This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com - #Growing Your Business
When a business is running at its peak in all areas, efficiency and profitability increase exponentially.
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Now that we are in the strategy-implementation phase of the Fight for Your Franchise Challenge, we are focusing on real-world leadership-skill development. You can utilize this information for yourself, your executive team and your team leaders.
I am going to start this lesson by setting the bar for what we are ultimately trying to achieve as business owners. As a franchise executive coach, I introduce my clients to what I call the “Zenith Franchise” level as a goal. Zenith means the highest and most powerful state. When a business is running at its peak in all areas, the company’s efficiencies and profitability increase exponentially.
Related: Fight for Your Franchise Challenge: Week 4
The objective is to raise all five departments of your business to the Zenith level. We do this through a step-by-step process we call the Franchise Equation, and it consists of the following five categories:
Leadership
The leadership department of your business includes the overall leadership philosophy, team organizational structure, team training and support, internal resources and outsourced training and coaching resources.
Marketing
The marketing department will include your marketing plan, marketing team, campaign management, event management and ongoing training and support for your marketing team members.
Operations
The operations department includes your day-to-day operational duties and team, fulfillment of your products and services, customer service, financial collections and training and support of your operations team members.
Finance and Legal
The finance and legal department includes your accounting, human resources, contract management and other legal management and compliance areas.
Technology
The technology department includes all technology platforms used by the business, tech support for all team members, customer-technology support and management and related team training and support.
The Fracnhise Equation uses the Evaluate, Adapt and Overcome technique that I featured in last week’s session, along with the Three Decision Lens strategy from Franchise Bible 8th Edition to determine the strengths and weaknesses in each department and possible solutions to reach the Zenith level.
Try this exercise for your business:
- Gather your team and grab a whiteboard (or virtual whiteboard if your meeting is online) and get ready to brainstorm.
- Write down the five departments from above.
- List the department leaders for each. Smaller companies and startups may not have people for all departments so the owner may cover multiple departments.
- List the strengths and weaknesses for each department.
- Use the Evaluate, Adapt and Overcome and Three Decision Lens techniques to identify the best options to strive for the Zenith level in all five departments.
- Get help from third-party resource providers to increase efficiencies in departments that you have identified as weak or lacking. You are only as strong as your weakest link.
- Review your plan weekly to make sure you are making positive progress.
- Measure your goals and KPIs and adjust as needed.
Related: Fight for Your Franchise Challenge: Week 3
This week on our Franchise Bible Coach Radio Podcast with Rick and Rob, our guest was Michael Katz. Michael is a franchise, business and real estate attorney in Denver and the co-author of Franchise Bible 8th Edition. We discussed strategies for each of the five departments in the Franchise Equation and featured stories of real-world franchisors and franchise owners. You can listen to the entire podcast by clicking on the FBC Podcast drop down on the Weekly Content tab at www.franchisebiblecoach.com.
The Franchise Equation is one of many Franchise Bible Coach strategies that are available for free as a part of our Fight For Your Franchise Challenge. You can join the fight on the website and gain immediate access to the weekly resources, including the video coaching sessions, article, podcast and our Facebook community. This is our way to help our industry get through this crisis. You as business owners are the backbone of our global economy. I know that you are feeling battle weary, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. You have made it this far so keep fighting the good fight!
The Fight for Your Franchise coaching videos are now hosted on Entrepreneur.com, and you can subscribe for free, giving you access to our content as well as other great resources offered by Entrepreneur. Click here to set up your free account.
