learning. There
are a lot of leadership lessons we can learn from this man. And our project includes 6
parts:
 LITERATURE on LEADERSHIP
 INTRODUCTION about Mc Donald’s
 LEADERSHIP QUALITIES
 RAY KROC’S LEADERSHIP TRAITS
 RAY KROC’S LEADERSHIP STYLE
 LEADERSHIP SKILLS OF BUSINESS LEADER RAY KROC
Our project helps people understand more about the theory also as the important of
Leadership in Business.

2. About My Topic: “McDonalds Founder Ray Kroc’s Visionary

Leadership”
One of the most important leadership is having a big decision. Through his vision, he
became one of the foremost business leaders of the world. While others see limitations, a
leader sees opportunity and possibility. And the topic I will discuss is “McDonalds
Founder Ray Kroc’s Visionary Leadership”. A forward-thinking leader can be key to the
success of a growing company. Visionary leaders are individuals who guide a business
toward positive change and increased momentum through thoughtful, long-term decision-
making. This report explores the importance of visionary leadership, understand the roles
of the visionary leader and how Ray Kroc applied visionary leadership to run
McDonald’s company.

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II. LITERATURE REVIEW
1. What is Visionary Leadership?
Visionary leadership is the ability to create and articulate a realistic, credible, and
attractive vision of the future that improves on the present situation. This vision, if
properly selected and implemented, is so energizing that it “in effect jump-starts the
future by calling forth the skills, talents, and resources to make it happen.”

An organization’s vision should offer clear and compelling imagery that taps into
people’s emotions and inspires enthusiasm to pursue the organization’s goals. It should
be able to generate possibilities that are inspirational and unique and offer new ways of
doing things that are clearly better for the organization and its members. Visions that are
clearly articulated and have powerful imagery are easily grasped and accepted.

2. What is Visionary Leader?

The visionary leader is the person, who has a clear idea in terms of how the future should
look. They set out the concrete steps to bring the vision to life and lead a team in that
direction. Visionary leaders are driven and inspired by the goals and objectives of the
organization. They are well-equipped with the skills and abilities that are needed to carry
out one’s job duties in a well-organized manner and achieve the desired goals and
objectives. The leaders have the primary objective of making use of modern, scientific,
technical and innovative methods in the implementation of tasks and activities. The
visionary leaders also need to assume the roles of instructors. As the instructors need to
be well-prepared before they take the class lecture, in the same manner, the leaders also
need to be well-prepared. They need to be skilled in terms of modern, scientific, technical
and innovative methods, so they can impart them to their subordinates. Therefore, the
visionary leaders possess as well as focus upon up-gradation of competencies and
abilities on a continuous basis.

3. 3 Qualities of Visionary Leader

Tempering the freewheeling brainstorming, experimentation and charisma with these
grounded qualities and practices can help you harness your visionary leadership style or
boldly step up as a visionary leader.

3.1. Visionary Leaders See the World Differently

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Visionary leaders can often see what no one else sees, finding potential and opportunity
in a time of change or even company contraction. They see what’s not there—or what’s
not there yet.
A visionary leadership style embraces the unknown as a blank canvas for innovation,
experimentation and pioneering new possibilities. In order to cast that larger vision for a
team or organization, that often means having the ability to look at the situation—
whether it’s an organizational restructure or diminishing product sales—in a different
light, even when there seems to be no light at all.

3.2. Visionary Leaders Help Others See the Vision

For teams working in the midst of change or grasping to understand their role within the
larger vision, it can be hard to see that grand vision. This is when visionary leaders have
to become people unites, bringing teams and entire organizations together and leading
them in a common direction.
This can play out in different scenarios with visionary leadership style tapping into the
flair of storytelling or symbolism to paint a powerful picture that energizes people toward
the future goal.
Visionary leaders recognize that the individual, collective team and even an entire nation
must align with the vision, have a clear goal and understand their role in making this
vision for the future a reality.

