A time for owners, not Franchisees

A Brand is a promise - of quality, of delivery, of attention. A Brand is organic - it grows, thrives, declines, gets hollowed out and dies.

In times of rapid and complex change, we know that we can only deal effectively with change at the edge, coming into contact with morphing realities. Despite that, most of our organisations still want to "manage" change from the centre.

It reminds me of a scene in the wonderful 1969 film "Monte Carlo or Bust", where the car, driven by the hapless Dudley Moore, careers over a cliff and the imperious Peter Cooke, pointing over to the left, instructs him to "land over there." It's a perfect metaphor for much of what we see in highly centralised organisations at present.

Perhaps, in the current conditions, Franchises are an excellent example of what happens when the centre decides what happens at the edge. In the coffee shop, the people on the front line, or the fast-food outlet, or the coaching business picking up the pieces when the unstoppable force b…