I read an interesting article today about the Great Harvest Bread Co., headquartered in Dillon, MT; it covered the franchises’ overarching philosophy which is to set its franchisees free after a one-year apprenticeship to run their stores in the time-honored mom-and-pop way — but with “handrails,” as former CEO Tom McMakin called the help that’s available if wanted. And, most importantly its “learning community” aka collaboration.
Furthermore, the article covered several points we at WhenToManage stress to new/current clients alike about developing processes that drive growth, increase collaboration and promote a hands-off managerial approach.
While most franchisors dictate everything about their franchisees’ operations in order to ensure a predictable experience for customers everywhere, Great Harvest doesn’t even require that its franchisees use the same bread recipes. In other words, Great Harvest says to its bakery owners, do whatever you want. Except in one respect, which makes all the difference: Every owner in the chain is encouraged to be part of Great Harvest’s “learning community.” Those who join (and most have) must share information, financial results, observations, and ideas. If asked questions, they must give answers. They must keep no secrets. They must, as McMakin described it, “let things go.” The result is what academics would call an intentionally created “complex adaptive system.” A learning organization.
At its simplest, the idea is to let people “create their own enterprises but stand on the shoulders of existing owners,” as McMakin put it. To that end, Great Harvest both facilitates the casual swapping of ideas and maintains formal mechanisms that steer owners to the best sources of help.
For instance, Great Harvest staffers provide franchisees with a top 10 list, a rundown of the 10 best-performing bakeries in 14 statistical and financial categories — from total sales (the biggest Great Harvest shop tops $1.3 million), net profits, and payroll, to costs for ingredients, utilities, promotions, and “continuing education.” If a franchisee has a problem controlling labor expenses at their store, Great Harvest staffers tell the owner to call up the bakery owners who’ve got that figured out and get their advice.
Sounds great, right?! But where does a multi-unit operator start — there are so many factors to take into account 1) various POS Systems, 2) a myriad of SKUs or Recipes and 3) the range of Manager/Employee Capabilities to name a few…turns out, we have the most appropriate solution available on the market, called Enterprise Management.
When packaged with our restaurant management solutions (Employee Scheduling, Inventory Management and POS Intelligence), Enterprise Management facilitates the exchange of information like Great Harvest does by accumulating, processing and distributing insightful data from a variety of sources, while giving the super-user one place to manage the entire operation. Simply put, it streamlines operations and opens the door to a “learning community” that can promote growth.
If you are interested in learning more about our web-based Enterprise Management solution (featuring a flexible API), ending the need to sift through manually generated reports faxed in by franchisees or switching platforms to compare data, contact us today! (888) 316-8861 or click the Support button on the left – we would love to show you how we can help you create a self-managing restaurant.
Have you ever read books about corporate culture and come away overwhelmed? I have. Most of them do a good job explaining what comprises corporate culture, but few lay out steps for how to go about changing culture in a company.
Since culture and change are often big challenges in the work I do in organizations, I’ve been researching action steps that can be applied in group settings in order to facilitate rapid cultural change.
Organizational culture is an idea in the field of organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization.
It has been defined as “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.” It’s also been defined as “the way things get done” in a company.
Although it’s difficult to get consensus about the definition of coorporate culture, several constructs are commonly agreed upon – that corporate culture is holistic, historically determined, socially constructed, and difficult to change.
I don’t want difficult. I want simplicity and effectiveness. I think I may have stumbled upon some answers. At least, the authors of this book seem to have some good ideas. They explain their definition of culture in terms that will get employees to quickly adopt new thinking and acting to produce rapid results. And they provide examples of companies that used their methods and reached goals within 90 days.
The book is Change the Culture, Change the Game: The Breakthrough Strategy for Energizing your Organizations and Creating Accountability for Results by authors Roger Connors and Tom Smith.
Here’s an example of work the authors did to change the corporate culture in a fast food restaurant chain. The goal the organization wanted to achieve was a 5.5 percent profit margin. First, they determined to stop sending mixed messages by communicating the same key results to everyone in the company. (That, in itself, is often necessary in some companies.)
Then they ensured that all employees could connect the dots between their daily work and the results they needed to achieve (5.5 percent profit margin).
Within months, a check on the alignment in the company proved that people at every level of the organization and within every restaurant understood and embraced the new profit margin goals. A random visit to a restaurant illustrated this alignment. When asked what their jobs were, even the people busing tables were able to articulate their participation in the goals:
“My job is to achieve a 5.5 percent profit margin, and here’s how I do it: The faster I clean and set a table, the more people we seat per hour. The more people we seat, the greater our contribution. The greater our contribution, the better our margin. That’s what I do.”
When people can describe what their job is in terms of what they contribute to driving results for the organization, you can be sure you have a culture that supports the change initiative. The culture is driving action, and people at all levels can see their part.
To me, that’s a good illustration of how culture drives results. What do you think?
If your company is looking to improve the bottom-line, contact us at (888)316-8861 or sales@whentomanage.com, we can show you how to do it under 15 minutes!
* Special thanks to guest blogger Doreen McGunagle for providing this valuable content.