3.3. Visionary Leaders Turn the Vision into Reality

Innovative ideas and grandiose vision are meaningless if not followed up by action. The
flair and charisma so often associated with the visionary leadership style must be
balanced by discipline, focus and a specific course of action.
A visionary leader ensures the vision becomes reality by stating clear goals, outlining a
strategic plan for achieving those goals and equipping and empowering each member to
take action on the plan at the organizational, team and individual levels.
For individuals, working under a visionary leader who encourages innovation and unites
the organization towards one goal can be energizing, with studies indicating that
visionary leadership style can lead to greater employee engagement, more productive
teams and improved outcomes.
A visionary leadership style can inspire a team to boldly strive for and achieve new
heights and unite an organization to take one giant leap forward. Leading with vision in
your role and in your career can inspire you to aim for the moon—and beyond.

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III. HOW MY TOPIC IS CONDUCTED IN MY PROJECT
1. Big Vision of Ray Kroc that changed McDonald’s Destiny
This was the case when a traveling milkshake machine salesman named Ray Kroc visited
the operation of two of his best customers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, in
California. Early in 1954, as Ray Kroc approached his 50th birthday, however, sales
began to drop from 9,000 mixers per year sold in the late 1940’s units to under 2,000,
contemplated his future plans. Ray was losing customers by the dozens. But one small
restaurant in San Bernardino, California, ordered eight machines. Intrigued by the order,
Kroc left for California to see for himself what kind of restaurant needed to churn out 40
milk shakes at a time. There he found a small hamburger stand run by two brothers, Dick
and Mac McDonald, being run with more professionalism and efficiency than he had
seen in his entire career. In contrast to the popular drive-in restaurants of the time, it was
self-service, had no indoor seating, and the menu was limited to cheeseburgers,
hamburgers, fries, drinks and milk shakes, all of which were produced in an assembly-
line fashion that enabled customers to place their orders and receive their meals in less
than a minute.
But he also saw more than that, he had seen the future and wanted in on the action, in his
autobiography. He tried to articulate what overtook him when he first visited
McDonald’s: “When I saw it working that day in 1954, I felt like some latter-day Newton
who’d just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull,” Kroc said. “That night in my
motel room I did a lot of heavy thinking about what I’d seen during the day. Visions of
McDonald’s restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my
brain”.
What kept Kroc awake that first night wasn’t the food, it was the system in which the
food was prepared and delivered. Kroc formulated a plan, hoping to sell thousands of
multi-mixers to the burgeoning restaurant chain, recalling his conversation with the
McDonald’s brothers at their restaurant, “I’ve seen kitchens of a lot of restaurants and
drive-ins selling multi-mixers around the country and I have never seen anything to equal
the potential of this place of yours. Why don’t you open a series of units like this? It
would be a gold mine for you and for me, too, because everyone would boost my multi-
mixer sales”. After a long silent stare from the taciturn New England brothers, Maurice
answered: “See that big white house with the wide front porch? That’s our home and we
love it. We sit on the porch in the evenings and watch the sunset and look down on our
place here. It’s peaceful. We don’t need any more problems. We are in a position to enjoy
life now, and that’s just what we intend to do”. The McDonald’s brother lives confirm
that the biggest enemy of great is the belief that one is doing good, losing the hunger to

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improve further. Kroc, flew back to Chicago, but couldn’t get McDonald’s out of his
mind, eventually calling the brothers back a week later: “Have you found a franchising
agent yet?”. “No, Ray, not yet”- McDonald’s response. “Well then, what about me?”,
asked Ray Kroc. Ray realized that he could sell McDonald’s franchises, saying, “This
will go anyplace. Anyplace!”.
After initial overtures to expand the business was thwarted by the McDonald brothers,
they eventually relented and in 1955, in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Illinois, Ray
Kroc opened his first McDonald’s franchise. It was a success right out of the gate and the
ambitious Kroc could barely wait to open more to other franchisees. Kroc quickly
calculated the financial rewards possible with hundreds of these restaurants across the
country. But when he approached the McDonalds with the idea, they told him they
weren't interested in doing it themselves. So Kroc offered to do it for them. The brothers
agreed, and gave Kroc the exclusive rights to sell the McDonald's method.
Kroc, was a top notch salesman and leader, not a systems genius, but he had thirty-year
experience in the food service industry, and knew a winner when he saw one. The
McDonald’s system was a winner, a franchising system that Kroc was convinced he
could sell all over the world. In order to do so, Kroc intuitively understood that the
business was more than just hamburgers, but a complete franchising system sold to
entrepreneurs, promising results if they followed the turn key McDonald’s system.
According to Michael Gerber in The E Myth, “But Ray Kroc created much more than just
a fantastically successful business. He created the model upon which an entire generation
of entrepreneurs have since built their fortunes: the franchise phenomenon… But the
genius of McDonald’s isn’t franchising itself. The franchise has been around for more
than a hundred years…
The true genius of Ray Kroc’s McDonald’s is the Business Format Franchise.” The
Business Format Franchise provides the franchisee with a turn key system for doing
business that works for anyone who will work it. The original franchises sold their name
and product offerings, expecting the franchisees to develop a business system to sell the
merchandise. But Kroc, and his franchising system was different, Kroc understood that
his first customer, the one he needed to sell, was the franchisee. In fact, if the franchisee
didn’t believe in the McDonald’s system for producing results, no one would purchase
the franchise, thus no hamburgers would be sold. Kroc, became a salesman, not of
hamburgers, but of the McDonald’s business itself. His success or failure would depend
upon creating a business system that worked, and his ability to sell the business format to
hungry entrepreneurs. Gerber elaborates, “At that point, Ray Kroc began to look at his
business as the product, and at the franchisee as his first, last, and most important

