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Class Notes Profiles

Know where you want to go

By Jay Sanders

For Deborah Allen, GSM ’97, planning is key.

“I’m a person who believes you have to paint a picture of where you want to go,” she says, “and then ask what steps you need to take to get there.”

Allen’s vision proved to be 20-20. After earning her Executive M.B.A. from Marquette, she set her sights on becoming an entrepreneur, entering the rigorous McDonald’s Corp. franchisee applicant program and emerging in 1999 as owner of her first McDonald’s restaurant. She now owns seven franchises in and around Milwaukee and was recently honored as a “Woman of Influence” by the Business Journal of Milwaukee.

“Everything you do has to be tested against your vision ” she says. “When I was getting my E.M.B.A. at Marquette, the opportunity to train and become a McDonald’s owner came up. That fit within the vision, so I pursued it.”

For Allen, success is also about having processes in place to get things done. She prioritizes, creates routines and sticks to the plan.

Process also helps her deal with setbacks. “Whenever things aren’t going right,” she says, “one of my first questions is, ‘What process is broken?’ or ‘What process doesn’t exist?’”

The devotion to process is one of the things that attracted Allen to McDonald’s Corp. “That’s why no matter where you go,” she says, “a hamburger always tastes like a hamburger.”

What about her own plan? Is it complete? Not even close. “It encompasses more things than just work,” she says. “I haven’t written a book yet, for instance, and I’d like to visit Dubai.” 

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