Fast Lane
Rising to the challenge
How to communicate effectively with employees
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Atlanta | January 2009
Page 1 of 2
Mike Lassiter
president and CEO, Rising Roll Franchising Co.
When Mike Lassiter
talks about how he
solicits input from his employees, his examples are
mouthwatering.
For instance, when the president and CEO of Rising Roll
Franchising Co. wanted to
gather input from the 130
employees of his Rising Roll
Gourmet franchises, he held a
contest for employees to submit new menu ideas based on
feedback from customers.
One entry was a pimento
cheese sandwich, and the
company decided to roll it out
and give it a test run.
“Then, this summer, we had
a pimento cheese BLT that
included our made-from-scratch pimento cheese, hickory-smoked bacon [and]
Granny Smith apples on a
seven-grain boule, and it was
fabulous,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Lassiter about how to make
sure your employees aren’t
too intimidated to approach
you and how to avoid being
overwhelmed by feedback.
Q. How do you become an
effective communicator?
First and foremost, you’ve
got to provide a platform
where the franchisees feel
comfortable being honest
with you and having good
dialogue with you. You don’t
want a corporate structure
where there is an intimidation factor to speak to someone at the corporate office.
To do that, you have to be
visible. You have to be out in
the stores. You have to call
the franchisees. You have to
create a communication
structure, which will allow
them the opportunity to give
you good, honest input. The
platform of communication is
crucial, and then secondly,
you need to have structured
communication.
We have monthly conference calls in which we’ll go
over a variety of different
topics. For a lot of people,
that is a good way to reach
out to us.
This structured communication plan allows our franchisees to be very strategic in
our decision-making process.
Then, we have a national meeting at the same
time every year, and we
have round-table discussions so franchisees
can address specific
topics and come up
with solutions.
One of the points that
has been helpful in
making sure we have a
good dialogue is I have
given every franchisee
my cell number. They
know that they can call
me after hours, they
can call me on the
weekend, and they
have access to me.
Because we’ve opened
our communications
that much, we have
very strong communications
in our organization.
If you talk to some organizations out there, it’s very difficult to get to the person you
need to speak with to get an
answer. You have to go
through this maze of assistants and voice mail — it
becomes very unproductive.
Whatever business you’re
in, the CEO needs to reach
out at some point each month
to those offices, the regional
managers, those franchise
units, whatever the structure
may be to make sure there is
good communication.
