People

Organizations can expect obvious results when they implement an empowered environment. However, many people fail to realize the impact of the hidden effects of the empowerment process. These hidden benefits can have a more dramatic impact on profitability than a leader might imagine. When one considers the issue of the effective use of resources, the hidden impact of empowerment clearly demonstrates how leaders can effectively marshal the resources they are responsible for.
Many traditional managers fail to understand and comprehend how empowerment can impact their bottom line, as there are a number of hidden costs associated with restricting employee abilities and capabilities. Most are focused on their power and authority and concentrate on ways to maintain their personal power base...

Flight Controller: Enduring values keep Tom Barnett aloft in turbulent times
In business, a lot changes in three years, especially in a down economy. And while his business has taken a turn for the worse, Tom Barnett's values and commitments remain strong as ever.
Since Multi-Unit Franchisee profiled the Arizona-based multi-unit, multi-brand franchisee in 2008, the skier, pilot, and family man has purchased a small private jet that he flies. His son is now 18, his daughter is 20, and he and his wife, Georgia, have been married for 25 years. His favorite pastimes include skiing with them in Colorado.
Unfortunately, what hasn't changed, says Barnett, is the four-year decline experienced by his Phoenix and Tucson area Burger Kings, The Good Egg restaurants (a full-serve concept he owns with friends), and Blue Burrito Grilles he contracts out in airports...

Tom Barnett has taken it on the chin. The last three years of economic woe have taken a toll but his values and commitments remain as strong as ever.
Since we last spoke with the Arizona-based multi-unit, multi-brand franchisee in 2008, the skier, pilot, and family man has purchased a small private jet that he flies. His son is now 18, his daughter is 20, and he and his wife, Georgia, have been married for 25 years. His favorite pastimes include skiing with them in Colorado.
Unfortunately, what hasn't changed, says Barnett, is the four-year decline experienced by his Phoenix and Tucson area Burger Kings, The Good Egg restaurants (a full-serve concept he owns with friends), and Blue Burrito Grilles he contracts out in airports.
"I've never seen anything like it--none of us has," says Barnett, a former fighter pilot in Vietnam turned UCLA MBA-wielding franchisee and franchisor...

At the risk of placing substance over style, all leaders must understand this simple truth: style does matter. It is not about matching your belt to your shoes, or accessorizing appropriately for the occasion, but rather understanding the way you go about leading.
Allen rose through the ranks of the military with great ease and retired young with a high rank. Properly prepared for his transition into civilian life, Allen was able to land a great opportunity with an upstart tech firm in the Midwest. Everyone was confident his previous leadership performance would translate to the battlefield of competitive software development. Within months it became obvious that the members of Allen's team were not responsive to the command and control leadership style that Allen was comfortable exercising...

In 32 years, Tommy Haddock has never closed a restaurant

Tommy Haddock has added 10 Bojangles' Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits restaurants since we profiled him six years ago. As he approaches 50 units, this "hands-in" operator says his favorite photo of himself shows him making biscuits--a testament to his made-from-scratch, multi-million-dollar organization and his ongoing love for operations.
Not that he would ever win his company's biscuit-making competition. "I can make a pretty good biscuit, but I'd lose out on speed," says the easygoing North Carolinian who opened his first Bojangles' restaurant 32 years ago.
A graduate of North Carolina State University's School of Forestry, Haddock worked for a local power company before entering the restaurant industry...

Tommy Haddock has added 10 Bojangles' Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits restaurants since we profiled him six years ago. As he approaches 50 units, this "hands-in" operator says his favorite photo of himself shows him making biscuits--a testament to his made-from-scratch, multi-million-dollar organization and his ongoing love for operations.
Not that he would ever win his company's biscuit-making competition. "I can make a pretty good biscuit, but I'd lose out on speed," says the easygoing North Carolinian who opened his first Bojangles' restaurant 32 years ago.
A graduate of North Carolina State University's School of Forestry, Haddock worked for a local power company before entering the restaurant industry. He learned from the best: Bojangles' founder Jack Fulp (now deceased), who also happened to be his father-in-law...

When I was 19 years old, I was promoted to passenger service manager for Capital Airlines at Midway Airport in Chicago. I had no college degree, no supervisory or managerial training, and there I was in charge of a shift with about 20 employees in customer service and 20 flights per shift. My experience level consisted of growing up on a farm in Iowa, being a baggage handler, and then a ticket agent for 18 months.
Kind of scary.
How do you know whether you are going to do a good job or not?
Everyone else was at least 10 years older than me in experience. So, I just asked them. I didn't know any better than to be open and honest and ask for their feedback. Wow, did they give me helpful and outspoken feedback. It was very eye opening...

