Fast Food Leadership
Running Head: FAST FOOD LEADERSHIP
Fast Food Leadership:
Valuing What is Easy Over What is Best
Ernest Ng
Claremont Graduate University
Ashley Kelloff
The Walt Disney Company
Claremont Graduate University
School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences
123 East Eighth Avenue
Claremont, CA 91711
Phone: (626) 664-8455
Email: ernest.ng@cgu.edu
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Fast Food Leadership
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Abstract
A fast food culture has developed that value pre-packaged, fast, cheap, and convenient, in
lieu of sustainable and healthy options. This culture is not isolated to food consumption, but has
impacted how leaders run their business. As uncertainty and complexity grows in global businesses,
the fast food mentality has spawned reactive individuals rather than thoughtful and thorough
leaders. We term this trend “Fast Food Leadership,” because the metaphor provides a framework
for understanding common mismanagement and remedies to prevent practitioners from propagating
the fast food culture. We propose several symptoms of a fast food leader: immediate gratification,
shallow vision, and unrealistic expectations. There is no fast and convenient way to wean
organizations off a steady diet of fast food, but we provide good first steps: value quality over speed,
commit to change, and invest for sustainability. By starting to bring back healthy values, bad habits
can be broken.
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“It’s not hard to make decision when you know what your values are.” – Roy Disney
The media’s recent attention on the nation’s obesity epidemic has served to highlight the
increasing dependence on consuming items that are pre-packaged, fast, cheap, and convenient, in
lieu of sustainable and healthy options. Center for Disease Control and National Institute of Health
reports on the obesity epidemic, books like Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2002), and movies
like Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock (2004) paint the picture of a culture that values cheap, fast,
and convenient without considering the long-term consequences. Gone are the days of choosing to
eat meals that consist of fresh, local, seasonal food found in the market in favor of drive-thru,
processed, ready-to-eat foods. Though the organic movement has entered the mainstream
conscience, it remains a relatively small segment of the market. In moderation, fast food might not
result in long-term health issues, but the mentality of fast, convenient, no-need-to-think has
penetrated deeply into almost every aspect of our culture that it has become difficult to moderate
the appeal of fast and convenient, especially when it involves making a choice for something
healthier.
Times of adversity make fast food more appealing because it is a quick solution and
something that requires little thought until you are hungry again. If the adversity remains for a
prolonged period of time, what might have been a one-time solution for a quick win grows into a
regular habit. Sadly, this type of “fast food” thinking is not just isolated to food consumption, but
has also been transmitted into how we build and lead our businesses. Since the rise of the digital
age, global markets, generational and cultural gaps, constant change and a host of other issues have
inserted a great deal of uncertainty and complexity in today’s organizations. It is especially now that
our leaders find themselves dealing with issues that they were never taught and at a pace that is
exponentially speeding up. This is putting pressure on leaders within established companies to
compete better and more strategically. In practice, this expectation is typically manifested as faster;
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but faster does not necessarily imply better. In fact, most of the time, faster only makes things more
complicated down the road because time was not taken to investigate and address the root causes of
the issues. We term this trend “Fast Food Leadership,” because the fast food mentality has spawned
reactive individuals rather than thoughtful and thorough leaders. As a result, entire industries have
developed that feed our business leaders with great slogans and convenient mass-produced solutions
that are easily consumable without much thought to context and long-term consequences to the
health of the business. While these industries do provide a valuable service, a constant dependence
on these services without tailoring their recommendations to the business’s context passes the
responsibility for any missteps and mistakes from the leader to the provider. The health of an
organization should be in the hands of the leader, but many times leaders fall into a practice of fast
food leadership by valuing what is easy and safe over what is best.
We use the fast food culture as a metaphor because it provides a tangible framework that
allows us to examine the leadership practices in use and the ones we are attempting to improve
through the establishment of an organizational cultural identity and the creation of structured HR
programs. For example, we can ask ourselves is what we are planning the fast, convenient, cheap,
and pre-packaged solution (drive-thru hamburger) or is it a thoughtful, thorough, and sustainable
solution (home cooked meal)? Is this a quick fix, full of empty calories just to demonstrate we did
something, or is it a planned and precise solution that we are willing to stand behind if it fails? The
fast food culture encourages instant gratification, passing off the responsibility, and the mentality of
just doing enough to get by because there is no personal investment or thought. When we choose
fast food, we know what we are getting, and a known product is more comforting than the
unknown, even if we know it is not good for us. When someone realizes they have an unhealthy fast
food habit, they point their finger at the companies for providing unhealthy options, instead of
looking at who made the decision to have a steady diet of fast food. The fast food culture attempts
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to shift all culpability for mediocrity or failure to the providers and not the decision-makers. It is this
cultural value that is at the core of fast food leadership.