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customer. For the franchisee wasn’t interested in hamburgers or French fries or
milkshakes; he was interested in the business. Driven by the desire to buy a business, the
franchisee only wanted to know one thing: “Does it work?”. Kroc believe the
McDonald’s brothers had cracked the code for high speed and low cost fast food service,
and that he would complete the package by providing vision, salesmanship, and
leadership, to make the dream a reality. He knew his business system had to produce
results for the franchise owner, becoming the best choice for hungry and driven
entrepreneurs in the competitive marketplace. Gerber writes, “If McDonald’s was to
fulfill the dream he (Kroc) had for it, the franchisee would have to be willing to buy it...
He wasn’t competing with other hamburger businesses. He was competing with every
other business opportunity”.

2. The battle for Controlling

The McDonald brothers had mixed emotions watching Kroc expand across the country.
The franchise royalties that rolled in were certainly welcome. But they were losing
control of the business that carried their name. This became even more evident when
Kroc named himself President of the McDonald’s corporation. Kroc continually clashed
with the McDonald brothers over changes he wanted to make in their original formula.
Kroc became increasingly frustrated and decided he wanted control of McDonald's all to
himself. So in 1961, he bought out the McDonalds for $2.7 million-cash. Kroc thought
the deal included the original McDonald's restaurant in San Bernardino, but the brothers
said it did not. Infuriated, Kroc confided to a long-time employee, "I'm not normally a
vindictive man, but this time I'm going to get those sons-of-bitches." And he knew just
how to do it. Without the rights to their own name, the McDonalds were forced to rename
their restaurant The Big M. So Kroc opened a brand-new McDonald's one block away
and put The Big M out of business.

3. Success proves Ray Kroc’s Visionary Leadership

With the McDonald brothers out of his way, Kroc was free to run the company as he saw
fit. By 1965, he had opened more than 700 restaurants in 44 states. In April of that year,
McDonald's became the first fast-food company to go public. Stock was issued at $22 per
share. Within weeks it climbed to $49 a share, making Kroc an instant multimillionaire.
By the end of the decade, Kroc had met and surpassed his goal, with nearly 1,500
McDonald's operating worldwide.
By the 1970s, McDonald's was the largest food supplier in the country and would remain
so through the next two decades. At the time of his death on January 14, 1984, a new

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McDonald's was opening on average every 17 hours. Ten months later, McDonald's sold
its 50-billionth burger.

