Michael Gerber's Franchise Prototype Rule to Win #6: Uniform Color, etc.

Michael Gerber's 6th and final rule, from p. 107, is:

6. The Model Will Utilize a Uniform Color, Dress, and Facilities Code.

It's all about communicating credibility, consistency, predictability, and value. As Gerber says, colors are important to people. Red signifies aggression. Blue is a confident color. Gray and Brown are neutral. And if you have clashing colors everywhere, what are your employees or customers to think.

And even if your business is web-based, you still have to have colors and shapes on your website and your collateral materials. And you're going to have some kind off office. How that's laid out and what it looks like will be a key element.

So, you cannot escape this.

Sorry.

And we're so much more a visual society than we were when Gerber originally wrote this.

What do you think of this? The goal is to produce more skilled entrepreneurs. Does this help? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.

Michael Gerber's Franchise Prototype Rule to Win #4: All Work in Operations Manuals

The fourth of Gerber's rules, from p. 104:

All Work in the Model Will Be Documented in Operations Manuals.

In Gerber's view, the operations manuals communicate the structure of your business. They tell people what's expected. What to do, what to expect, how to behave.

Gerber again invokes Alvin Toffler from The Third Wave, (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1980) p. 389:

For many people, a job is critical psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized.

You're designing a world for employees to live in. The operations manual tells them how to move around in it. After all, employees crave order in a disorderly world as customers. Give it to them.

What do you think of this? The goal is to produce more skilled entrepreneurs. Does this help? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.

Michael Gerber's Franchise Prototype Rule to Win #2: People

Gerber, p. 100, says:

2. The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill.

At first reading, he seems to be saying hire only unskilled labor, an egregious assertion in an era when so many people are up in arms against undocumented aliens, illegal immigrants, whatever you want to call them.

But Gerber's not saying this. The key word in that sentence is "possible." You wouldn't want a heart transplant surgeon working at MacDonald's. "It's been said, and I believe it to be true, that great businesses are not built by extraordinary people but by ordinary people doing extraordinary things." (See p. 100)

But for this to happen, Gerber says,

A system--'a way of doing things'--is absolutely essential in order to compensate for the disparity between the skills your people have and the skills your business needs if it is produce consistent results. (p. 101)

Just think how much money this country spends for "job training." The assumption behind this expenditure is that people's skills aren't up to the challenges businesses require of them.

Then think how much money would be saved and how much better business would be if those who designed their businesses designed them in such away that the people we have could do them and produce what Gerber calls "exquisite results." I'm not saying job training isn't important. Having people trained to do what is needed is important. There are certainly a lot of people who aren't well trained. But, we would be better off if we paid heed to what Gerber is saying.

I will resist the impulse to quote more Gerber with the caveat that you will go to the book and read it.

What do you think of this? I'd like to know. Post comment

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com