Director - Corporate Strategy
McDonald's is the world's leading global food service retailer with more than 37,000 locations in 100 countries. More than 90% of McDonald's restaurants are currently owned and operated by independent franchisees living in the communities they serve and proudly making high-impact contributions on a local, national and international level.
McDonald’s introduced the Velocity Growth Plan in March 2017. The strategy is elevating the experience for McDonald’s customers and helping the company build momentum. McDonald’s franchisees, suppliers and employees are moving with greater speed and agility to ensure customers enjoy more convenient, personalized and enjoyable visits. As one of the world’s largest restaurant companies, every change makes a big difference. McDonald’s is committed to using the company’s Scale for Good to take meaningful action on some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges of today.
McDonald’s is freshly emerging from a global transformation aimed at refining focus and alignment across the system. 2017 was a strong year of performance that illustrated the early success of the Velocity strategy. The company’s comparable sales were the best in six years and guest count growth was the best since 2012. While proud of this recent progress, the company’s leaders also look confidently to achieving their even greater ambition for the future. McDonald’s is not just changing, it’s changing for the better, requiring the business to communicate and engage with the public in different ways than ever before. The company’s Global Chief Communications Officer, Robert Gibbs, and his team are working to create a truly integrated and global function capable of connecting audiences to McDonald’s commitment to growth, customers and driving positive change in the world.
Corporate Strategy
Over the past two years, McDonald’s has significantly expanded its Corporate Strategy function to guide and support growth-oriented priorities. This includes launching and embedding the company’s overall growth strategy (“Velocity Growth Plan”), launching and growing McDelivery into a $3B business, and building new business development capabilities.
This role contributes to these priorities by leading selected strategic projects, supporting competitive intelligence efforts, and supporting communication with the Board of Directors and Senior Leadership Team.
· Leads and shapes special strategic projects initiated by the Global Senior Leadership team.
· Supports the development and execution of McDonald’s global competitive intelligence capabilities in coordination with Investor Relations.
· Coordinates with Corporate Strategy VP and Senior Director to guide the annual strategic planning process, in particular the synthesis and communication of market plans to Global Senior Leadership.
· Develops executive-level communications on behalf of the Corporate Strategy team, including in advance of Global Senior Leadership Team meetings.
· Supports planning and execution of annual Board of Directors Strategy Session, outlining strategic outlook and opportunities.
· Overall, supports the elevation of strategic capabilities at McDonald’s by leading and shaping these global strategic priorities (as well as others which will be determined over time).
Capabilities
· Strategist and leader with strong intuition / first principles thinking around business performance, business drivers, and overall competitive landscape
· Strong influencing skills; a team player with the ability to build relationships and work collaboratively across lines of senior management and other staff as appropriate.
· Effective communicator with ability to convey concepts and stories to various levels of leadership
· Comfortable with ambiguity
· Effective people leader and manager capable of leading and mentoring team
3-5 years of post MBA work-related experience, preferably from a strategy consulting firm.