While much of the academic literature focuses on idealistic leadership styles like charismatic
(House, 1977) and transformational (Bass, 1985) leadership, our goal through this article is to
provide a framework for understanding common mismanagement and to prevent practitioners from
propagating the fast food culture within their organizations. Fast food leaders rarely become aware
of their destructive behaviors until it is too late. In fact, many are good people just trying their best
to deal with a difficult business environment, and responding in ways that were modeled to them by
previous leaders. Through our observations, we propose three symptoms of a fast food leader, how
the symptoms manifest, and the problems they cause within the business in Table 1. These are
issues, as practitioners, we can identify and address before they develop into a destructive habit that
jeopardizes the health of the workforce and organization. We can relate to and understand the
appeal of fast food, so the framework gives us practical touchstones to evaluate symptoms and
consequently desired decisions or actions.
----------------------------Insert Table 1 around here
----------------------------Immediate Gratification: I Want to Eat Now
One symptom that perpetuates the fast food culture is the need for immediate gratification.
When we are stressed and hungry, our natural response is to get something fast and easy to eat. This
way we can get back to handling what is causing our stress. We do not want the extra stress of
thinking about what to eat, preparing it, cooking it (or going out of our way to obtain it, at specialty
stores), and then cleaning everything up. We rationalize that the time saved by eating fast food is
worth the health risk, yet we forget to analyze if we are actually more productive during that time we
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saved. Many times, the time we saved is balanced out by a decrease in productivity because we feel
sluggish and tired after eating the unhealthy food, netting minimal to no productivity gains. In fact,
research has demonstrated that taking a break can be beneficial to productivity (Janaro & Bechtold,
1985). Nevertheless, we rarely consider the total cost of our behavior and only focus on satiating our
immediate hunger.
The fast food leader possesses this same mentality of immediate gratification but applies it to
how they run their organization. There is minimal planning and preparation, and all responses are
reactive and ad hoc. For example, all current work gets put on hold to tackle an immediate need or
to address/solve a fire drill. This mentality assumes that the fast food leader will not be challenged
but rather his/her actions will dictate a silent following. Similar to a “command and control”
manner, the fast food leader pushes the directions and responsibility down so that he/she is not
accountable for any mistakes that arise.
In this situation, the fast food leader looks for quick and easy solutions to remedy the
immediate problem, but once one issue is handled, another one develops. This causes the leader to
be constantly putting out fires without taking the time to determine where all the issues are coming
from. They switch from issue to issue completely puzzled about why it is occurring, distracting the
leader and the rest of the organization away from their main purpose of helping the organization
succeed. This often is exemplified by the Lessons Learned stage at the end of a deliverable. The fast
food leader conducts these sessions in an attempt to see where things could have been improved.
While the theory behind the action is noble, in practice, it becomes a way to place blame for things
that have happened in the past rather than actually taking the time to dissect the decisions during the
project, transparently ask hard questions, and accept constructive criticism. By passing the blame
away and quickly moving on, the fire is put out without truly discovering what started it.
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This fast food mentality of immediate gratification leads to constant firefighting and
distraction from strategic goals resulting in employees and leaders feeling burnt-out and stressed.
Leaders who are constantly focused on immediate gratification soon realize that their long-term
health has been severally impaired by their over emphasis on the short-term, not to mention the
long-term health of the organization and the people that work for them. Many times, as HR
practitioners, we help feed a leader’s desire for immediate gratification by taking on the problem
without asking for guidance or help. Not only do we provide the tools and procedures to firefight,
and not the assistance needed to challenge the fast food mentality of the leader, but we also
encourage independent work as a way to remove accountability and partnership in the work. During
these circumstances, fast food leaders are then able to avoid the responsibility for any mistakes.
They are also able to “take action” on these mistakes through interventions of managing
performance; rather than assisting with the work to begin with. Often times, because the fast food
leader is ill-equipped to make decisions and take the responsibility, they are not able to be challenged
or even willing to be debated into changing their frame of mind.
