Looking to the postal operations manual as a template for a well run franchised operation will give you inspiration for how to be efficient when you start your own franchise.

The postal operations manual is one of the best kept secrets that are hidden in plain sight.  When you think about it, the post office represents one of the largest, most active franchised businesses in the world. It is also a heavily distributed operation that runs like a well oiled machine completely under the radar.  We are so used to the post office coming through with the mail on time and professionally that if there is ever a problem with the mail, we react like the world is coming to an end.  That is just how much we assume that the post office will always do its job well. The reason for that efficiency is the postal operations manual.

When you are ready to sign a franchise agreement and start your own business, the first step is to find a great franchising company to become a part of. While the post office is not the place where you would make a franchising investment, you will find no better example of how to run a diversified franchise-like operation than the one that is powered by the postal operations manual.  Despite the jokes about postmen and the negative stereotypes, day and day out the postal operations manual assures that the function of that organization is fulfilled with an extremely high success rate without fanfare or notice by most of its customers.

If your franchise lives up to the postal operations manual, you will succeed.

You can get ahead of the game to develop an operations manual template if you reflect on the efficiency that happens every day of the week when the daily mail is delivered to your house.  The discipline and the values of a postal operations manual are evident in the behavior and performance of the army of postal workers who slave away without praise or rewards for the good work they do.

If one day out of the year the mail is delivered an hour late or a day is missed, most of us behave like it represents a national emergency.  That is just how effective the postal operations manual trains their people to run a reliable organization that lives up to customer expectations as a matter of routine.  Consider also that for the tiny price of the cost of a stamp, the post office pulls off the Herculean task of delivering your mail every day and every month of the year.

The way the postal operations manual assures this kind of high level effectiveness is even more shocking when you consider that the post office is a government agency.  We have to put that aside when we look at the many ways that the postal operations manual would make a cracker jack template for any franchising effort in the world. Considering it is a part of the government, the post office methods for getting the job done right and doing it every day of the year should stand as a model for the rest of us to follow.