The franchise industry’s most overlooked challenge

Every time I attend a franchise conference, I hear smart people talking about the same challenges.

How do we improve franchisee engagement? How do we drive performance? How do we strengthen communication? How do we improve unit economics?

They’re all important conversations. But over the years, I’ve become convinced that we’re talking a lot about the outcomes without spending enough time going deeper into what actually creates those outcomes.

I do not believe the biggest challenge in franchising is simply communication, trust, or even… unit economics.

Hear me out. I believe we’ve underestimated the central challenge of franchising itself.

Franchisees aren’t employees. That sounds obvious, but think about what it really means.

A franchisee owns the business. They’ve invested their own money. They bring their own experience, opinions, strengths, blind spots, and local market knowledge. Every decision they make affects both their own future and the future of the brand.

At the same time, they’re part of a larger system with shared standards, shared goals, and mutual accountability.

There really is not another business relationship quite like it!

The challenge is not simply creating great systems, better marketing, or stronger operations.

The challenge is navigating one of the most nuanced business relationships in business: partnering with franchisees in a way that both respects their ownership and creates consistent execution across the brand.

That is a human challenge. Not a technology, marketing or unit economics challenge.

Over the last thirty years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing franchising from almost every angle. I grew up in an iconic Canadian franchise that expanded to nearly 500 locations. I worked in field support. I became a franchisee. Today my team and I work with franchisors and field support teams across the globe.

One observation has remained consistent and led to my interest in solving this phenomenon.

Two franchisees can receive the same training, the same marketing, the same operational systems, and the same support, yet produce completely different results.

Why?

Because information doesn’t create execution. People do.

Walk through almost any franchise conference and you’ll hear people talking about building trust, improving communication, strengthening partnerships, and increasing engagement.

I agree with every one of those objectives.

The question I keep asking is: How?

How does a field coach build trust with an experienced franchisee who thinks they already know the answer?

How does someone in marketing influence adoption of a new campaign without direct authority?

How does a franchise development professional set expectations that strengthen the future relationship instead of selling the dream?

How does a finance team hold someone accountable while preserving the partnership?

Those aren’t communication problems.

They’re influence problems.

For years I’ve focused on helping field coaches because they’re the people closest to the franchisee. But the more I’ve observed, the more I’ve realized this is not really a field support issue.

Every department influences franchisee behaviour.

Marketing influences behaviour.

Operations influences behaviour.

Finance influences behaviour.

Franchise development influences behaviour.

Leadership influences behaviour.

Every interaction either strengthens or weakens the relationship. Every conversation either builds capability or creates dependency. Every department is influencing behaviour whether they realize it or not.

When franchisee performance drops, I see franchisors throwing more money at dashboards, marketing, technology, systems and what they describe as “coaching tools”.

But none of those investments deliver their intended impact if we cannot help franchisees care enough to take action

Which means the ability to influence behaviour is not a nice-to-have skill. It is one of the most important organizational capabilities a franchisor can develop.

In our free weekly virtual Field Support Roundtable, I often ask the group a simple question… “Would you rather spend your day solving operational problems, or coaching franchisees to grow their business?”

The answer is almost always coaching.. When I ask them why, considering real coaching takes more effort and energy, they tell me that they get fulfilment from seeing franchisees achieve their goals.

So what if, as an industry, we invested as intentionally in developing the capability to influence, coach, challenge, and develop independent business owners as we do in developing operations, marketing, finance, and technology?

Maybe the next evolution of franchising is not another software platform or another reporting dashboard.

Maybe it is finally recognizing that influencing, supporting, and holding franchisees accountable is worth the same energy and investment we’ve made in every other critical business function.