The McDonald's fast food chain has translated its proposition into a set of business values, which are used to drive the entire global business. The founding fathers of the company set out four key values of the business and communicated them to all staff: quality, service, cleanliness and value. These described the basic company proposition. Objective descriptions of these dimensions were developed and these were tracked and monitored by area/regional managers who regularly measured each outlet against these dimensions. Performance against these measures formed a key component of staff remuneration, so these dimensions were not only in the front of their employees' minds as operational measures, but the impact on personal remuneration meant that they were considered to be really important by individual staff.

What was so simple, but effective, was that each dimension constituted an important part of the basic proposition.

Outlet managers expect to be monitored against these dimensions. and the area/region manager completes a checklist of them against a graduated scale. (A characteristic of good measurement systems is that they enable monitoring of movements in delivery, rather than simplistic yes/no responses.) The location manager must sign off this checklist before it is filed in the regional office. Improvement activities are focused on where performance is deteriorating. Here again, area managers may suggest interventions as they are trained in intervention diagnostics.

Another benefit from such a widespread and consistent measurement system is that it enables good practice to be identified. The service and product specification manuals are now built upon good practice in delivering high performance. It also means that all locations are measured against best practice next time they are inspected, so continually stretching business performance.

This case study highlights what a company needs to do to translate its proposition into values that drive the business, and to ensure that these values are supported by measures that are understood and tracked at each level of the business. It is not enough just to articulate values. They must be translated into pervasive measures and staff incentives which work at all levels of the business, to ensure that they drive values, beliefs and behaviours. The company says that it knew this approach was working when the 'war stories' shared when their people met socially related to these values.