Recognized Senior & Passionate Brand Leader Michael Donahue

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and you’re in for a treat. I hope you have your paper and pencil ready. You are going to learn a lot. Today’s guest is Michael Donahue. He’s a recognized senior and passionate brand leader, proven innovative and anticipatory champion of relevant change management. He is a proven, intuitive, customer centric advocate for over 40 years at senior levels in some of the largest companies that you have all heard of. Welcome, Michael.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:00:53] Thank you very much. Lee, it’s an honor to be here with you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:56] I am so excited to pick your brain here and get your thoughts on the world of associations. Tell the listener a little bit about your background. I know you spent a lot of your years with McDonald’s, but you’ve been involved in associations, it seems like, for a very, very long time.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:01:14] Yeah, and I pride myself on that, LEIGH. The diversity has given me a kind of a unique perspective because I started out in the trade association business back in 1987, 1980, coming out of college as a I was one of the first public relations contract majors. They didn’t even have PR and earned media back then at the Fine Institute, we call the Harvard of the Midwest, Illinois State University. And so I came out of there and I immediately got an intern with a local state senator, and I started working down in Springfield, Illinois, in politics. I was from the Chicago area and then immediately got hired away. I realized what a breeding ground state capitals were at that time with Ronald Reagan, the 10th Amendment bringing items back to the state level, and a group called the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest trade association for small business owners. I think the vast majority have ten employees or less of their members. They hired me as part of this trend of getting back to the states to cover the Midwest area. And it was a great experience learning the association business from, you know, small business owners that were real entrepreneurs that had real problems. I migrated then I got hired from them because of our success. We actually repealed the state inheritance tax at that time. Of course, they they put it back on later. But the Governor Thompson, who was governor for 14 years, a very strong governor, they called him governor for life. He saw the work I had done with this small business group. And he was a moderate Republican and needed help. And he brought me in and had me run his Department of Commerce, small business and technology.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:03:20] So I got some government experience. And then out of that, I got noticed by corporations in the in the political world needing more help at the state level. And I got hired by 3 a.m. to do both sales branding and some some government relations work. They sold a lot of product. And then from there things seemed to kind of just breed within themselves. In this arena, I was able to go and get hired ultimately to McDonald’s Corporation, and I worked my way up there. I was there at McDonald’s Corporation out of Oakbrook, Illinois. They’re down now in downtown Chicago. And I worked there for 20 years. Lee And in a diverse group of experiences, I worked in government relations. I opened our first social responsibility group and response to all the groups like PETA and the they used to call them the obesity police and others that targeted McDonald’s. And we worked with them. And it was much like a trade association because we like to use our franchisees. Back then we had 2300 and every congressional district. So at McDonald’s we sort of worked. We said we were a multi local company, not multinational, because of the franchisee model. So I had a good experience with them, good experience with 3ma good experience with NFIB working for the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, which of course Chicago’s headquarters for many of the largest. But we worked for the largest all the way down to the smallest retailers. And then I’ve done a lot of consulting in between and have a rich history of both, seen it from the corporate larger side and then from the people that represent us in the trade associations as lobbyists or consultants and multi-unit groups like that.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:34] Now for the folks that are in the enterprise level and working for large corporates, can you talk about the importance of associations and how these large enterprises can play a role in really helping their entire industry if they lean into. Associations and really try to serve them to the best of their ability.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:05:59] I sure will. And if you have a big corporate office or people that are coming up in media relations, public relations, social responsibility, ESR, you name it, I have a significant statement for them. If they don’t use trade associations, if they don’t use third party advocates, they’re, they’re doing their brand an injustice. And that sounds a little harsh, but let me explain my experience with McDonald’s. I came into McDonald’s and the first thing I did, I was hired as a government relations specialist because that’s where I was coming under. And they wanted me to cover all 50 states, believe it or not. So I said, okay. I sat down and started my process, my inventory. I said, How many state restaurant associations coming from the retail merchants? Of course, knowing that Penney’s and Sears and all the large groups had really formulated all these state retail associations, and we had a coalition of national retail associations, and that was who they had. They hired powerful lobbyists in every state. So to some degree, they could protect their brand, you know, rather than go down and fight an issue that might be a consumer issue. They could have their trade associations doing that and talking from an economic and jobs and other reality. Well, I was told by my leaders at McDonald’s, well, we don’t join trade associations at the time.