Chris Kempczinski on the path to becoming CEO of McDonald's

The Path is a video series where I chat with some of the most influential leaders in the world exploring the successes, missteps, and key pivotal moments that shaped their professional paths. It’s through these stories that we can learn how to navigate our own career journeys.

My guest this week is Chris Kempczinski. Chris is the CEO of McDonald's, one of the most recognizable brands in the world. The company's reach is epic: Nearly 42,000 locations in 120 countries and territories serving 68 million customers a day.

Even just Kempczinski's path to the corner office at McDonald's is a story in itself: He never expected to be CEO. But nothing could have prepared him for that late night call on a Sunday in 2019. The CEO who had recruited him, was out for violating company policy, and the board wanted him to take over – now.

Chris was in the office the next morning – as the CEO.

It was not the path he dreamed of or even imagined. As a kid, Chris had other ideas. "It was all about wanting to be in sports," Chris told me for The Path. "My natural athletic ability actually made it pretty evident that that was not gonna happen."

Also, his parents were strict — "Basically I couldn't do anything unless I was keeping my grades up." They insisted he get a job — he took tickets at an amusement park, caddied, and washed dishes at a restaurant.

But some of the most important things we learn about leadership we learn in our teenage odd jobs. "When to speak, when not to speak," he said. "When to maybe push back on somebody, when to just bite your tongue and keep your mouth shut."

Chris's path through college was also unclear. At Duke, he tried pre-med "for no other reason other than my dad was a doctor," he said. "My chemistry teacher quickly helped me discover that I had other talents — or at least I didn't have a talent in pre-med."

Those other talents did not include the law, either: "One of my summers I worked at a law firm and all the lawyers there were telling me, ‘whatever you do, Chris, don't become a lawyer.’"

Chris eventually earned a degree in economics and landed his first job in Procter & Gamble’s soap sector, working on brands like Mr. Clean and Comet. It did not sound like an exciting job at first, but the standard of excellence he witnessed there left “an indelible imprint” on him.

Things started happening. He had choices to make, and they began paying off. He moved to Boston because that's where girlfriend got matched for her medical residency, and eventually earned himself a spot at Harvard Business School. Chris joined BCG as a consultant and got hired by one of his clients: PepsiCo. He climbed to senior positions during his eight years there, and then seven at Kraft, eventually leading the international business.

When Heinz acquired Kraft, Chris helped navigate the big transition. But with new management coming in, now in his 40s, he had to face yet another fork in the road. Fate had given him a chance to consider a major lane change. "It's now or never," he recalled. "If I'm gonna pivot out of packaged goods, I better do it now."

One of the first introductions he got was with Steve Easterbrook, then the new CEO at McDonald's. It wasn't exactly a job interview — but of course everything is. "‘I'm a new CEO and I just want to pick your brain,’" Chris recalled Easterbrook saying to him. "And one thing led to another, and ultimately I made the move over to McDonald's."

"I could have gone to a smaller company, probably private equity and been a CEO," he said. "If I went to McDonald's, the likelihood that I would ever be CEO was low." But that wasn't what was driving him, and it turned out to be a strength.

"Ultimately I concluded that the title wasn't the end all and be all for me," he said. "It was really about impact. It was about enjoying what I was doing, enjoying who I was working with and kind of just realizing that there's lots of CEO jobs out there, but it's the work that you're doing which is actually what makes a difference."

Some takeaways from our conversation:

Soft skills are important

Chris started out washing dishes, taking tickets, and caddying. These early jobs taught him how to read people and stay patient. "You learn how to work with a lot of different people under different situations. When to speak, when not to speak," he said. "When to maybe push back on somebody, when to just bite your tongue and keep your mouth shut."

When the McDonald’s CEO job came to him mid-crisis, he didn’t panic. He listened, adapted, and kept the business moving forward. These soft skills of knowing how to listen and when to step up are the key to Chris’s success. 

Most important brand is your personal brand

Chris shared an anecdote from his time at P&G. One of his first bosses asked what he thought would be the most important brand he was managing. "I thought, I don't know, Tide, or Crest, or Pampers, or something like that. But he corrected me and said ‘the most important brand you're ever gonna manage is the Chris Kempczinski brand’.

It was kind of a trick question, but the kind that prompts a big change in perspective. Chris said many of his opportunities came from personal relationships, networks, connections. "I'd like to think that that's all because I had a positive brand halo out there, that the Chris Kaminski brand actually stood for something good," he said.