When I managed McDonald’s restaurants — for nearly a decade — one thing always struck me as foolish:
The goal for most store managers — based upon systems established by the company —was to eventually be promoted out of the restaurant and into some corporate office, far away from the burgers, the customers, and the profit centers of the business, in pursuit of higher salaries in more prestigious positions far less critical to the company’s profitability.
In fact, the only way to significantly increase your pay at McDonald’s was to leave the restaurant and land a job that could often disappear tomorrow without significantly impacting the actual company in any way.
When a restaurant loses a store manager, it’s always in trouble. Service suffers, systems collapse, and profits diminish until a suitable replacement is found.
Store managers are the heartbeat of every restaurant.
If you lose a corporate executive, you would be hard-pressed — with certain exceptions — to even notice a difference for quite a while. They may claim to be impacting many restaurants significantly from their ivory towers, but if you placed the most capable, competent, accomplished person in the company in charge of every restaurant, profits would soar.
When you can stay home sick for three days and not even be noticed, your role just isn’t that important.
This has always struck me as an upside-down model of leadership. Instead of increasing the pay of people who exit the restaurant to the corporate offices, the highest-paid person in the company should be the store managers, where sales, service, brand, and reputation are paramount.
The company does not exist without its restaurants. They should be the shining cities on the hill.
Want to leave the restaurant for a corporate position?
No problem. But you’ll need to take a pay cut because you’ll be far less important to the company now.
Education operates similarly. Promotions in school districts eventually result in principals, vice principals, and teachers leaving their jobs for administrative positions far away from the place that matters most in all of education:
The school.
Also, and more importantly, the students.
The people who matter most.
This is also very much an upside-down model.
If a school loses its principal, it suffers mightily until a replacement is found. The principal’s role is critical to the school’s functioning, and the workload on a principal far exceeds the demands of any school district administrator except perhaps a superintendent.
Even losing a teacher causes enormous problems in a school. The result is an enormous crater in the classroom that isn’t easily filled but must be at all costs. Without an effective teacher in every classroom, schools teeter. Students suffer. Instruction deteriorates rapidly. Children’s futures are compromised. The purpose of education collapses.
But lose a central office administrator?
The impact on student achievement would take a long time to be noticed and would be minimal compared to losing a principal or teacher.
Want to be promoted from a position in a school to a job in the central office?
No problem, but take a pay cut. The highest salaries should be reserved for leaders who work with students and families on a daily basis, where the biggest differences can be made.
This should apply to teachers, too, since no one impacts student success and achievement more than teachers. Ideally, a school district should base its pay scale on how much direct contact an adult has with students:
The more contact you have with students, the greater your pay since you are by far the most important part of any school district.
Sound crazy?
If a teacher needs to miss a single day of work for any reason, a substitute teacher is required. Plans must be made. If you have an especially challenging student in a classroom, meetings take place to manage the class in the teacher’s absence. Support staff are engaged. Principals frequently check in on substitutes throughout the day to ensure things run smoothly. Teachers often spend their sick days or personal days agonizing over what might be happening in their classrooms.
A classroom teacher cannot miss a school day without someone else taking their place and considerable planning ahead of time.
In fact, a classroom teacher can’t even arrive ten minutes late to school without someone taking their place to ensure the safety of kids and the continuation of learning.
But if an administrator misses a day of work or arrives an hour or two late, no replacement is ever needed, and not a single child suffers their absence.
No one even notices.
If every central office administrator in a school district took a month off from work, teachers would continue to teach, learning would proceed, and kids would continue to be safe and happy.
But eliminate even one-tenth of the teachers in a school district for a day, and all hell would break loose. Children would suffer, and learning and safety would be seriously compromised.
Pay schedules based upon student contact would right size school districts and prioritize positions that matter the most:
Those in direct, daily contact with children.
This would also reduce the incentive for people to climb that inexplicable career ladder farther and farther away from children.
McDonald’s and education:
Two places where the incentives do not match the value and importance of the people working within the organization.
Upside-down leadership.
Organizations where people are incentivized to exit the places that matter most.
I’m sure there are more examples in the world, but these are the two I know best.