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:07:31] I will say as the industry leader at that time, long before Apple and others, we battled each year with Coca Cola to be the world’s most recognized trademark. And I guess there was a left over Ray Kroc and Fred Turner of the two founders, sort of I call it arrogance, but I have all the respect in the world for them. But they had prohibited their group or communications people from joining trade associations saying, we don’t want to share our secrets with other competitors. We are leading the industry. There was one statement somebody made in a meeting to me once that I just grimaced at We have everything to teach and nothing to learn. I went about and I realized that I was fighting upstream. Lee So I quickly developed a strategy and a plan to convince my management team all the way up to the top that not using the Restaurant Association’s was a major mistake for McDonald’s, that we were exposing the brand to unnecessary consumer hostility. There’s, you know, is there a brand that’s more consumer facing every day than McDonald’s? And if the word got out that we were fighting, let’s say a soda pop packs or we were fighting health care benefits, they could vote with their feet walking into any restaurant.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:09:07] And the same is true of any retailer and other group. So I started to put together a case examples of where we could be much more effective if we worked with our state restaurant associations as opposed to going it alone and and relying on others most at that time, QSR, as we call them, quick service restaurant rather than fast food. It’s more appealing, right? So we said, you know, if we join these associations, we have the internal expertise that they do not have. We have an obligation to give them that information because these issues. Do help other companies. And it’s just not a McDonald’s myopic issue. And as we started to do that and see some success, see some coalition building, I think others in the industry, the QSR industry and others began to realize the importance of that and join their local restaurant association. At first I had some work to do, Lee. We were met as arrogant. We were met as 19 players, and for business to split that way is a very detrimental way to lobby in the state legislature. When your opponents are coming in pretty well organized, if that makes.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:30] Sense. Now, when did you start getting traction? And then people starting to understand your vision and start believing what you believe that it helps when we lean into the association and that our work, that it’s not kind of a zero sum game that we are going to gain more than what we’re giving in actuality.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:10:50] So let’s take an issue. For example, let’s let’s say a well-intentioned legislator. Wanted to add a new tax on I use it before on beverages. We had the famous case of Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York trying to tax big beverages and sugary drinks. Think he was doing a social good? Well, that was around a lot longer than him, I can tell you. And we would analyze the tax. We would realize that it might be like another syntax, like cigarets or other things that legislators go for because they’re not as. What do you want to see detrimental to people? We realized early on that people didn’t understand the economics of these issues. So using our tax department, using our vendors like Coca Cola, several others, we would get together with the respective industry groups and by that I mean restaurant associations, chambers of commerce, let’s say it’s in Little Rock, Arkansas, was just repealed after years there sort of tax. It took a broad based coalition of led by the local restaurant and beverage associations to really defeat this because the cause that they were paying for was a good one, but it was an inappropriate tax on the consumer. And the consumer was already taxed 2 to 3 times on food products and other purchases and like that. And we considered that a regressive tax. And you can make a very good case. And this is where I think your message or your question to me about what’s the corporate, corporate person’s job is to realize this is not a tax on a brand, that there is a statement that I would use what many Chicago legislators, and they just shake their head and say, Mike, you’re right, but your people don’t elect me. When I would say there’s no such thing as a tax on business. We live in a free market enterprise system. Any time you raise a tax on a product, what does the retailer, what does the wholesaler, what does the restaurant industry have to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:27] Because they pass it on like.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:13:29] Small margins. So once we started this effort of a multidimensional group coming together, we found that we could go out and recruit consumers to be a big part of the group. And don’t you dare tax my soda. You know, it’s bad enough I have to go and get a value meal for my family to save money. We would take good enough. But it’s it’s important that I pay as low as much every time you pass a tax. It’s a double tax to me because the food tax. Isn’t that so? That’s what I would say for every industry, for every issue, almost even the very complicated issues, you can put together a coalition using that trade association as the lead. And the more you make that trade association strong, the more you bring resources to that trade association, the stronger you help your brand, the stronger that you make it. And then for any corporation that has franchisees or distributors or even sales representatives out in the marketplace, the local you know, it’s all Tip O’Neill used to say that all politics are local and you want your local franchisees that people see sponsoring the Little League, cleaning up the beach or sidewalk litter, participating in Little League baseball games or litter cleanup drives or whatever. You want that local contact talking to their local legislator and saying this is the problem and that’s the job of associations and it’s multiple voices with the same message. And I hope we played a role in bringing a lot of groups together. Once we started joining, I think by the time I left 20 years later, we had joined just about every state restaurant group. Sometimes we we join the retail group if it was more powerful and even local chambers of commerce.