A Bigger Impact

One of the things my former boss impressed upon her charges was that whatever we were doing should be for more than just the task at hand.  She called it the "McDonald's approach."  The McDonald's brothers ran the restaurant, but it was Ray Kroc who franchised it and turned it into the global icon that it is today.  Similarly, we should have a bigger picture in mind when we created and ran our programs.  And in fact, we did end up helping others do what we did, leading to countless informal and formal replications of our work.

I find myself returning to the same approach in my current job.  Whoever the new mayor of Philadelphia will be, it is likely he will be the type of person who will read the kind of reports we produce, and not just read them but pore over them, dissect them, and incorporate them into his policies.

And so it is that while we are doing various reports first and foremost for our clients, they and we agree that there is a larger audience and impact in mind.  Whether it is affordable housing, economic development, immigration, minority business, taxes, or transportation, what we produce can have an impact on our city for the next four to eight years.  It's daunting and exciting to have that opportunity.  So I thank my former boss for helping me get my head around that bigger picture.