Like most of you, I get a lot of email.

Maybe because I write not only this blog, but also creatively for clients, I tend to care about my responses.

The result is that every now and then I write something worth sharing beyond that email.

That’s what happened today.

A friend sent me an article.

My response was especially apropos considering the upcoming presidential election, which means months of being bombarded by candidates, talking heads, pundits, gurus, etc., on all forms of media.

That said, here is my self-described brilliant take on it.

Years ago there was one talking horse named Mr. Ed on TV. These days there are dozens of talking asses on all kinds of media.

Feel free to use it, although attribution is appreciated.

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Would you like to work for a company where the 401K matching on 5% of salary is as much as 11%? Where you can become a manager earning $62,000 plus bonus and company car with no college degree, no Union, no trade—nothing but hard work.

Of course, you’ll have to put up with snickers and even scorn if you mention your job in public.

All of that is what’s available to the 6,700 managers at company-owned McDonald’s restaurants.

“While an average McDonald’s grosses $2.2 million a year, seasoned managers who motivate employees and keep customers coming back can add more than $200,000 to that total.“Restaurant managers are in the most important position in our company,” says Richard Floersch, McDonald’s chief human resources officer.”

Moreover, with corporate culture being recognized as the moving force behind corporate performance, why is it that articles about changing culture in major corporations employing mostly skilled, well-paid workers, such as IBM, are met with serious discussion, while changing it in major corporations with mostly minimum wage earners, such as McDonalds, is marked down as hype?

Why was a cultural change at IBM seen as key to the company’s survival, but instilling pride in the workers at McDonalds, Taco Bell and KFC is viewed as hype, “Raising spirits is cheaper than raising salaries.”

Why do we expect young people to take pride in their first ‘real’ job, or care about the customer, when they were laughed at for the same attitudes/actions in their minimum wage job?

Why does our society denigrate those who work low-paying jobs, when they are honest, hardworking, raise families and even pay taxes, which is more than you can say for their wealthier counterparts?

In the same vein, why is the four-year grad, with a degree paid for by mom and dad, considered a better candidate than the one who took longer working ‘non-professional’ jobs to pay for the same degree from the same school?

Maybe companies need to wake up. No matter what their family’s economic status, I haven’t seen the same high sense of entitlement in kids who spent their summers working in average and minimum wage jobs as I have in the ones who worked frequently overpaid jobs for their parents or didn’t work at all.

How far can you really rise when you start on the counter? Ask Karen King, President of McDonald’s USA East Division.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink what we, the people, look down on and what earns respect.

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What does Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz have in common with incoming President Barack Obama?
While they are superb choices as managers and as leaders,

1. both are entering their respective stages at a time of crisis;
2. both have multiple and diverse constituencies;
3. both are the focus of extremely high, often conflicting, sometimes impossible expectations; and
4. both are subject to substantial outside influences, circumstances and pressure.

Hopefully both will succeed, but the real lesson to be learned here is in the list of commonality and what they do.

Not because of the obvious difficulties, the scope of challenges or even enormous pressures, but because these four points are what every person in charge faces—from multinational CEOs through small biz owners and managers at every level to parents. In many ways the scope isn’t even all that different, relatively speaking.

It’s like cooking. You can take a recipe for two, multiply by X and feed an army.

Which makes this the opportunity of a lifetime.

Look at your world, professional and personal, and analyze it based on the four points above and sort accordingly. Then watch the actions of these two role models.

For instance, Obama spent substantial time before the election and all his time since talking with a wide variety of people and gathering a diverse amount of information from all quarters—including just plain people—in order to be as fully briefed as possible to the situations he’ll inherit on January 20th.

Bartz plans to gather diverse intelligence from all stakeholders and doesn’t seem interested in just kowtowing to those with power.

“But for the moment, she doesn’t even seem to care [about a Microsoft deal]. She told journalists to stop already with the speculation and advice, and explained that she would take her time listening to employees and customers before making any big decisions.”

Ask yourself, how often do you take on a situation by doing instead of listening, analyzing and thinking first?

Plan on watching these two, learning from what they do and applying that knowledge to your own situations—kind of long-distance mentoring.

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