Ronald Holden’s Post

Thanks for the shoutout and thoughtful reflection, Alai Umérez Sué! 👏 I appreciate you sharing my perspective on brand authenticity in the context of current events. It's a tricky balance for brands to navigate, and as you mentioned, staying true to core values and personality can be more impactful than chasing every trending topic. I agree that awareness of global events is important, but consistency in messaging and action is key to building trust and long-term consumer relationships.

VP Kamala Harris recently reflected on her time working at McDonald’s, noting that her role in making fries “wasn’t a small job.” This perspective is a powerful reminder that every position—regardless of its perceived size—plays a crucial role in an organization’s success. Consider this: McDonald’s serves over 3 billion pounds of fries each year! It takes a dedicated team to meet that demand, highlighting the importance of every contribution. Each job requires unique skills and efforts, and no role should be underestimated. Whether in entry-level positions or leadership roles, everyone’s work is essential to achieving a common goal. Let’s celebrate the significance of all jobs and the hard work that goes into them. Every contribution matters. What are your thoughts on this? How have you seen small roles make a big impact? https://lnkd.in/eQv2JbVM

KFC has hired Scott Mezvinsky, until recently the president of Taco Bell North America and international, as its new global chief executive. Mezvinsky, who will take up his new role on 1 March, will report to parent company Yum! Brands’ chief executive David Gibbs. 👉 For the full version of this story and to read it first sign up to the Propel email newsletter for free: https://lnkd.in/eyy_THzR

In 2005, while working for Woolworths Café, I faced a daunting yet exciting challenge: opening a new restaurant, http://FOOD.BAR in Design Quarters. This opportunity presented me with the task of recruiting and training 80 new staff members—a pivotal moment that ignited my passion for training. As I stood in front of the new staff on their first day of training, every nerve tingled with nervousness and anticipation. Little did I know, this experience would shape my career path for years to come. Over my 14-year career at Woolworths Café, I immersed myself in leadership training, customer service, financial management, and recruitment, developing my skills and expertise. After nearly three decades in hospitality, I chose a new career journey in the real estate world as a Team Leader. This transition allowed me to meet incredible individuals, and apply my training skills to a different industry. Despite facing challenges like the unexpected retrenchment of our entire leadership team in the Western Cape, 2 days before we went into lockdown, I took the opportunity to start my own company. Today, as I celebrate my 4-year anniversary, I am living my passion and serving my purpose with gratitude for every person who supported my journey. So, here's to embracing challenges, accepting opportunities, and transforming into the best version of ourselves. Thank you for being part of my journey—I couldn't have done it without you! #Leadership #Leadershiptraining #Managers #Delegation #Influencers #Motivators #Skills #TheWinningAttitudeSkillsTraining #Thewinningattitude #Goals #Goaltraining #Motivation #Goals #Goalstraining #Goalsetting #Goals #Goalscoach #Success #Focus #Driven #Achievement #Goalsmastery #thewinningattitudeskillstraining #thewinningattitude #skills #training #goaldriven #perserverance #Commitment #SpeakingWithPurpose #ConfidenceInSpeaking #WiseWords #Publicspeaking #Confidence #Storytelling #Fear #Speakinginpublic #Skills

Starbucks Niccol’s vision to go “back to Starbucks” strategy includes decreasing service times to four minutes per order, making its stores more welcoming and cozy and slashing the menu “As we focus on our ‘Back to Starbucks’ plan, we need a new operating model for our retail team, with clear ownership and accountability and an appropriate scope for each role” the shakeup : key leadership roles Meredith Sandland will hold the role of chief store development officer Mike Grams will join the company in February as North America chief stores officer: shakes up its leadership again, adding two former Taco Bell executives

