And so if your competitors aren't growing, if there isn't a competitive reason to grow, and you want focus and discipline to add customers to existing stores, you adjust your strategy.

Playtime and toys are good for kids, or they wouldn't buy them. McDonald's can provide that experience. And having dinner with the family is good for kids.

You then get into a period a few years ago, where a lot of external factors that we didn't have anything to do with did hit, and some of them at the same time... devaluations, weak economies, you name it, in various parts of the world.

So Europe's a big driver. And at one point, if the euro hadn't devalued, they would have been making as much money as the US with half the stores. Returns were higher.

McDonald's is almost 50 years old. For 47 years we had a pretty consistent track record of being able to deliver admirable sales.

You have got to have discipline and focus - on the customer and how you run the business.

I think this year we'll open up 900 gross, we're closing some, so the net count is lower, but the 900 are spread all over the place. Some of the closures are relocations, where you're moving it to another place in the marketplace.

When you're doing that you lose your focus on the discipline of the business, and how you train people at Hamburger University, and everybody gets on a bigger, different vision, and they're not on the same page.

I think we have a great track record on being relevant, on identifying consumer trends, needs and wants.

As I said, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about partner brands.

And so if your competitors aren't growing, if there isn't a competitive reason to grow, and you want focus and discipline to add customers to existing stores, you adjust your strategy.

But I tell you, I would really be interested if there was a partner we could take in, that could put them over here on the side, that would allow us full leverage and access down the road.

We cover hamburgers, chicken, veggie burgers, salads, we've got a pretty broad range. To me, McDonald's isn't only about the food. It's about the prices, it's about the way we eat.

Salads was a big indicator of that - there was a huge market out there for it. And why not tap it? Some of the things we are doing now around the globe are responding to customers. It's not because some guy sued you.

Every year we close 300-400 stores anyway, just relocations.

When you raise prices, you've got to make sure you get it to the bottom line. You can fritter it away because of the way you're running the business, with maybe not a totally disciplined approach.

I think we'll still be a family restaurant, we'll be contemporary, we'll be lifestyle, we won't be old, we won't be 60 years old in the view of the consumer.

But we had a pretty diversified portfolio of businesses around the world and things tended to offset each other. But one or two years ago, we had a lot of things happening at the same time.

The fact of the matter is, most of our orders are not supersized. Less than five per cent are supersized - that's never mentioned. The whole issue has been supersized itself.

And ours is a business that requires discipline and focus.

Ronald has had bicycle safety and safety in the home. Yes, Ronald is McDonald's, second most recognised figure after Santa Claus, and there's an element of obviously benefiting your business.

We have very specific rules about how we go to market with children, and I think they are very responsible.

The markets where we've got real good presence are the older, more mature markets like Australia, and Western Europe - where we've only got 6,000 stores, compared to the US with 13,000.

Some of the analysts were saying, Now you're a cash cow, there's no growth at all, pay it all out in dividends, give me it all, you can't invest wisely.

But, on balance, we seized the marketplace. We've got a great infrastructure. And yes it's struggling in some areas because of some external factors and some internal factors.

I talked about 12 to 18 months, and that's about reaffirming our foundation for sustained growth: getting the discipline back, getting the basics right, getting the customer focus back... so by the end of next year, I hope most of that's in place.

But you know the second month I was here I put out a healthy lifestyles directive. The pundits will say it was because we were sued. Well that's what they say. It was never about that.

But in terms of the code by which we go to market - it's not telling kids to supersize, we're not selling them, generally, products, in the advertising we do to them.

Because we only feed in the United States less than 1 per cent of the meals, most of them are eaten elsewhere. Most meals are eaten at home. So to make McDonald's the target is not going to solve the problem.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

The police officers, so far as discipline, organization, pay, and orders were concerned, came exclusively under the German Reich police system and were in no way connected with the administration of the Government General.

I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.

It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

I'm not good enough, technically, to be a classic musician. I lack discipline.

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.

I do it as a therapy. I do it as something to keep me alive. We all need a little discipline. Exercise is my discipline.

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Perfect retention. I don't think I could do that-I've never disciplined myself to do it.I suppose a lot of it is a question of discipline. Which improvisation is not.

You have got to have discipline and focus - on the customer and how you run the business.

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.

The student develops an analytical as well as finely blended character. He is able to choose from a wide variety of job fields from which to embrace a career, without having to be a specialist in one particular discipline.

A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.

I was taking piano lessons with a very good piano instructor in Toronto, and I'm afraid due to my schedule and discipline, it kind of fell apart. One thing lead to another and I was unable to practice as much as I wanted to.

People like me have to have the discipline only to work for clients, corporations, political people, products, services, networks that we believe in and we want to see succeed.

I'm challenged by people like Russell Crowe and Sean Penn who come in with such incredible discipline and power.

The discipline of daily devotion to God undergirds decisions.

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.