You search and screen and interview for the best employees. Days pass, sometimes weeks, as you narrow down your choices (and continue to operate understaffed). You pull the trigger, make the hire, and within days you realize you've made a mistake--sooner if your new hire never even shows.
Let's face it, hiring the right employees is the bane of existence for franchise operators. Yet without top-performing front-line employees and unit-level managers--the face of your franchise--you will not be as successful as you could be. Hiring right often seems a mysterious, unachievable goal lacking any chance of long-term success.
"The challenge is that we really want the cream of the crop and sometimes we end up with the cream of the crap," says Bill Wagner, CEO and co-founder of Accord Management Systems, a company that specializes in behavioral and hiring consulting...

After 10 years at Union Carbide, Ottawa-born chemical engineer Roger Mongeon wanted to spend less time traveling and more time with his family. He also wanted to test his entrepreneurial wings and started looking at franchise concepts. His 24-year relationship with Weed Man, the 40-year-old lawn care franchise, began with a casual dinner at a neighbor's home.
"He was running a Weed Man franchise out of his basement, and when he showed me his financials for the previous year I couldn't believe the profitability of the franchise," Mongeon recalls. "I looked more closely at the industry and visited a lot of dealers before I made a decision. I was impressed by the success and enthusiasm of the Weed Man franchisees."
In 1987, Mongeon, who says he's not a big risk-taker, nervously sold his home to buy a Weed Man franchise in Gatineau, in western Quebec...

In order to excel in your work, in your life, or as a leader, you need to commit to continuous learning. Many leaders know this, but many more are missing the opportunities for powerful learning that could really help them get ahead on their goals.
Leaders are encouraged to learn "on the job." The problem is that many of us don't. Either because we're too busy, we forget, we don't know what we need to learn, or we don't have the resources we think we need, we end up learning by chance or command. Neither one is very powerful.
Learning by chance means you take opportunities to learn whenever they show up, but you don't necessarily go looking for more. A conference brochure arrives; it seems interesting; you go. A friend recommends a book; it looks good; you read it...

Generally speaking, people like to compete. They like to test themselves and be challenged. Most important, people like to win. Being rewarded for it? That's icing on the cake. It doesn't matter where they're from, what language they speak, or what job they do - people like to succeed and be acknowledged for it. Because I consider myself a coach, and I believe in positive energy and positive reinforcement, I believe that incentives are the single greatest tool I have for motivating my workforce...;and they can be for you, too.
Incentives work - whether the person receiving them is the manager of a retail business, an executive at a large corporation, or an entry-level employee making minimum wage. And incentives don't have to be pure cash, although I have yet to find a team member who would ever turn it down...

When great front-line hourly employees quit, most managers take it personally--and with good reason. For more than 20 years, employee exit interview research has been telling us that the #1 reason the best people leave is because they feel they are being poorly managed. In other words, these folks joined the company and then quit the manager.
Just imagine how frustrated you would have to be with your job to decide to go elsewhere. That's how dissatisfied all the outstanding people who have left your organization have felt. If your people truly are your greatest assets, then the way your managers and supervisors manage those assets is the crucial key to your organization's success.
Whether you're recruiting field and area managers or hourly employees, there are five specific things everyone wants from their job, no matter what their position...

Franchisors recognize the best performers in their system each year with a Franchisee of the Year award. We spoke with four recent winners--different-sized, in different industries, and in different parts of the country.

Common denominators among these winners include excelling in the following areas: 1) financial (sales/revenue volume, profitability), 2) adherence to system and operational standards, 3) client/customer satisfaction, 4) HR (employee training, customer service), 5) contributions to and participation in the system (mentoring and leading), and 6) community involvement and service. And one important trait they all share is their passion--for their business, their brand, and their people.


Alan and Harriet Bleiweiss
Signs Now

"Re-peat" Winners
It's two years in a row now for Alan and Harriet Bleiweiss, owners of the Signs Now center in Hollywood, Fla...