What a week! I just spent the last 3 days at McDonalds head office in Toronto participating in the Inspire leadership course. I always like to share why McDonalds is such an awesome place work and while conventions, and sabbaticals and awards are all fun and appreciated, it’s the focus on developing people and leaders that truly makes this a special place to work. For McDoanlds Canada, it’s starts at the top with Michèle Boudria, one the best people leaders I have ever had the opportunity learn from and someone who always makes people and their development a priority. Because we have that strong commitment to people at the top, it means it’s a priority at every level of the company. Many people outside of McDonalds may be surprised to know that we refer to ourselves as a people company, because we know that people are our key to success. So this week I attended the Inspire course with about 15 other amazing leaders at McDoanlds (including my partner in crime, Lucia Kanellopoulos) to add important leadership skills around coaching, tough conversations and talent development to name a few. The material was fantastic and beyond learning new skills I had the chance to meet some great leaders at McDonalds, from so many disciplines. It is incredibly rewarding to have had the opportunity to be fully supported in taking a week of time to attend the class in person (shout out to my amazing team for holding down the fort this week). And just a huge amount of appreciation to McDonalds for seeing the value and potential in me, and investing time and resources to further develope my leadership skills and to continue to set me up for success for the next challenge. And last, but most certainly not least a shout out to Sonia Gonzalez who facilitate the course. All I can is wow, Sonia you are fantastic, I think everyone in the class commented to me how much they enjoyed your facilitating. If you ever have a chance to attend a course that Sonia is facilitating, go! Really fantastic. So I am flying home to Vancouver re charged, excited and fired up to get back to work opening a heck of a lot of new restaurants in Western Canada. Our appetite for growth is going strong so if you have a site that you think would be great for McDoanlds and want to experience what it’s like working with this amazingly powerful brand please reach out to me, my team Victoria Gereluk, Christopher Bekkers, Matthew Dunn, Audrey Powell, Andrea McKittrick or Kristy Wainwright. You can also reach out to any of our broker partners, Jack Voykin, Brodie Henrichsen. Until the next cool McDonalds update… 🎶 Ba-da-ba-ba-ba🎶

👨🍳 Chef Spotlight 👨🍳 Yes I know Chef Appreciation week has passed, but with such wonderful talent in our business, I could write about them 52 weeks of the year! One such talent is Cormac Kennedy. I’ve had the pleasure of watching Cormac’s journey unfold at Compass Ireland, and it’s time I share how proud we are of the chef and leader he’s become. When Cormac first joined as Chef de Partie at Vodafone, you could immediately see his talent, but it was his energy that really set him apart. There was something about his enthusiasm and attention to detail that made you stop and take notice. Despite being early in his career, it was clear Cormac had leadership potential. Fast forward to today, and Cormac has stepped into his role as Chef Manager within one of our key accounts with such ease and confidence. Running a kitchen is no easy task, it's all about juggling creativity with the everyday realities of budgets, suppliers, and keeping a team motivated. Cormac does it all without missing a beat. What really stands out is his ability to bring people along with him. He’s got a knack for mentoring his team in a way that’s both supportive and empowering. You can see how much his team respects and trusts him, and that’s a true testament to his leadership. Cormac’s journey is a reminder of how mental fortitude, hard work, and a bit of support can lead to incredible growth 💪 Here’s to more plenty more success in and beyond the kitchen 👏 #Leadership #Mentorship

Over the course of my career in retail store operations, field leadership, and learning and development, I’ve been able to travel to many different places for work, leaving just three states in the U.S. that I had yet to visit: Alaska, Iowa, and New Mexico. My trip in July not only checked off one of those states, Alaska, but it also added another area of North America I’ve yet to explore: British Columbia. As a self-confessed foodie, I always seek out great restaurants when traveling and, if possible, the opportunity to meet the chef while I enjoy their food. While in Vancouver, we enjoyed a spectacular experience at celebrated restaurant Viji’s Bib Gourmand. During our time at the restaurant, we met and talked with Chef Vikram’s entire staff. He explained that it was important to him that we met all of them because everyone contributes to the success of the customer experience. They were all highly engaged and authentic; nothing was for show. Having spent a large part of my life and career developing leadership training to create this type of culture in retail organizations, it made a huge impression on me. I was struck by how humble and appreciative he was for his restaurant team and where he is today. One sign of just how powerful his restaurant’s culture is: Most of his team have worked with him for over 20 years! The parallels to retail are evident: Treat your team well, empower them with skills and confidence, and instill in them a sense of ownership and pride, and they will ensure your customers are well taken care of. It’s the employee-customer profit service chain that I have followed my entire career. When you engage and empower people, they will deliver their best work for your customers. And they (and your customers) will stay with you for the long haul. How are you creating a culture of trust and respect? #LearnMOHR #Retail #LeadershipTips