4. What Learned from Ray Kroc’s Vision and the Role of my topic
For any business to be successful, its leader must be passionate, strong willed, and
equipped with the necessary knowledge to achieve long-term goals. Visionary leaders
possess these foundational traits of the trade but have even more to offer. They have the
keen ability to both envision a company’s future and to rally employees around a shared
vision. Just like Ray Kroc realized the further growth of fast food store- McDonald. Like
many of the 20th century's most influential entrepreneurs, Ray Kroc was not a creator.
When Kroc came onto the scene, convenience food already existed in many forms, from
local diners to hot dog stands. But it was Kroc who had the cunning ability to grasp all
the complexities of the fast-food concept and deliver it in the best possible way.
Each entity and individual of us always has a different vision. And, the interesting thing
about vision is that, it will be proportional to the position you have. It is like the vision of
a corporation president and a branch manager. Their vision and orientation are different.
At this point, we can also partly understand the importance of vision for the organization,
right? Because of vision, it is a simulated picture that the organization can achieve in the
future based on current data about the organization.
The difficult task is communicating that vision with clarity and passion in order to
motivate and inspire people to take action. Initially, Ray Kroc also failed to express his
vision for the McDonald brothers about the future growth of the fast food store. With his
passion and clear communication of his plan, he fueled their beliefs, persuaded them and
proved to everyone he did the right thing, achieved and succeeded. A visionary leader
who clearly and passionately communicates his or her vision can motivate employees to
act with passion and purpose, thereby ensuring that everyone is working toward a
common goal. The end result is that everyone contributes to the organization's forward
momentum.
Therefore, one of the decisive factors to become a capable leader is to have a clear and
true leadership vision. In life, there are many things we need to consider carefully before
making decisions. Those decisions are related to whether you can be a true leader.
Through the concept of what a visionary leadership is explained above, a vision will give
us a comprehensive view of the big picture of the organization that is expected to achieve
that the business aims to achieve in the future. Vision needs to be specific, serving as the
basis for strategies and goals. A vision is just like a dream or just a vague image in the

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mind, unable to reach sustainable and long-term realist values. For that reason, visionary
leadership represents a number of extremely important meanings as follows:
 Act as an associate, transforming the ideals stated in the mission into reality to
achieve the real future results that you or your organization want.
 Create a destination for the organization. Through vision, business leaders can
clearly quantify the criteria needed on the way to the destination.
 Find the way for the organization: because the vision plays a role in helping to
define the goals. The clearer the goal, the easier it is for people to find a way to
achieve that goal.
 Visionary leadership promotes decisive, right action. This means a lot to
businesses because there are many things that force businesses to act decisively
and clearly to succeed. Therefore, the vision needs to be clearly defined from the
beginning to push the business on the right path.

IV. EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION

In group project, I contributed for searching information my part and doing PowerPoint. I
am not completely satisfied with my part that I showed in PowerPoint slide because all
the information was too short and some of information would be missed. This issue may
mislead people or make it difficult for the audience to see the importance of Visionary
Leadership. If I have a chance, I will search for information thoroughly and present it in a
concise and easy to understand manner. Now, I am trying to fulfill that problem through
this report. Besides, I hope all readers will enjoy and understand my report.

In conclusion, I think my topic “McDonalds Founder Ray Kroc’s Visionary Leadership”

is one of the most important part of our group project “Choose a leader: Introduce a
leadership portrait (a successful leader)”. Through this report, we understand more about
a leader of an organization and all this information is presented through Ray Kroc’s
brilliant leadership. In short, the visionary leader is the person, who has acquired a strong
awareness in terms of how the future of the workplace should be. They set out the real
phases to bring the vision to life and lead a team in the proper direction. The strengths of
the visionary leader are, inspirational, open-minded, emotionally intelligent,
collaborative…The weaknesses are, inability to focus for long time, being aware of
number of ideas will lead to an unrealistic optimism, lacking the abilities to make wise
and productive decisions, do not manage details and held others responsible and tend to
hire the service providers and do not focus upon development of talent.

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V. REFERENCE
Lindberg, C. (2021, June 16). Visionary Leadership Explained by a CEO: Pros/Cons,
Examples. Leadership Ahoy! https://www.leadershipahoy.com/visionary-leadership-
what-is-it-pros-cons-examples/

M. (2016, August 10). Ray Kroc Leadership Profile. Leadership Geeks.

https://www.leadershipgeeks.com/ray-kroc-leadership/

Ray Kroc. (2008, October 9). Entrepreneur. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197544

What Is Visionary Leadership? 3 Traits of a Visionary Leader. (2020, April 11). Status
Articles. https://status.net/articles/visionary-leadership/

Sekulich, T. (2018, May 20). The Genius of Ray Kroc, the Visionary ‘Founder’ of
McDonald’s. Tharawat Magazine. https://www.tharawat-magazine.com/start/ray-kroc-
visionary-founder-mcdonalds/

Western Governors University. (2020, October 27). What Is Visionary Leadership?

https://www.wgu.edu/blog/visionary-leadership2010.html#close

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