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Drinking from a firehose – or Niagara Falls?

April 3rd, 2011
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Today at the CFA, Greg Nathan offered a master class on Franchisee Relationships.  It was a rare occasion to hear him speak in person in Canada, and hugely valuable, both for his insights and ideas and fact-based conclusions, but also for the opportunity to see how he led the group.
We started off with an ice breaker (and usually I don’t much care for ice breakers, but this one had an amazing transformation effect on the group) that had everyone laughing and sharing and picking up on one another’s points.  Within the space of twenty minutes, not only did we all know interesting things about one another, but we had the group bonded and sharing and ready to go.
There’s no way to cover all he had to say, but a few highlights were:
1) the Platinum rule.
- Do unto others as they would do unto themselves
a novel take on the golden rule
2) the way he led the group through an exercise that got the collective wisdom of the group working, and then, not satisfied with all we had learned from that, invited us to reflect on the process and what we had just done & why we had done each part the way we had.  Thus giving us yet more tools to take away and apply in our own organizations.
The volume of data was so high that I ended up with half a notepad of notes, and will need days just to see what it all means, but the top three points I took away (as intended) were the importance of
1) Trust
2) Competency, and
3) Transparency.
I also came away with a refreshed sense that while systems can’t create brand or culture or communications, they can certainly go a long way to supporting those key elements in any franchise system.  Looking forward to more this evening & in the days to come…

Today at the CFA (in Niagara Falls), Greg Nathan from the Franchise Relationship Institute offered a master class on Franchisee Relationships.  It was a rare occasion to hear him speak in person in Canada, and hugely valuable, both for his insights and ideas and fact-based conclusions, but also for the opportunity to see how he led the group.  The session was like drinking from a firehose (or Niagara Falls, where we are happily ensconced).

Niagara Falls

We started off with an ice breaker (and usually I don’t much care for ice  breakers, but this one had an amazing transformation effect on the group) that had everyone laughing and sharing and picking up on one another’s points.  Within the space of twenty minutes, not only did we all know interesting things about one another, but as a group we were bonded and sharing and ready to go.

There’s no way to cover all he had to say, but a few highlights were:

  • the Platinum rule  :  ”Do unto others as they would do unto themselves” - a novel take on the golden rule, and

2) the way he led the group through an exercise that got the collective wisdom of the group working, and then, not satisfied with all we had learned from that, invited us to reflect on the process and what we had just done & why we had done each part the way we had.  Thus giving us yet more tools to take away and apply in our own organizations.

The volume of data from the day was so high that I ended up with half a notepad of notes, and will need many more days just to see what it all means and what Open Box as a company can do with it all, but the top three points I took away (as intended) were the importance of

1) Trust

2) Competency, and

3) Transparency.

I also came away with a refreshed sense that while technology and systems can’t create brand or culture or communications, they can certainly go a long way to supporting those key elements in any franchise system.

Looking forward to more this evening & in the days to come as the Canadian Franchise Association convention continues.

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