In Paul Facella’s book the 7 Leadership Principals that Drive Breakout Success (McGraw-Hill ISBN 9780071601412), he describes the McDonald’s corporation and how what became one of the world’s most successful business was started by a man named Ray Kroc who never graduated from High School. In fact most of the company’s early executives had what Facella describes as a ‘remarkable lack of formal education’.
The system this company built developed an extreme focus on McDonald’s being an experience for the customer and not just a place to eat. This ‘customer experience’ began just at the site of the establishments and wasn’t just about the food. This formula has since been copied time and time again and is now the norm for both fast food and other businesses. What we now consider normal in terms of customer experience was developed by a visionary group of people who’s legacy affects us every day.
The seven principles that helped McDonald’s grow into the organization it is today:
1. Honesty and Integrity
2. Relationships
3. Standards: Never Be Satisfied
4. Leading by Example
5. Courage: Telling It like it is
6. Communication
7. Recognition
Martial Arts organizations, instructors and student leaders would benefit from studying and applying these principals in their professional and personal lives. As students of Tang Soo Do (myself included), we learn and apply the principles of Integrity, concentration, respect & obedience, self control, humility and indomitable spirit. We work on these on a daily and some of us on an hourly or minute to minute basis.
Whereas our 7 tenets primarily address out own personal growth and development, these 7 principals of leadership speaks to how we can develop leadership qualities by applying the relationship building they infer. Whether you are running a business or leading a team, it’s essential that you have a great relationship with your customers and/or team mates.
Whether we like it or not, McDonalds has become a household word and is one of the most recognizable symbols in the world. All of us, including myself have sometimes referred to some schools as McDojangs. This has become a negative term in the martial arts industry, alluding to corporate mentality with low quality students produced quickly at the same time maximizing profits for the school’s owners. McDojangs satisfy their students by providing easy paths to promotion and a simple curriculum and satisfy their owners by positively impacting their bottom line.
Our challenge as instructors is to attempt to use principals similar to what the McDonald’s corporation developed to build quantity (yes we need students) while providing high quality instruction and producing high quality students. This is possible using traditional values, training and curriculum. This is the goal of the United Tang Soo Do Association. As the leader of this team my goal is to produce the very best in traditional Tang Soo Do instruction in order to produce the very best Tang Soo Do instructors and students.
TANG SOO!
Kevin Case is president of the United Tang Soo Do Association. Visit Master Case’s Association website at www.unitedtangsoodo.com