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:34] Now, if you do that right, can’t you really build some true grassroots campaigns like that are organically built from the ground up rather than some of these things that maybe have a big national budget that makes it look like they’re a grassroots campaign, but in actuality, they’re not.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:15:55] As a great and multidimensional question and I get paid by the word and my area of work. So you cut me off if I go too long. But Lee, it starts with this. Matt. Legislation. Legislative support is a game of mathematics. And a legislator on issues of the day like abortion or like climate control or other issues get thousands of letters and many of them are signed postcards that are worthless because they just throw them in a stack. I was married to a state senator for seven years and I saw up front how they handled it. But nothing is more compelling to that state senator or that local senator or that congressman or congresswoman or senator than a personal letter on personal stationery generated maybe from the trade association. But saying, listen, I’m a member of the community. I pay my taxes, I employ 60 people per restaurant. I contribute to X, Y and Z organizations. And what you’re doing to me will hurt me competitively from the district next to me, the state next to me, and hurt employment and other things. Because we’re a most people don’t realize it. We’re not an oil company. When you’re in the retail business or the restaurant business, we don’t sell oil and buckets of crude. We sell by value. So the margins are very small and that’s what’s important. And some of these taxes that people think they can get away with and not address the real issues and and and turn a business association’s or turn their members into the evil person is a big mistake. And especially in today’s world. You know, I could go on I could I could do that in a second, but I’d rather get your follow up before I go into my Europeanization of the United States.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:19] Sure. Well, let’s let’s focus in on on the task at hand in terms of what can or what do you recommend the association leader in a local market? Let’s start there. What could they be doing better in order to attract some of these larger players that have more resources, maybe deeper pockets, but still serve that individual, the small firm, the boots on the ground guy that that, you know, this is their livelihood. And and some of the ramifications are going to impact that person personally and their family personally. So, you know, as a leader of an association, especially at the local level, you have to serve multiple constituents. So how do you recommend them kind of threading the needle to serve both the larger corporates and that kind of smaller boots on the ground where the impact is maybe felt more personally to that person?

Michael A. Donahue: [00:19:25] I’ll start in the reverse order of telling you what I think. The biggest problem if a trade association is experiencing membership from big members or small members dropping off. I’ll start with what I think is the biggest. Miss or the biggest mistake of trade associations. Trade associations from their very origin origination were created to protect whatever their organizations. Trust me. For every one business trade association, there’s two or three consumer trade associations. There is more than that union organizations. There’s what I call the built in anti marketers that are going to be attacking your members every single day. Be it on nutrition if you’re a restaurant, be it on price hikes or credit card caps, if you’re a retailer, if you’re a small manufacturer, they think you’re loaded with money and they want to tax you on employees or things of this nature. And I think what has happened, the worst trend with all of the efforts, and I do call it I heard a wise man say this, it’s not my term, and I heard it 20 years ago. Lee So it’s not new. What is the Europeanization of the United States? And that is if you look at the traditional positions of business philosophy and how we were founded and kind of why we left the other countries is the idea of the power of the individual, the idea of the power of the independent entrepreneur, and the independent idea of market based philosophy is better than a government based.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:21:22] Now, you and I know and I don’t say this to be political, we’ve long lost that war, but trade associations are probably on the front lines of changing it. And I think the sense that they make is they see everybody else is going towards this new new world order and trying to be socially responsible, transparent. Whatever the case may be. And I would tell you that I talk to many trade associations that said, Mike, we have to change here because the dynamic is changing in Iowa or the dynamic is changing in New York or wherever. And I have to work here every day with these legislators. And I said, But what that means is you’re capitulating to the idea that the system you defend isn’t working. And for example, just the change of the messaging. To not go in and apologize for the fact that you represent, I could give you all kinds of examples. But I’m a restaurant or in the case of a chamber that you represent waste management or in other areas. Every one of these areas are doing great things in the social. It’s good business, you know, for McDonald’s to take many of the social responsibility positions we did working with the Environmental Defense Fund to come up with new ways to create packaging, reduce, reuse, recycle was good business. When we made key announcements, our business would go up now. What has happened is I would go to our tax department and say they want to tax X, Y or Z, and they would sit back in business execs that don’t know the political process would say, Well, what do you want us to do? I said, No, no, no.