Shallow Vision: As Long as it Tastes Good, I Don’t Care
The second symptom of having a shallow vision typically results from an overemphasis on
immediate gratification. Our fast food culture has created a disconnect between our food and us. We
only care about the end product and not how it came to be, how nutritious it is, or even how it is
prepared. Our meat comes processed and packaged in patty form, our vegetables and fruits are
served pre-diced and cut, and many individuals have no idea about what goes into making a loaf of
bread. As long as it tastes good, easy to procure, and cheap, nothing else matters. Only when people
get sick from the food they eat do we start questioning the means, but instead of addressing the root
causes like unsafe assembly-line slaughter houses and chemical pesticides, we develop solutions to
mitigate the effects so not to disturb the processes already in place. Flash pasteurization to kill
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bacteria, chemical rinses to rinse away pesticides, increased regulation to appease the public without
increased enforcement, so as long as it is not within our immediate sight or consciousness, we soon
revert back to our old ways.
The fast food leader shares this shallow vision, assuming not knowing is equivalent to not
existing. There is a lack of critical thinking about issues and rather than attempting to address the
root causes, which if investigated might reveal larger systemic issues that require more time, work,
and investment in resolving, they choose to avoid that opportunity and only address the presenting
problem. As a result, the problems always reemerge to the frustration of the fast food leader and in
reaction; the leader blames everyone but him or herself for the issue. The leader’s frustration soon
turns into resentment for his/her employees poisoning working relationships and bringing morale
and productivity down.
Just like the fast food culture creates a disconnect between our food and us, the fast food
leader’s shallow understanding allows them to rationalize away their responsibilities for any negative
results. Many times we perpetuate this disconnection by coddling leaders and believing we should
not waste their time with detail. We only present the high-level executive summary; thus providing
the fast food leader with just enough information to demonstrate his/her great vision if things go
well, and not enough information to justifiably assume any of the blame if it fails. The over reliance
on only the executive summary is classic fast food leader behavior. The executive summary is fast,
easy to digest, and contains very little insight. While its intention is to spur further questioning and
critical thought, the fast food leader ends up making a snack into his/her only source of
nourishment.
Unrealistic Expectations: The Options Are There, They Just Don’t Want It
Within our fast food culture, there tends to be unrealistic expectations when it comes to the
relationship between quality, quantity, price, and sustainability. We want the best, but we are
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unwilling to pay for it. We like the idea of sustainably grown food, but again, we are unwilling to pay
the price for it. We demand strawberries, watermelons, tomatoes, etc. year round, and do not care
how it happens, as long as it happens and is priced right. The ignorance behind how the food gets to
our plates fuels our unrealistic expectations and our reliance on fast food. What we know is a 12piece bucket of fried chicken with 3 large sides and 6 biscuits is around $25, and if we were to
purchase all the ingredients necessary to make the same meal from the local grocery store it would
definitely cost more than $25 and it would not be instantly ready to eat. In addition to being cheap,
fast food is created to appeal to the very instinctual responses we have when stressed. Nature has
programmed our bodies to seek out fat and high calorie foods when under stress. The fast food
industry has capitalized on this instinctual tendency, and even though the industry might place a
small number of “healthy” options on the menus, it is unrealistic to expect stressed individuals to
make a healthy choice. Also, sometimes those “healthy” options like certain salads are actually
higher in calories and sodium than the hamburgers. In this fast food culture, it is unrealistic to
assume people will take the time to look at nutrition information and make the right choices for
their long-term health.
In parallel, due to fast food leaders’ need for immediate gratification and their shallow vision,
they tend to have unrealistic expectations of how fast something can get done, how much it costs,
and the impact it will have. Their expectations are not grounded in data or a deep understanding of
the process, which causes them to expect immediate responses to complex issues. The unrealistic
demands create impossible situations for employees to resolve leading to decreased motivation and
poor work quality. The fast food leader places the cause of these issues on the individual and not the
context created by his/her unrealistic expectations. In these situations, it would not be uncommon
to see an increase in written warnings, poor performance reviews, inconsistent messaging, and high
turnover. The morale decreases as the leader loses confidence in his/her team, team members no
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longer have best friends in their group due to turnover, and employees resent their leader and their
unfair assessments of their work performance.
Practitioners sometimes propagate these expectations in the programs and tools given to
leaders. The fast food culture has polluted the well-intended HR practices and policies. Performance
reviews, performance metrics, competencies, performance improvement plans, and other such tools
created to initially assist leaders in having substantive, meaningful conversations with employees
have turned into empty, frivolous exercises or tools of control perpetuating the fast food mentality.
Fast food leaders turn these processes into tasks to check off their list or tools used to deal with
problems that they themselves have a big hand in. To expect an annual performance review, if even
given, and written in a way that is objective to provide the necessary data and feedback to help an
employee consistently grow is unrealistic. In addition, to expect a simple written warning or
performance improvement plan to resolve a systemic problem and increase motivation/morale of an
employee demonstrates a shallow vision and goes against most organizational behavior principles.
