Sharing Best Practices

Building a culture of information sharing improves operations, boosts franchise relations and saves time.

By Don Higginson

If others are doing well, people tend to be interested in what they are doing and how they’re doing it, so that they, too, can be successful. Sharing best practices is a key part attributing to the success of any organization. Similar to the old saying, “Learn from other’s mistakes,” it’s important to learn from individual experiences, but it’s much easier and more effective to learn from the experiences, mistakes and successes of others.

A best practice, loosely-defined, is a standard-operating method that produces the best performance and results. Best practices are not, however, rules or laws. They are bendable, adaptable to individual needs and systems. They are learning tools.

Having a franchisee culture that embraces the sharing of best practices can help avoid reinventing the wheel, and more quickly enact new processes or programs that can help improve internal processes and service to customers. By its very nature, a franchise organization thrives on best practices. Sharing what successful franchisees are doing encourages others to do the same.

Storytelling Builds Community

Sharing best practices is like storytelling, a concept legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg learned at an early age. Many organizations are now also learning that storytelling is a powerful communication and business tool. Storytelling helps build community and makes communication more human. Stories often lead to direct action. They can help close the gap of knowing how to do something and actually doing it. Not only do stories use natural day-to-day language, but they also extract an emotional response from your audience.

One can find and share best practices in all aspects of a business: marketing, franchise relations, training, operations and numerous others. Sometimes, however, the biggest hurdle is not the failure to dedicate resources to earmark best practices, but actually finding these best practices. Most people are humble, and if asked about their best practices, most would simply answer, “I don’t really have any.”

When seeking best practices from a network, be specific. Ask specific questions to get specific answers. 

Instead of, “Do you have any best practices in hiring?” ask, “What do you do to recruit new employees?” Or ask, “Where have you found success in finding your best employees?”

Rather than, “What are your best practices in customer service?” ask, “Do you have a formal, in-store customer service policy?” Or consider asking, “How do you communicate your customer service philosophies to your employees?”

Be more specific and instead of asking, “How do you obtain new customers?” ask, “What have you done to acquire new customers through a specific customer-service initiative?” Ask them to “Describe what the program entails and any results you’ve seen.”

Following the lead of popular talent search shows like “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” MBE recently conducted a formal best practices search, called Quest for the Best in Customer Service. The company asked its franchisees to tell it the distinguishing actions that they do in their centers that help them deliver world-class customer service. The company decided that it would select up to 24 of the best entries and award each winning franchisee $1,000. MBE then asked for best practices that held the potential to not only set it apart with better customer service, but have proven to make a difference. This approach, asking specific questions, helped net more than 250 entries in just two weeks.

Gathering best practices should be an ongoing task, a visible activity that embodies the culture of the organization. 

To realize the full value of best practices, everyone needs to be involved. To continue or achieve a best practice culture, companies must communicate their commitment to best practices and ask franchisees what they want and need. 

There are many ways to reinforce commitment to a best-practices culture:

• Incorporate strategic communications from company leadership.
• Integrate this commitment into key messages.
• Celebrate best practices.
• Integrate best-practice sharing into all formal and informal meetings.
• Be open to changing the operations manual to incorporate best practices.

Conduct focused campaigns to solicit best practices on particular opportunities or challenges.

• Integrate a best-practice focus into all formal communication vehicles.
• Promote on the internal Web site.
• Integrate solicitations for best practices into regional meeting agendas.
• Run an incentive promotion. Consider awarding a cash prize for the first 10, 25 or 50 submissions received or place all submissions into a drawing for a cash prize.
• Inform all associates about the best-practices culture and encourage them to flag best practices when they see them.
• And, most important, be sure to communicate the results of your best practices campaign.

Publishing and sharing best practices

There are many ways to present best practices to franchisees. MBE uses its franchisee extranet as the primary means for sharing best practices. This allows us to organize the information in a variety of ways without duplicating it. As new best practices are developed, we do a variety of things. We publish summaries in our weekly newsletter, our monthly best practice publication and on our extranet. We sometimes place a Web banner on the homepage of our extranet telling franchisees they are available and where to find them.

We circulate a monthly best practice publication, The Bottom Line, which is a newsletter that is focused on sharing best practices. Each edition focuses on one specific topic and it is distributed via e-mail to our franchise network. 

At our most recent convention, we held multiple workshops featuring panels of franchisees who shared their best practices in specific profit centers. Our franchisees really appreciated the feedback and took to heart what other franchisees are doing. 

The process of sharing best practices is something everyone can do. First, figure out the most effective way to share best practices within the organization, which really is focusing on the most successful way to reach the audience. Sharing information should be widespread and it can be done many ways, face-to-face, electronically or the old-fashioned way, on paper. Nowadays, most people use electronic means to communicate through the Internet and many organizations are quickly adopting Web 2.0 methods to communicate their best practices. This includes technologies such as Web blogs, social networking sites, wikis, podcasts and RSS feeds.

Implementing best practices

Once the best practices are published, it’s time to have franchisees implement them. Best practices are only useful if they are put them into practice. It’s up to the franchise network to keep these best practices going and to continually evolve into other, new best practices. They encourage continuous learning and continual improvement. The result can be more candid dialogue and improved franchise relations.

One final piece of advice on how to make the best practices culture thrive: listen to the network and talk their talk. The franchisees who have been in the business for a number of years are the best people to talk to. They will be the first to recognize the most effective best practices and the first to pass those best practices on to others.

Don Higginson is the senior vice president of franchise relations at The UPS Store. He can be reached at [email protected].