McDonald’s Organizational Change

McDonald’s organizational change involved the introduction of the system “Made for You” to make operations more efficient and innovative. However, this change failed as McDonald’s did not monitor how customers would perceive the innovation. According to Jalagat (2016), organizational changes fail because of inadequate strategic planning, ineffective process, and lack of communication with customers. Indeed, McDonald’s did not conduct market research to understand customers’ needs. Dievernich et al. (2017) claimed that the efficacy of organizational change depends on such processes as understanding, planning, implementing, and communicating changes. Thus, McDonald’s failed to plan its change as it was implemented without due communication with customers.

Before implementing organizational strategy, McDonald’s should understand whether the change aligns with business goals and determine how it can influence both employees and customers, how they react to it, and whether they accept or resist it. According to Dievernich et al. (2017), time frames are important determinants of the quality organizational change process that requires enough time to be accepted by both employees and customers. McDonald’s implemented the system “Made for You” quickly without providing time for its understanding and acceptance. The sequence of execution is significant because change management should be a step-by-step procedure that requires a defined order (Dievernich et al., 2017). However, the main mistake of McDonald’s was that it violated the sequence of execution by omitting such processes as understanding and communicating change. Jalagat (2016) insisted on the need to identify the areas to measure before beginning of the implementation process to stay focused on the key aspects and understand whether the change is relevant or not. McDonald’s failed to develop these clear measurement guidelines; therefore, it was unable to predict that the system “Made for You” would not be popular among customers.

Metrics and measurements help to define objectives, evaluate advantages and risks, and measure how they can contribute to a company. Metrics and measurements are important to the strategy because they help assess the made progress and define further steps (Dievernich et al., 2017). McDonald’s failed to put metrics and measurements into its strategic plan; therefore, it could not evaluate whether its change would be accepted or not, which resulted in a failure.