Similar to how we seldom care about the process of creating a mass-produced hamburger, many
leaders are only focused on the results without regard to the process, thereby creating unrealistic
expectations and perpetuating the cycle of fast food leadership.
Remedies
While the fast food leader is alive and well in America, not all is lost. Not all fast food
leadership is bad or harmful, especially in smaller doses and if followed up with more long-term
thoughtful solutions. Sometimes leaders must react in a quick, efficient and timely manner. But a
steady diet of fast food leads to an unproductive workforce and an unhealthy organization. There is
no fast and convenient way to wean organizations off a steady diet of fast food, but we provide
three good first steps in Table 2.
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----------------------------Insert Table 2 around here
----------------------------What’s the Rush? Slow Down
Fast and easy has replaced measured and thoughtful at the detriment of quality. Speed and
rigor are not mutually exclusive, and many of the tools and exercises currently in place are high
quality, but how these tools and exercises are used determine the value of the result. Therefore, the
first remedy proposed is starting to value quality over quantity and speed. All of us learned in
mathematics to show your work, because even if you get the final answer wrong, you can get credit
according to the quality and logic behind your work. This should be no different in business. The
fast food culture has made us less self-aware and only concerned with the end results.
By thinking and reflecting before reacting, root causes of issues can be identified and plans
can be made to resolve them. For example, many performance-based employee relations issues
within an organization are not one-off situations but symptoms of deeper issues. The fast food
leader’s first inclination would be to react, put the employee on a written warning or performance
improvement plan, most likely terminate that employee after 30 days because there was no
improvement, and move on without trying to understand why there was no improvement. By
pausing, thinking critically about the context, forming different theories about the reason for the
performance issue, and testing those theories out, a leader can make more informed decisions. Only
after testing assumptions and theories can a leader rule out deeper systemic issues that could
jeopardize the stability of the organization. While the need to demonstrate quick decision-making is
important in today’s global businesses, acting on instinct can lead to bad decisions that sacrifice
long-term stability in favor of short-term relief. Building patience for quality decision-making is
paramount to countering natural fight or flight tendencies that are instrumental to fast food
leadership.
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Old Habits Die Hard
Once a behavior develops into a bad habit, it becomes difficult to change, but force of habit
is not a valid excuse for mismanagement. The fast food leader is reactive in an unpredictable and
non-productive manner during stressful times. This inconsistency decreases employee morale and
productivity because it creates confusion. Therefore, our second remedy is committing to change,
and that starts with developing a strategic guide to assist you through stressful times. Especially
when trying to break bad habits, adhering to a plan helps to avoid any self-doubt or rationalizations.
Developing a set of critical questions and values that have to be answered and addressed like “Am I
responding too personally?” or “Is there a better way to handle this situation?” helps to slow things
down, prevent unproductive reactions, and redirect the leader back to core values.
In addition, instrumental to any strategic plan is being able to reflect and learn from
successes and be transparent about mistakes. By implementing a personal system of evaluation and
reflection, the leader can gain insight about situations that trigger unproductive reactions, best
practices to resolve issues, and other areas of critical importance. This practice of double loop
learning (Argyris & Schon, 1978) takes a commitment to change and an understanding that what
might have worked in the past, might not work today. The global business environment is constantly
changing so there needs to be an acceptance of that reality and a commitment to grow, learn, and
change accordingly.
The Future Starts Today
Fast food leadership begets fast food leadership unless we intervene programmatically. Most
new leaders do not have the proper training to deal with this rapidly changing business environment.
As such, many model their behaviors and practices on what they have experienced and seen before.
Even for those wide-eyed, enthusiastic new leaders who had great role models before, they soon
become jaded and complacent when constantly encountering other fast food leaders around them.
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They soon realize that “if you can’t beat them, join them.” Thus, the third remedy is to invest in the
sustainability. By developing a long-term view, leaders are forced to think about how their actions
influence tomorrow’s outcomes.