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:23:26] Don’t don’t take that approach. Tell me what’s the best for job growth, economic growth, tax growth in our business? And let me put that into messages and go sell that to the legislators. Far too many people are conflict avoidant and are afraid to take a stand. And it’s rare anymore. And I’m talking when I was running the trade associations, it was over 25 years ago, but I found it then, and even when I was hire an independent lobbyist to work for us, I was finding it. Then they were more worried about ruining their reputation with a changing philosophy in government than they were with trying to reiterate the importance of it and, and, and business and economic issues. I could go into a 100 examples, but the bottom line is, if you’re not afraid to speak your truth, my mantra at McDonald’s was we we’re often hiding because we are again before Apple and others, we were the world’s most recognized trademark. So it was easy for Teddy Kennedy or you name it, to attack our brand. Mario Cuomo stood on the property of a McDonald’s restaurant and said, we’ve got to get rid of this disposable world and get rid of the Styrofoam container.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:24:49] And he got nightly news and was all over the place. Next thing you know, McDonald’s is a scourge of the environment and we’re fighting for four or five years bans on polystyrene foam. But. If a technical issue like that, you get the facts and you have the company committed to defend what they’re doing rather than trying to cut in and find a solution, you can win the battle and you can win by making the point you want a landfill that doesn’t have leachate and methane gas and you want inert items in there. And Styrofoam is probably one of the best to keep it solid. There’s a reason why Chicago’s built on a landfill, you know, and there’s a reason why they have methane gas and everything else. Biodegradability we used to have a professor say is the biggest myth since Santa Clause. Now, I’m not trying to get on to I’m not trying to get onto one issue at a time. I’m just trying to say the same is true with the new workforce and the different ways that people are bringing in employees. And then legislators try to regulate that. You have to have a certain schedule or you have to have certain benefits or whatever. And the HR departments and the government relations departments are afraid to go to their local trade association and say, this is why we’re doing it. We have so many single mothers that this is an advantage to them and this is how it is better for them, for business.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:26:28] They rather worry about, you know, the the stimulus coming at them, then trying to change. As Stephen Covey told us, the difference between animals and humans is our ability to think between stimulus response. You know, often trade associations will run to us and say, oh, you’re going to have to change your X, Y or Z position because they’re introducing legislation. My response would be why? And they would say, Well, they’re sponsoring legislation. I said, Isn’t it a democracy? And whoever wins the argument, so let’s go back at them and explain to them why we’re doing it. And I think too many business leaders and I’ll take it all the way up to the c-suites. And you see what happens with recent decisions by Coca-Cola, by Delta Airlines, by others. They want to capitulate to what they perceive is the what should we say, the the loud minority, and they end up hurting themselves. Worse, people vote with their feet. You’ll never be able to measure how many people didn’t go into a McDonald’s because we had Styrofoam and people were blessed. And Styrofoam you’ll never be able to measure how many people are no longer flying a certain airline because they took a liberal position. And I’m not taking sides, but because they took a position that they didn’t belong in. And that’s why you have a trade association to represent you and those issues.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:27:57] And more times than that, when we did get with the Environmental Defense Fund and say, hey, don’t look at what goes out the front of our door. Help us with decisions on what goes out the back of the door. Corrugated cardboard, you know, plastic containers help us. We came up with a Harvard business case of 60 different ways we could reduce, reuse, recycle that weren’t going out the front. And it was less than 1% of whatever was in the landfill, those Styrofoam containers. Yet we couldn’t win the PR war, but we won the government relations war. And what I would say is association management has to be stronger. They have to be more willing to tell the truth. They have to talk about transparency, and they have to go to a company and say, listen, you’re going to lose your shirt because they don’t understand you. If you don’t do X, Y and Z or arm me with those, there might be time for modifications, for compromise. We all we’re all for that. But 90% of the time the legislator does not understand. A pal does not understand a business issue. And that’s what I mean by the Europeanization. We have less business support than ever. And I’m an economic guy. I’m all for it, you know, I’m all for doing the right thing for the environment, doing the right thing for everything. But you don’t automatically capitulate to the wrong idea.