Our brain is wired to be careful of whom to trust. Open yourself up to the wrong person and you can get hurt — physically, emotionally and financially. Nature has given us a shortcut to help here. It’s called reputation. If we’ve heard good things about a person or group, we’ll be more open to what they have to say. In business, we call this having a good brand. Brands, lik 
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My mother lives in an apartment which is part of a retirement village managed by a multinational property group. The nature of the relationship between management and residents is so similar to a franchise network it often makes me laugh. For instance, the residents have created a highly effective Committee that keeps Village Management on their toes. And similar to a franc 
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Last week I joined 40 people for a personal development retreat in a beautiful bushland setting. For five days we contemplated, cooked and ate together with no interpersonal communication. No talking, no passing notes and no sign language. Yet everything flowed comfortably, stress-free, like clockwork. As you can imagine the planning to pull this off was impeccabl 
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My wife and I recently spent a few days in Penang to recharge the batteries. I was sitting by the pool with my eyes closed, listening to the beautiful tinkling of a nearby fountain. But the sound of dragging feet was taking the edge off the experience. I opened my eyes to see the pool attendant sluggishly wander by, head down, eyes unfocused. His mind was clearly elsewhere. 
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I was recently debriefing the leadership team of an award winning franchise network on the results from their latest franchisee satisfaction survey. As part of our debriefing process we share best practice tip sheets on each area. While we were going through the area of leadership, the President suddenly exclaimed “These are the best leadership tips I’ve ever seen!” He was  
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The simplest things often bring us the most joy, and contain the most important lessons. Like the little red ball. Before I explain why it has been such a source of inspiration, a brief description is in order. Slightly smaller than a tennis ball, it’s hollow and made of tough, springy rubber with hexagonal patterns. This makes it easy to grab and squeeze. It also has a lar 
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What do franchisees and franchisors care most deeply about? Each year we conduct research to answer this question. One hot topic for franchisees, is the need for more consultation before important decisions are made. Consultation is not consensus Contrary to popular belief, consultation does not mean getting everyone’s agreement to a decision, or even involving others d 
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I recently met with a young franchise executive who was about to be promoted to head up an established franchise network. She'd been with the network for some time and we were discussing leaders she’d worked for - some great and some not so great - and what she’d learned from watching them. When I asked, based on her experience, what advice she’d give to herself as the new  
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I had some fun on the weekend editing an academic journal article, based on a large study FRI conducted into the factors that drive franchisee success and satisfaction. The findings from this research are especially important for franchisor teams responsible for leading, supporting and recruiting franchisees. The only three things that matter Let’s start with a de 
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In recent months we have been running a research project investigating how franchise networks are fighting margin compression. This is where costs are rising faster than sales. As part of the study we asked senior franchisor executives what their highest performing franchisees are doing that is enabling them to achieve superior sales performance. We then analysed and themed 
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