Reports of the death of DEI at McDonald's are greatly exaggerated. As emphasised in the post below, making the effort to read beyond sensationalist headlines reveals that McDonald’s is NOT joining the DEI backlash. Quite the contrary, in fact. Rather, it is recognising that inclusion is a critical driver of business success and future-proofing. As such, inclusion should be embedded into an organisation’s strategic priorities – rather than treated a self-contained project, divorced from strategic alignment. Too often in businesses the latter happens, causing executives, leaders and staff to view it as a compliance-flavoured requirement, rather than the commercial imperative it actually is. So what McDonald’s is actually doing is progressing on the maturity journey that all organisations should undertake to achieve workplaces which, by being more #inclusive, are more productive, effective and robust. This is made clear by the re-framing of its diversity team as the Global Inclusion Team. This is not semantics; #diversity and #inclusion are not interchangeable – the distinction is important. As I have long said, diversity does not create inclusion; instead, inclusion fosters diversity. The diversity of inputs which businesses should crave is not limited to optical body counts, and so cannot be achieved wholly by “push” tactics (e.g. selective hiring or promoting). The “pull” approach is essential to attract, retain and leverage the pollinating potential of diversity – demographic, but also of lived experiences, qualifications, skills, personality traits, heuristics, etc. And the pull is achieved by creating a #workplace where inclusive practices are the norm. In such an environment, tactics like quotas are fundamentally unnecessary; and the US Supreme Court’s ruling against #AffirmativeAction does not matter. Because diversity will come and stay of its own accord, and the business will benefit from consequent points of difference as valuable inputs. McDonald’s stated guiding principles for inclusion speak directly to this – they include the objectives of: 🎯 gaining competitive advantage through early and full adoption of inclusion; and 🎯 maximising individual performance through belonging So inclusion is now understood to be of core strategic importance, key to gaining competitive advantage – and #belonging (i.e. feeling included and valued as part of a team) is now understood to be critical to optimising the way people perform, as individuals and for the greater good of the team and the organisation. This reflects my own re-framing of #DEI as Disruption + Elevation = Innovation. Innovation is the lifeblood of future success and robustness for any commercial organisation – and it is facilitated by elevating the voices of those who can, and feel empowered to, challenge (i.e. disrupt) the status quo in search of better ways of doing things. McDonald’s is an invaluable example of this new approach in action. The Inclusion Imperative

I can’t quite believe it’s three years since I started at Sainsbury's. Usually this is where I might insert accolades or achievements - sure there are a few things under the belt - but that’s not why I’ve stayed here. Four words to sum up my journey so far: People, purpose, potential, pause 👥 People Sainsbury’s feels unique in that everyone, at every level is so personable. But more than that, there are so many people I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and learning from. Whether that’s uncovering some really incredible hidden gems when we film, to fun collaboration sessions with our partners, regular coffee chats with different people or even lunching with my own team - it all counts. 🎯 Purpose I’ve always been very purpose driven - and I feel proud when I understand how to join the dots, seeing how our work impacts our candidates and customers. Purpose is lived and breathed through the business and a shared goal really brings you closer together. 🧗🏽♀️Potential There is always the potential to do more with your work. To have great ideas and have someone go - I believe in you, let’s try it. It’s also incredible when you have leaders who see the potential in you. I was lucky enough to go on an internal leadership acceleration course for high performing colleagues who were of ethnic backgrounds - and to be part of a programme where the playing field is levelled says it all. Something magical happens when you give people the room to grow their wings and fly. 🧘🏽♀️Pause I’m still on a journey trying to balance my health, which is always a struggle with a chronic pain condition, and work where I want do things all the time. Anyone who works in retail will know how nuts the pace can be - but I’ve learnt when I need to pause that’s okay. Working in an environment where pauses are not just welcomed but encouraged is refreshing. Even if I know I’m not very good at doing it - knowing I can is a huge comfort. Who knows what the future holds, but right now wonderfully orange. When you find a company that cares, when you feel you’ve found your stride, hold onto it. Success happens when you’ve got the environment to fall, learn, grow and win, and the right people who support you every step of the way. To everyone I have met along my journey so far - thank you 🧡 #workanniversary #lifeatsainsburys #sainsburys