By employing just a few kaizen tactics, you’ll strengthen your franchise culture and ensure your system continues to get better and better.
In a competitive market, it’s not enough to be the best. With so many brands vying for the same customers, it’s critical you continuously push to get even better.
Most franchises invest in research and development. They tinker with products and processes to level up the system. But many would benefit from improving the improvement process itself. With a more systematic approach to collecting, testing, and implementing ideas, you can make substantial and ongoing gains.
Enter kaizen. The Japanese term associated with ‘continuous improvement’, kaizen became a formalized process for ongoing systemic enhancement during Japan’s post-WW2 rebuilding. Toyota famously adopted the process in their production system and is often cited as the premier example of kaizen at work.
A bit of googling will reveal all kinds of interpretations of kaizen and lists of its principles. It can get complicated. For a franchisor, it doesn’t have to be. By employing just a few kaizen tactics, you’ll strengthen your franchise culture and ensure your system continues to get better and better. Here are a few common kaizen steps and how to use them:
Involve everyone
A key component of kaizen is collecting ideas from everyone without regard for job title or rank. Executives with global perspective may not see what’s happening on the ground. Every pair of eyes in your franchise is collecting data. Sometimes it’s hourly workers who are most in touch with what’s really happening. But if they don’t have a voice, or if they’re never asked, they may keep their observations to themselves.
Create formal processes for collecting ideas. Toyota solicits and receives more than a million ideas a year from their global team. Canon encourages factory foremen to devote 30 uninterrupted minutes a day just to think about problems, look for improvements, and share their ideas. These companies’ commitment to continued improvement isn’t just part of their culture. It’s part of their system. It should also be part of yours. Create structures to consistently seek, encourage, and reward new ideas.
And honor the bad ideas. You don’t need to implement them. But by giving them respectful consideration, you encourage franchisees and team members who submit them to submit more, some of which might be game-changers.
Seek small improvements
While modern-day gold miners are delighted to find nuggets, what they typically seek is dust. There’s more of it, it’s easier to find, and it adds up. Ideas are the same way. Whether you’re looking to increase revenue, decrease costs, or just to make things more convenient, it’s easier to find small ways to do it. These small forward steps accumulate into big gains.
“Interest in entering franchising has accelerated in recent months as many people seek to establish new careers or stable business income streams”
One of the popular products we sold at our Edible Arrangements franchises was chocolate-covered strawberries. Often the thick chocolate coating would overwhelm the flavor of the strawberry, or it would break off. We discovered that melting the chocolate just a few degrees warmer thinned its consistency and reduced the amount that stuck to the fruit. That increased the yield, kept the chocolate on the strawberry, and made for a better flavor ratio. We significantly improved our business by turning a dial a few degrees clockwise.
Keep an eye out for the small things and don’t underestimate their long-term impact.
Make incremental improvements
We franchisees are notoriously resistant to change. We’re like seatbelts. Pull too hard, too fast and we lock up. We respond better to a slower, gentler approach.
Big change activates our amygdala, the brain’s ‘fire alarm’. It triggers our fight or flight response. When it’s active, it blocks the neural pathways to the prefrontal cortex. That’s the brain’s region responsible for logic, reason, and problem-solving. It sounds complex, but your goal should always be to engage your franchisees’ prefrontal cortex and avoid activating their amygdala. (And you thought you were in the taco business!)
Introduce change in bite-sized pieces. It’s not only easier to digest, but it also allows you to identify and rectify any unexpected issues before they get out of hand.
Test, measure and recalibrate
Practitioners of kaizen are all about data, not feelings. Good ideas prove themselves with measurable results. Again, the googlesphere has many similar descriptions of the kaizen way, typically mapped out in a circle. Generally, they involve some version of the following steps:
• Identify the problem/opportunity
• Plan a solution
• Execute the solution
• Measure and analyze the results
• Recalibrate as needed
• Standardize the solution
• Repeat
This is a bit more thoughtful than just trying stuff. And even if you have a formal approach for testing new ideas, do your franchisees? Operationalize your process for improvement and make it part of the system you teach them.
Let go of your assumptions
It’s easy to see things as a given without realizing it. Even when something has been proven, the truth about it may change as the world around you does. Ideas perfectly aligned with yesterday’s marketplace may not be ideal today. Things you think are true may not be. Are you sure ‘picking up the phone’ is better than emailing? Do you know for a fact your customers care more about quality than price? Are you sure your franchisees are as happy as you believe them to be? Recheck your data and revisit your conclusions regularly to ensure they still apply.
Never stop improving
This may be the single most important principle of kaizen. It’s continuous. Fix your fixes. Improve your improvements. Or get rid of them altogether and start fresh with something better. Make ongoing, positive change part of your franchise culture. Teach your systems for improvement to franchisees to apply at the unit level. Make it part of your brand’s culture.
Not long ago I had a brand bring me in to facilitate a day of brainstorming. We brought in a mix of people from different locations and job titles and focused on the little things. The day had just enough structure to keep things moving and just enough flexibility to keep things creative. They ended up with dozens of ideas to implement and test. Equally important, everyone left with a higher level of investment in the brand. Who doesn’t love being heard? Consider planning your own events to get similar results. Do them regionally and do them regularly.
To really get the most out of kaizen, it must be both operationalized and philosophized. Make it part of what you do and how you think. Replace your desire to be the best with the goal to get even better – because getting better is always best.
SEVEN STEPS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
1. Get everyone involved
2. Identify problems and opportunities
3. Generate solutions
4. Test the solutions
5. Measure the results and recalibrate
6. Operationalize (and recalibrate) the solution
7. Repeat the process
THE AUTHOR
Franchise expert Scott Greenberg is the author of The Wealthy Franchisee: Game-Changing Steps to Becoming a Thriving Franchise Superstar.
