Mike Grams
Taco Bell
Irvine, CA USA
"You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room—what you have to be really good at is recognizing when to call on someone else for their thoughts. If you can be an avid learner, it takes your doubt and turns it into confidence."
Career Roadmap
Mike's work combines: Business, Food, and Working with Others
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Here's the path I took:
High School
Here's the path I recommend for someone who wants to be a Chief Executives:
Graduate Degree: Business Administration and Management, General
Learn more about different paths to this career
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
The first 6 months with Taco Bell were very difficult. I focused on all the wrong things and was getting nowhere.
2.
I had the ‘ah-ha’ realization that you have to be a leader of people before anything else. Results follow that.
3.
In my late 20s, I was given the opportunity to take over a high-performing market. Turned out their results were masking a culture problem. They weren’t having any fun.
4.
The lesson for me here was the importance of culture and how making people feel really good goes a long way.
5.
Later, I took over a broken market. Adversity and defeat were deeply entrenched in the culture.
6.
I knew we had to do a complete cultural reboot. Propping people back up and empowering them to recreate the culture themselves is one of the toughest but most rewarding challenges.
7.
I moved to California and took the COO job. I knew what an incredible story there was about our people and I wanted to ensure that story was told in a way that fuels the business and drives decisions.
8.
On the flip side, we had to get the people in our restaurants rallied behind the brand’s business objectives. When those two things are happening together, it creates unstoppable momentum.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Earlier in my career, there were a few times I thought I was ready for the bigger job when I wasn’t. It was deflating to stand back and watch other people get opportunities ahead of me.
How I responded:
It was a matter of listening to others. The mentors, bosses, and leaders around me knew how to make me successful. Once I began to trust that, I redirected my energy into learning as much as possible in the job at hand. Opportunities came at the right times.