It is imperative to not perpetuate the cycle of fast food leadership. Especially as a greater
number of millennials join the workforce, their thirst for challenge and personal growth fuel their
motivation. If a fast food leader does not provide the necessary experiences for these individuals,
research has demonstrated that there is little hesitation to remain in a job that is not fulfilling just
because it is comfortable and secure (Deal, Altman, & Rogelberg, 2010). Therefore, the behaviors of
a fast food leader are not only detrimental to the current productivity of the workforce, but also to
the future of the organization. To mitigate the impact of fast food leaders on the workforce, and to
invest in a sustainable future, new leaders and employees should have mentors that model
thoughtful decision-making, reflection, and transparency. If there is not a commitment to invest in
the future and training the leaders of tomorrow properly, today, they will just be even more
entrenched in fast food practices in the future. There needs to be a recognition that the business
environment is changing, the workforce is changing, and the skills that are needed to compete in this
context are constantly changing, as well. If we do not seek to balance the needs of today with those
of tomorrow, our organizations will remain addicted to fast food practices and continuously plagued
with mismanagement.
Conclusion
The fast food leader is a product of our fast food culture and a lack of proper training.
Drucker (2003) lamented that much of management and leadership training today fails to focus on
people, their values, and their growth and development. Instead, management has become a science
focused on execution, finance, and strategy neglecting the fact that managers are leaders of people.
These three remedies put into practice together attempt to address this issue. Much of
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mismanagement is not a failure in execution or strategy, but a failure of values. By valuing speed
over quality, valuing doing the easy thing over the right thing, and valuing short-term gains over
long-term sustainability, the health of the organization is put in jeopardy. The remedies we provide
attempt to reengage the leader in healthy values. Drucker (1966) wrote that,
“Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they
play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body. But any organizations
also need a commitment to values and their constant reaffirmation, as a human body
needs vitamins and minerals. There has to be something the organization stands for,
or else it degenerates into disorganization, confusion, and paralysis…Value
commitments, like results, are not unambiguous” (pg. 56).
Just like how fast food provides plenty of calories without providing essential vitamins and
minerals, fast food leaders might get results, but at what cost? For example, Morgan Spurlock in his
documentary “Super Size Me” ate only fast food for 30 day resulting in weight gain, organ failure,
mood swings, and put his health at serious jeopardy. What damage he did in 1 month, took 14
months to repair. Spurlock’s experience provides a great metaphor for the repercussions of fast food
leadership. What a fast food leader can do in a short period of time can take years to fix. As such, it
is important to identify the fast food behaviors present in the organization, so remedies and a
reengaging of healthy values can be applied before the damage is permanent.
References
Argyris, C., & Schon, D. (1978). Organizational Learning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Bass, B.M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press.
Deal, J.J., Altman, D.G., & Rogelberg, S.G. (2010). Millennials at work: What we know and what we
need to do (If anything). Journal of Business and Psychology, 25, 191-199.
Drucker, P.F. (1966). The Effective Executive. New York: Haper & Row Publishers.
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Drucker, P.F. (2003). The New Realities. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
House, R.J. (1977). A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In J.G. Hunt and L.L. Larson (Eds.).
Leadership: The cutting edge. (pg. 189-207). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Schlosser, E. (2002). Fast Food Nation. New York: Harper Perennial.
Spurlock, M. (Director). (2004). Super Size Me [Motion Picture]. United States: Kathbur Pictures.
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Author Note
Ernest Ng is a PhD candidate in Applied Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, and
also a Graduate Associate at The Walt Disney Company. He currently researches creativity,
innovation, and leadership within organizations. Ernest holds a Bachelor of Science in
Psychobiology from UCLA and a Master of Arts in Applied Developmental Psychology from
Claremont Graduate University.
Ashley Kelloff is a Director of Workforce Insights at The Walt Disney Company. She has
spent 15 years in the Human Resources field managing operations, HR information systems and
assessing, developing and deploying Talent. She has a Master of Arts in International Public Policy
from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts from University of Virginia.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ernest Ng, School of
Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University, 123 E. 8th St., Claremont,
California 91711. E-mail: ernest.ng@cgu.edu
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Table 1
Symptoms, Behaviors, and Problems with a Fast Food Leader
Symptoms
Manifestation/Behaviors
Problems
Immediate gratification
•
Reactive, just in time, or too
late responses
•
Always firefighting leading
to burnout
Shallow vision
•
Does not solve root causes
•
Problems always reemerge
Unrealistic expectations
•
Expects immediate
responses to complex issue
•
Employees become
unmotivated
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Table 2
Remedies for a Fast Food Leader
Remedies
Manifestation/Behaviors
Results
Value quality over speed
•
Pausing to reflect and
addressing root causes
•
Commit to change
•
•
Invest for sustainability
•
Comfort with change, and
curiosity/commitment to
learn
Long-term thinking,
mentoring, and transparency
•
Thoughtful, consistent,
and impactful decisionmaking
Double loop learning
Strong, competent,
motivated workforce