Sophee McPheeMarketing & PR Manager| AAFCANSBrisbane, Qld, Australia
I recently adopted the role of Marketing & PR Manager for a food franchise (which has 26 sites throughout the country). At present, each site's manager and staff are treating their franchise like a home business. The 26 outlets are all doing their own thing in terms of menus, prices, signage, processes etc. Head office is trying to get the sites operating in the same way (as franchises should). However, the dictatorial approach and limited communication channels being used has resulted in limited change. The managers and staff seem to have an attitude of, "We'll do what are unique customers want, and we'll do things as we've always done them, we can't operate like a franchise because our customers will walk if we do what other sites are doing - a one size fits all approach won't work." QUESTION: How can I inspire managers and staff to adopt a more unified approach to business, so our brand remains clear and consistent for customers? Do we need to sack old staff if they don't comply within a given timeframe and bring in new people who are only aware of the 'new regime'? I'm not sure if you can teach old dogs new tricks... Saving Changes...
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Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I would suggest that all business units need to know what are the standards set by corporate head office and what latitude they have to adapt to the local market. And they need to know that you will take action if they don't comply. After all, you have the right to take the franchise away from them if they are damaging your brand (I assume). Explain how a standard approach is better for everyone as people travelling between branches will expect the same level of service and standards.
You can teach an old dog new tricks but they have to be willing to learn. It sounds as if you have got an uphill struggle, and some franchisees might not make it.
Such Change Managment does tend to be diffiicult, but by no means impossible. However, I doubt many countries' employment laws would look favourably on your first option, instead why not review what means of incentivising them to make these changes have already been tried (possibly none)? You will need to couple this with a clear vision, a really good set of tools & creatives, and some shared leadership from some of the managers who are more in favour, have (perhaps with incentives) already tried this and have some favourable experience and benefits to share with their colleagues. Saving Changes...
John ColePM II| County of RiversideRiverside, Ca, United States
There are two really good techniques that I can think of to accomplish your goals. However, they must be used as part of a larger strategy that is beyond my knowledge level.
Technique #1: You must sell the benefits of the change...essentially you must market the benefits. As someone else said, allow some flexibility for localization, but sell the benefits of why the should change.
Technique #2: Develop an accounting system that requires them to change their accounting system. Essentially, because people always follow the money, if you request things interface with a certain system, report a certain way, or are called certain things, and it is money related, they will follow the methods that earns them the most money. (Also, incentivizing these types of changes help too) Saving Changes...
Don KimPROJECT-TO-PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT EXPERT| Seeking opportunitiesSacramento, CA, United States
As a former owner of 2 franchise businesses, I may be able to provide you a perspective from the other side.
(I see your from Australia, so the definition of "franchise" may be different as it seems your company hires internal employees to run the sites, whereas in the US a franchiser sells a brand and license to a business owner who use it to sell goods and services and pays a royalty to the franchiser)
The first franchise business I owned was a very well known and strong franchise brand in the west coast section of the US (Arco AM/PM). And because the brand was so well known and had many successful franchise businesses with high revenue and profitability, it made no sense not to follow the franchise branding, processes and procedures.
Furthermore, it was in our contracts that should we violate their policies and procedures, you could lose the franchise license, pay lots of penalties for doing so and lose out on a strong franchise brand so you had incentives not to do so. McDonalds and 7-11 which were others I looked at, had similar provisions and strong brand recognition.
The second franchise I owned was less well known and much smaller in size and scope to the first. But they were great with training and setup, but less so with consistency and follow up with their franchise business owners. Due to this, myself and other franchise owners customized our products and services as well as marketing and branding which made each store very different than the others. But the benefits were a strong "local" look and feel for each location as well as products and services aligned with the demand and demographics of each location.
The franchiser in the second instance attempted at some point to "direct" more consistency in branding, but ultimately did not have the resources or ability to maintain that approach.
The only advise I could give is unless your franchise has the resources, ability and branding power of a McDonalds, your best approach would be to create a franchise branding approach that will inspire your franchisees to follow them, while also giving them some flexibility with adapting their products and services best suited to their locality.
For those who do enterprise PMO/PPM, this is absolutely no different than if you were part of a corporate PMO tasked with ensuring your divisional or departmental project management practices follow a standardized process, procedure and governance structure with respect to how projects, programs and/or portfolios are initiated, deployed and managed.
The challenges, road blocks and bottlenecks are surprisingly similar which I can personally vouch for having been involved with both!
It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but you can make the treats tastier and the tricks easier on the bones. :) Saving Changes...
Wayne MackRetired| RetiredSouth Riding, Va, United States
It will probably not be possible to get all 26 franchises using all the same processes. Take the pragmatic approach and standardize where feasible, but allow variations where appropriate.
I would tackle the problem incrementally. Pick the highest value item to standardize and then meet individually with each franchise owner to understand if he will standardize and if not, what are the reasons not to standardize. If one gets a sizable majority on board with the standard and the project benefits from the standard are actually realized, then show the out liers and they will readily adopt the standard. There still may be a few exceptions to which the standard may be dermimental and one will need to let them use alternatives. Even the alternatives, though, may be standardized into an acceptable list.
View the approach as selling the standards to the franchisees, so that it becomes more of a cooperative effort than a mandate from corporate. Establish trust so that the franchisees view the standards as offers for help from corporate and that corporate views deviations from the standards as necessary adaptations to address regional variations.
I can't say I'm too familiar with the running of a franchise business, but it seems to me that the answer is contained within your question. You said yourself that your franchisees' attitude was "we can't operate like a franchise". Well, I'm tempted to say: "if you can't, then don't". Sometimes an object lesson can serve as an efficient example to the rest of the crowd. Of course, you would have to carefully weight what you would stand to lose by un-franchising a site.
Also to consider: maybe they are saying "a one size fits all approach won't work" for a good reason. If you are selling burgers, but one franchise decided to sell hot dogs because there is another burger place right across the street and they know they can't compete with them, then they are not being unique just to annoy you, they are exercizing good business sense.
I would be inclined to do something similar to Wayne's suggestion, except in reverse: don't come with your list of items, ready to haggle like a carpet seller. Instead, ask each franchise owner to make their own list of what are the most important things to keep unique for them. Let them talk first. I don't know how it is with Australians, but with French people sometimes winning the argument is not as important as having the argument - so let them speak, listen, show understanding, and *then* have them do what you want. Besides, this way will make it easier to see what you can compromise on, if compromise is an option. Saving Changes...
Russell GeakeProject Management Consultant| Deciduous Partners LtdLostwithiel, Cornwall, United Kingdom
how are you getting on with this problem? Saving Changes...
