McFamily Feud

FORMER McDONALD’S CEO STEVE EASTERBROOK SUPERSIZED THE COMPANY’S PERFORMANCE—UNTIL HE WAS FIRED AMID A SCANDAL. NOW HIS SUCCESSOR, CHRIS KEMPCZINSKI, MUST PERSUADE THE COMPANY’S MANY STAKEHOLDERS TO REUNITE.

- BETH KOWITT

TO HAVE A SUCCESSFUL CAREER at McDonald’s, one must make peace with the practice of putting “Mc” in front every noun that will take it. Customers can order Egg McMuffins and McGriddles for McDelivery. Employees at the old corporate campus caught the McShuttle. Executives who leave a frustrating meeting are McOverIt.

But in 2016, “McFamily” was struck from the company’s lexicon. The term was more than a feel-good name for the burger giant’s collection of employees—it embodied the cohesiveness and shared fate of everyone who made up the McDonald’s system.

Former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook found the word distasteful. To him, it was “soft and represented the past”, says a former executive, and embodied the mindset hindering the company’s performance. Easterbrook, a Brit who had come up through McDonald’s U.K., had been tapped by the board in January 2015 to turn the struggling restaurant behemoth around. Consumer preferences had changed, and the home of the Big Mac and “Billions Served” could no longer simply wield its massive scale to stay ahead of the competition. Easterbrook pledged to become an “internal activist” and bring about radical change—including eradicating the cronyism and paternalism that McFamily seemed to represent.

In February 2016, the company held a town hall announcing the death of McFamily. The message: You couldn’t pick your family members, but you could pick your team. From then on, they would collectively be known as McTeam.