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:27] Yeah. I mean, in your career, you’ve seen a lot and you have a lot to share with others and something that we’ve seen over the years when there is lack of context and lack of understanding of the big picture. You know, they say history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. So we’re seeing some of the same things happen again and again based on, you know, not optimal information and capitulation. I mean, that’s that’s happening that’s happened throughout history.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:29:54] So this notion that you would tell legislators and they would look at you like. You know, you were a Cyclops. I’d say there’s no such thing as tax in business. All this talk about the corporations don’t pay taxes is such malarkey. If you add up what they really pay in personnel and property and sales and other taxes, there is no such thing. And people might want to argue with this as a tax on business in a free market enterprise price. It’s all about margins and the marketplace will take care of it. Why do we have to fight with all the fast food places on a dollar menu or on a value menu? It’s the marketplace setting those ideas. And so Governor Thompson used to like to travel around the state, and he was a moderate. So he liked to speak to a Republican, his Republican people. But then he also liked to talk to labor unions and sometimes got criticized. And I loved it. I say don’t walk away from adversity as a trade association, walk right into it and say, we want we got a point of view we’d like to have heard here and we’re going to bring our members. But he used to always say, because Illinois, like California, like so many other states, had a terrible worker’s comp and unemployment insurance and tax environment still does. But he would walk in and say, we’re trying to improve the business climate.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:31:34] And I pulled him aside one day as an economic adviser. And I said, Governor, why do you keep referring to it as the business climate? He goes, What do you mean? I go, Isn’t it the jobs climate? And he looked at me and he was a brilliant man, much smarter than me. And he goes, You know, you’re right. You can’t tax the job provider. And Illinois. At that time, we were losing manufacturing, basic manufacturing like crazy because of worker’s comp and unemployment and a simple message change, a simple ability. The art of the rhetoric to call it a jobs climate makes all the difference in the world. You know, now everybody wants to target business because they’re a big monolithic environment. When I testified in front of the FTC, when they were saying Ronald McDonald was no different than Joe Camel, I said, I’m here today to represent the more than 10,000 families, mothers and fathers that work for McDonald’s Corporation. And I assure you, we have no desire to make the world heavier, provide them with food that is not considered nutritious. It has the basic items. You have a lot of people that are hard to convince. But when you bring in that’s the other thing I recommend to our trade association is bring in your adversaries.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:33:08] The best thing you can do is bring in the adversary. Whenever we did state workshops or a federal workshop around the country, we’d bring in that guy that was introducing the Sirup Tax, that was introducing the retail grocery tax or whatever. And we’d have them by by talking to our members. They thought they were lobbying us until they start getting a question. And then another question. And then it might be Inner City Black from Chicago. Who would have a black owner operator who was the largest employer in that guy’s district go up to him and say, Do you understand what you’re taxed on, soda or cheeseburger or anything else? Do you know what it means to employment and to what I’m doing in your district? And it makes all the difference in the world. And what you find is people, when presented with logical facts, presented with the business case, are often persuaded in a different way. Just look at some of the changes that has happened. And and I think, you know, I think what’s his name from Tesla is a perfect example. He’s not a moderate or a liberal or conservative. He’s a common sense guy. And that’s what trade associations have lost. We retreat. We retreat. We retreat because the majority of legislators are not business oriented. Right. We know that. Right. There’s very few leaders left that would put themselves through those kind of things.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:35:01] So the immediate reaction of the business community is and the trade association is to retreat and say, let’s get the best we can out of this. And it’s like, What? Why can’t you make the case? You know, and there’s a great book, Conflict Politics. If the Enemy attacks and pushes you back two steps by criticizing and you retreat and come back with your evidence and they push you back to steps, you retreat and push them back one step. What’s their net gain? One step. And they just hurt your business and profitability as opposed to understanding you’re the job promoter or the job creator. And that’s the message I would give to summarize all that. All my rhetoric is I think trade associations in a way have to adopt that model that so many governors and and so many others. You know, Trump tried to steal it from Ronald Reagan. But taking back, taking back, you know, what it means to be an and free enterprise system and the damage that’s done. Now, I admit there’s things that have to be done to improve working conditions, all that, but not to the magnitude we’re seeing nowadays. You know, we’re reverting to a system that has failed everywhere else in the world sometimes. And again, I don’t mean to be too political.

Lee Kantor: [00:36:29] Now, I know you’ve retired for some of your work, but you’re still available as a free agent consultant, is that right?

