“Aha!” Moments in Business

A founding moment in the growth story of McDonald’s and how you can have more of these moments too to change your business

The pursuit for continuous improvement in your golf business is such that if you’re not going forward, you’re likely going backwards.

Augusta National and The Masters Tournament is probably the best example in golf of an organization that is always changing in an effort to improve their product. In their case it could be something as small as improving the quality of their famous pimento cheese sandwiches or as big as building a new media centre opened in 2017 that was universally praisedd by journalists as the most luxurious in golf.

However to make change and improve your business you need to be able to have more “aha” moments that you then put into action with flawless execution. But how do you ensure you have more of these moments?

The Harvard Business Review writes that ‘aha!’ moments that spark brilliant, unexpected solutions tend to crop up when our minds are quiet and our consciousness is at rest. These aha moments are often the only way to solve truly complex problems that are too big for our conscious mind to process.

Four steps to having more of these “aha!” moments include:

• Notice Quiet Signals
• Look Inward
• Take a Positive Approach
• Use Less Effort

McDonald’s Founding Story and its “Aha!” Moment

“The Founder,” a 2016 biopic tells the story of Ray Kroc, played by Michael Keaton. He’s a traveling salesman hawking milkshake machines to the owners of drive-in restaurants. He stumbles upon the McDonald’s brothers in California and their new fast food burger stand concept.

He immiediately franchises the concept in the midwest of the United States and despite a few thriving franchises in operation, Kroc is nearly out of cash reserves. His stake in the business is puny, and the lender is threatening to foreclose on his house mortgage that he initially used as collateral.

At that moment in enters Harry Sonneborn, a fellow fast food executive, who advises Kroc to consider pivoting into a higher margin business: “You’re not in the hamburger business, you’re in the real estate business,” buying up the real estate and subseqently leasing it back to the franchise.

Soon Kroc is nationwide following his “aha!” moment, and the McDonald brothers in California don’t know how to handle the runaway success that Kroc has generated. He later acquires the company from the brothers and reincoporates it as the McDonald’s Corporation. The rest you can say is history.

Takeaway: Kroc was an eternal optimist

The Harvard Business Review continues highlighting research that has shown that feeling even slightly happy, as opposed to anxious, is conducive to eureka moments and insightful problem solving. That’s because people tend to notice a wider range of information when they feel happy than when they feel concerned.

This served Kroc well in this pivotal moment.