“A ship in a harbour is safe but that is not what ships are built for.”

An interview with Faz Hussen, General Counsel and Head Legal Govt Relations & Sustainability at McDonald’s in Singapore.

What are the biggest external forces or trends currently shaping your role as General Counsel and how are you responding to them?

AI is at the forefront of conversations in many aspects of life, let alone business. The biggest trend for me as General Counsel of a food and beverage (“F&B”) business is the transformation of the consumer marketplace with the inclusion of more and more Gen Zs and Gen Alphas. They have a vastly different point of view and adopt different habits from our generation of millennials and boomers, encapsulated in their unique lingo and catchphrases – no cap 😉

They have very different goals and motivations – FIRE movement and Quiet Quitting – and given the impact of the COVID experience, the way they deal with the world is changing the consumer front. As costs escalate and the appetite for working for higher income ebbs, the typical younger consumer tends not to eat out or entertain and prefers home comforts or online entertainment and engagement. While this represents an opportunity for some businesses, the F&B industry is definitely facing this sea change with last year seeing 3,047 closures – a 20-year high for Singapore – 300 closing every month in this first half of the year.

Our challenge is to change and introduce new product offerings in new formats and across different platforms to cater to this shift in behaviours and habits. For example, our app was introduced only late in 2019 but within just 5 years it has grown in a supercharged way from zero to representing almost half our total sales – driving this rapid ramp-up are the Gen Zs and Gen As. Similarly, we are looking at new ways to connect with the demographic through innovative new formats and offerings.

How are you balancing the increasing demands of legal risk management with the expectation to drive business value and strategic insight?

There’s a quote I like to highlight – “A ship in a harbour is safe but that is not what ships are built for”. I find most legal teams manage and guard against legal risk to the detriment of achieving the company and business aims. Many times, business units are reticent or even afraid to bring in the legal team till the last possible moment, if not leave them out in the dark, on deals and initiatives for fear of being shut down or called out of risk. This chilling effect does a disservice to both sides – the legal team isn’t privy to what is actually happening for the business and unable to structure the contract or initiative in a better way, and the business team isn’t able to go ahead to drive the numbers ahead with assurance of risk management sorted. While legal risk management is needed, there is need for legal teams to recognise they are part of the business team and everything being done by legal must add value to the business and ladder back to achieving the company’s aims.

As General Counsel, my expectation is that each of my team members is a business stakeholder that helps structure deals and contracts to achieve the goals set out. This is opposed to a legal counsel with a mindset of just managing legal risk in support. This diametrically opposite mindset helps to set the cadence of actively thinking of how best to help the business drive value and growth while managing legal risk and so advise on strategy accordingly. This makes it much more natural to balance risk issues while driving business value and thinking out of the box given that the main intent and strategy is to drive the company plan in as manageable way as possible.

What’s one lesson or insight from your in-house journey that you wish you’d known earlier and would share with a fellow GC today?

In line with my earlier point, an effective General Counsel should take the time to understand what makes the business work – what drives it. Otherwise, legal counsels are just overseeing the legal matters in a vacuum, which makes them less relevant and consequently less useful and less valued by the business. I would even say a general counsel is a business partner. As an in-house lawyer, if you have a really good general counsel or head of legal, they shouldn’t just be a lawyer who knows the business, but rather a businessman with a law degree or law knowledge. This will make you invaluable to the business by giving concise, relevant advice that makes a difference to the company. You will earn your seat at the board room table.