Michael A. Donahue: [00:36:37] Absolutely. I’m one of those guys that I watched too many of my friends and colleagues when they got to be 65 and they thought they could go off and retire and play golf and take their boat out. And within a few years they were a fraction of themselves. I, I am convinced I love it so much, especially being an advocate, especially teaching businesses, trade associations, companies, new ways of going about things. Lee That I will work forever. It’s forever young for me. While I compartmentalize, I have the ability to do that and I like it a lot. And there’s this thing that most people don’t realize. It was started by Proctor and Gamble, and I shamelessly stole it, and it led to one of my biggest promotions at McDonald’s. It’s called The Idea of Anticipatory Issues Management. And it was created. I got to give her credit, Deborah, if you’re out there, please call me. I was going to form a business with at one time. She was a Ph.D. in environmental science at at, at, at P&G. And she realized they were getting chilled on things like phosphates from their detergents in the water and things like diapers when the whole solid waste crisis came on. You and I remember when we went out in the backyard and burned our garbage in United States, I never saw a seagull unless I went to Florida. Now they’re everywhere because we bury our garbage. Well, she created a model called Anticipatory Issues Management that I pioneered at McDonald’s that allows you to play offense on all issues.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:38:26] And it’s there’s only four. No matter what company, no matter what association you’re in, there’s only four elements of every issue. There is the emergence. And that’s when you hear your environmental or teacher, you know, the education’s talking about this crisis may be serious, maybe a Swedish study that’s not necessarily germane. Then there’s a triggering event. But if you follow the hierarchy before it becomes a triggering event, you get the media, you get other groups, liberal groups and others starting to repeat, you know, such and such is bad for the world. And then we all know there’s no leader. So the media picks up on it and starts running stories. And then shortly after that, your politicians start trying to affect it with regulatory and legislative policies, and then the next thing, the next. So there is the first step of emergence. Then there’s your triggering event. Think of the garbage, barge and Long Island sound that nobody would let dock because they’re out of garbage room. And then there is resolution where companies invariably, on any issue, spend millions of dollars in crisis management to solve an issue with big blue ribbon panel, you know, blue ribbon tables and all that experts. And then there’s resolution. The fourth step. And any trade association member ought to look that article up by Deborah Anderson. Anticipatory Issues Management Aim ought to ban the word crisis management from their vernacular. Same with company PR and other people and ought to say, how do I take my organization from the emergence to resolution? And what we did is we sat down and looked at every single issue in McDonald’s.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:40:29] When you’re the world’s industry leader, you could start with packaging, you could go to work in hiring, you could go to employment issues, you could go to environmental issues, you could go down the line to animal welfare. We’ve had to deal with every single one of them right down to where the symbolic scapegoat. Even if we don’t produce it, they’ll come after us in order to put pressure on our suppliers. So you identify all of those issues. You identify the top issues that are the most important, and then you engage and find out from influencers. And sometimes that means talking to your adversaries. And we did form our meetings with the environmentalists. I did talk to PETA for two years about animal welfare policies. And what we did hired Temple Grandin, the autistic PhD from Arizona, that showed us how to handle cattle and chickens and others in a more humane way. And we met with them when we talked about policies and procedures, and we came up with many solutions, like I told you about the environment. And that’s that’s going out and targeting problems that, you know, we used to say at McDonald’s, the fans are always on just waiting for the ketchup to hit them. And our job was to get the resolution before we went to the triggering event and crisis management. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: [00:42:03] Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. If somebody wants to connect with you, is LinkedIn the best way to do that?

Michael A. Donahue: [00:42:12] Sure. You know, I’m kind of a hybrid of old school with my tried and true business practices. And then there’s a few people that have pioneered innovative solutions to deal with the world we’re dealing with today and the change of national psychology or philosophy. And so I have a perspective from either end of the continuum. Like I said, they can go to my LinkedIn, they can go to Facebook, etc. if I give my telephone number.

Lee Kantor: [00:42:47] Sure, whatever you like.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:42:48] 6304418080. I’m affiliated with a couple of great associations here in the Chicago area, so I have supporting crew on issues in that. But anything in public affairs, social responsibility, the culture, you know, they had it right when they said culture eats strategy for breakfast or lunch and not enough people think about their culture. And everybody from John Deere to a 20 employee manufacturing in the city of Chicago should be educating their employees. So they’re not taking the basic headline. You know, the opposition position and transparency is the key to all this, you know, transparency and then anticipatory management and walking into adversity. Those are the the biggest things that I could say.

Lee Kantor: [00:43:52] Well, Michael, thank you so much again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Michael A. Donahue: [00:43:57] Happy to help any way I can.

Lee Kantor: [00:43:59] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.