Sam Covelli says he grew up in the restaurant business working in his father's McDonald's. Under his father's leadership, Covelli Enterprises eventually grew to 26 locations, one of the largest McDonald's franchisees in the country. But after the senior Covelli handed over the company reins to his son, you could say that Covelli Enterprises grew up with Sam Covelli.
Under his leadership, the company's McDonald's holdings grew to 43 restaurants, keeping Covelli Enterprises among McDonald's top franchisees, and an award-winning one at that. Covelli sold off those restaurants and shifted the family business into Panera Bread--and how.
Today, Covelli Enterprises owns a 198 Panera Bread locations, with 20 under construction, making it Panera's single largest franchisee and the fifth-largest restaurant franchisee in the country...

This April will mark the third year in a row that Al Coelho has run the 26-mile Boston Marathon. That's a significant achievement. But it's only a part of what Coelho will do that day.

The Providence, RI, ColorTyme franchisee will once again partner with a patient at Children's Hospital Boston to raise money and awareness for the hospital. This year it will be Nathaniel Giannandrea, a patient since he was just nine days old.

Nathaniel's mom, Lia, learned that her son had cystic fibrosis when he was seven days old. Now two and a half years old, Nathaniel is no stranger to the hospital, as it has played an enormous role in his care, says Lia.

"Children's has always been fantastic to us," says Giannandrea...

Sam Covelli says he grew up in the restaurant business working in his father's McDonald's. Under his father's leadership, Covelli Enterprises eventually grew to 26 locations, one of the largest McDonald's franchisees in the country. But after the senior Covelli handed over the company reins to his son, you could say that Covelli Enterprises grew up with Sam Covelli.
Under his leadership, the company's McDonald's holdings grew to 43 restaurants, keeping Covelli Enterprises among McDonald's top franchisees, and an award-winning one at that. Covelli sold off those restaurants and shifted the family business into Panera Bread--and how.
Today, Covelli Enterprises owns a 198 Panera Bread locations, with 20 under construction, making it Panera's single largest franchisee and the fifth-largest restaurant franchisee in the country...

Ray Harrigill believes in diversification. His Sunray Companies has restaurants (Bumpers Drive-In), tanning salons (Palm Beach Tan), fitness centers (Koko FitClub), and hotel properties (Hampton Inn), to name a few. That's because of lessons he's learned along the way.
Harrigill got his start in the restaurant business working in a multi-unit, multi-concept company. When he set out on his own, restaurants were his first choice but he couldn't open new units quickly enough to satisfy his goals. He began opening Blockbuster Video stores in 1999, quickly ramping up to four. But even then it was clear to Harrigill that the Blockbuster model wasn't "a long-term business play." So he began diversifying further.
"I invested some money in comprehensive rehab facilities, which I lost a fortune in, and almost simultaneously got into the tanning business...

"Sometimes interesting things happen in a bad economy," says Dawn Lafreeda, CEO and president of Den-Tex Central Inc. in San Antonio. While the economy continued to hammer the restaurant industry, Lafreeda opened 10 Denny's restaurants in 2010 and 14 in 2011. That brings her total to a whopping 70 in six states (Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Arkansas, and Oklahoma).
"That's a lot of growth," admits Lafreeda, who began her Denny's career as a 16-year-old in Orange County, Calif., and bought her first restaurant when she was 23. "But we like to do whatever makes sense, and this made sense for us. In 2012, we're going to focus on fine-tuning our operations, getting acclimated to all our new acquisitions. We're not going to be as aggressive as we have the last couple of years...

I can't say enough about the importance of empowered employees in helping a business survive and grow, even in the worst of economic situations. When you empower your employees to make decisions quickly to take care of your customers, the results will be amazing: increased customer loyalty, increased sales, decreased employee turnover, and word-of-mouth advertising that is less expensive and more credible than anything you could buy.
Most executives agree that employees, particularly frontline employees who deal directly with customers on a daily basis, should be empowered to do whatever it takes to solve customers' problems, often they are merely giving lip service to that concept.
Most employers--and employees--actually fear empowerment...

Ray Harrigill believes in diversification. His Sunray Companies has restaurants (Bumpers Drive-In), tanning salons (Palm Beach Tan), fitness centers (Koko FitClub), and hotel properties (Hampton Inn), to name a few. That's because of lessons he's learned along the way.
Harrigill got his start in the restaurant business working in a multi-unit, multi-concept company. When he set out on his own, restaurants were his first choice but he couldn't open new units quickly enough to satisfy his goals. He began opening Blockbuster Video stores in 1999, quickly ramping up to four. But even then it was clear to Harrigill that the Blockbuster model wasn't "a long-term business play." So he began diversifying further.
"I invested some money in comprehensive rehab facilities, which I lost a fortune in, and almost simultaneously got into the tanning business...