Grow revenues! Grow profits! Execute better! Is there anything more important for most organizations? Growing revenues and profits can be a significant challenge if your organization consists of:
o 3600 pharmacies,
o 4400 quick service restaurants,
o 1800 grocery stores,
o 2400 apparel stores,
o 200 bank branches, or
o 60 "identical" manufacturing facilities around the world.
Application Development
How can you consistently grow sales and profits when the numbers and geographical dispersion of "local" operating units are so staggeringly big and complex? Let's answer this question by examining the importance of coaching for this type of organization, particularly the critical role of district and area management in coaching local performance, and how"digital coach technology" (DCT) can enable personal expert coaching of hundreds or thousands of local managers simultaneously.
Growing both revenues and profits in geographically dispersed chain or chainlike organizations can be challenging. Typically, there are just two growth alternatives for these types of organizations:
1. Efficiently add local operating units either by opening new ones or acquiring existing ones
2. Grow year-to-year same unit productivity, sales, and profits
During good economic conditions, chains tend to emphasize adding or acquiring new units as the best way to boost revenues. During weaker times, they tend to emphasize the importance of improving same store performance. Overall, to achieve sustained success, chains require superior execution of both strategies.
Not surprisingly, there are many barriers to achieving the performance required for sustained success. Every store represents the entire company to the customers. One poor experience in any location sours the customer on the entire chain. Contact between headquarters leadership and the field tends to be infrequent, limited in scope and strained. Each locale believes it is completely unique, encouraging local management to diverge, often inappropriately, from accepted and expected norms and standards. Senior managers are bombarded by so many problems and issues that they are forced into a reactive role, with little time for proactive, positive Development of the overall system. The list could go on and on!
In short, even though the enterprise needs superior, uniform performance from every local operating unit, each local operating unit is usually only "loosely coupled" to the organization, functioning at least partially as an independent entity. Naturally, in these circumstances, some units consistently and systematically outperform others, and the poorer performers are a significant problem. Poor performance has a significant negative impact for chains. Some chains have even been dragged into bankruptcy by the problems of the poor performers.
What then can a chain do to improve the performance of the less effective operating units, and thus the performance of the overall chain? The answer is actually quite simple - manage them better! Effective management is the key to sustained performance improvement.
What do these managers do that is missing from the conventional wisdoms? Mainly, they provide personal, one-on-one coaching for the local store managers, performing many of the functions that training, binders and IT systems neglect. Their personal coaching:
o Conveys the coach's energy and passion about the function to the non-expert, motivating their excitement about and ownership of the process
o Provides the 'big picture" view to the non-expert, including critical mental models and organization, enabling them to understand the focus and process of the function
o Adjusts the specific "how to's" to the real situation of the nonexpert, enabling direct Application of the coach's knowledge
o Frequently checks in with the non-expert to track and assess progress, to make further adjustments and provide emotional support
In summary, great coaching provides the emotional, mental and physical guidance and support in real-time, which makes the non-expert feel valued, involved, focused and successful. None of the conventional wisdoms can provide anything close to the impact of direct coaching. The results of great coaching are, once again, the Development of profound trust and huge gains in productivity, sales and profitability.
Performance Improvement in the Far-Flung Enterprise