100 career conversations
McDonald's exec finds transition advice guiding him somewhere new
“OK, I'm not going to work tomorrow,” Neil Golden thought matter-of-factly on his way home.
Golden had just resigned from his position as the Chief Marketing Officer at McDonald’s. After 7 years in the role, capping nearly 25 years at the company, Golden needed to look outside the golden arches for his next move.
He thought he’d suit up again as a full-time executive. But first, he decided to talk to other senior leaders to learn what they thought about when transitioning. And it shifted his course.
I expected Golden, who oversaw a $1.2 billion budget and launched McCafé, to tell a textbook career ladder story about his time at McDonald’s when we met last week for February’s Navigator Q&A conversation.
I was wrong.
Supporting subscribers, read on to learn more about Golden’s story, hear his career advice and register for our next Q&A on telling a compelling career story. Not yet supporting the newsletter? Level up today for full access!
‘Told me that … would never happen’
Golden came to marketing after a stint as a professional tennis player, working for RC Cola and Burger King before landing at McDonald’s. Early on, he got to attend an all marketing planning session at the home office, where he saw the Chief Marketing Officer and other senior leaders in action.
“I came back from that meeting just completely impressed, inspired and a bit intimidated thinking it would be really cool to one day have earned the opportunity to be in that type of a role,” Golden said. “My immediate boss told me that that would never happen.”
Of course, eventually Golden did earn that opportunity to lead marketing for McDonald’s USA. A different boss told him it was possible for him to land the job, and outlined what he’d need to do. But Golden was never pursuing the title for the title’s sake, instead finding ways to add to his responsibilities as he grew in the company. He said he didn’t ever pursue a role within McDonald’s, but saw roles emerge.
Every so often, he’d get calls about opportunities elsewhere. His wife asked him, if you weren’t at McDonald’s, what would you be doing? He told her, number one, he believed he was in a dream job, and “number two, I'm really too busy to think about it.”
But then, due to challenging business circumstances, the CEO asked him to resign. (They’re still on friendly terms.) And he had to figure out what was next.
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Making it connect
Golden decided he wasn’t going to take on anything new until he’d talked to 100 people about their transitions. Whether they retired, started a business or took on a new role, he found a common thread: you’re fortunate if you have the freedom to make a choice to pursue what you love. He decided to find experiences that would check the boxes about what he had loved about McDonald’s:
Good people
An organization where his contributions would be valued
Opportunities to learn
He also wanted to move somewhere new from the quick service category.
“For the previous 27 years, if somebody looked at my resume, they would say, ‘He's a fast food guy,’” Golden said. “I felt it so important to take control of my narrative and not have me be defined by somebody else.”
Those 100 conversations became more than 400, from meeting with three to five people a week. Along the way, he started making connections: to a former colleague who became a professor, a real estate startup, a private equity firm. After a year and a half, he looked up and thought, “Everything that I said was important to me is happening. It's just I'm not in the type of role that I would have expected.”
Now, as a senior lecturer at Northwestern University, he is helping the next generation of marketers. He wants his students to know:
“Your career will always make sense in retrospect,” Golden said. “It’s OK to have a little uncertainty in your career, it’s OK to move from one category to the next. It’s up to you, however, to make it connect.”
Watch the full webinar:
Happy navigating,
Bridget