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.

By examining the postal operations manual, we can learn a thing or two about how to run a large organization with many small regional offices

The postal operations manual may seem like an odd place to look as a prototype of a great operations guide but it makes sense to look again.  Let’s put aside the jokes the perceptions of “going postal” for a moment and step back and see what this organization has accomplished.  Running almost entirely on the cost of those little stamps you buy, this vast international organization handles a volcano eruption of physical mail each day.  For the most part you never hear of any problems and that is because of a well prepared and enforced postal operations manual.

Most of us think of the post office in terms of the local office we use and the carrier who brings the mail. That is why when you are pondering how a very large franchise operation might run, the postal operations manual could be a classic in how to franchise a business.

Each post office can be seen as a franchise of a much larger organization. And yet from office to office and city to city, there is a uniformity of service and in how postal workers look and perform. That is the result of good management from the top right down to the those humble carriers who avoid your dog each week.  And it is the result of that postal operations manual that could easily be adapted to transform into a franchise operating manual with very few modifications.

Good ideas are in the postal operations manual but its not the perfect franchising template.

Discipline and well defined expectations are part of why the postal operations manual is such a great management tool.  Both of those high minded values would fit in your franchising organization as well.  If you are preparing a franchise operating manual for your business, spell out the expectations in clear English along with the expectation that a strong sense of discipline will be used at the franchise level to enforce uniformity in how your franchises are perceived by the public.

Franchise managers are capable of having that kind of discipline. Franchise managers are often successful small business people with plenty of drive, business savvy and discipline that they bring to you when they filled out that franchise application and paid to own a franchise of your business.  So don’t be afraid to present them with a document that has the same high standards of the postal operations manual.  They can take it.

However, there is some wiggle room in making your franchise operations manual unique.  The commission of the postal service as reflected in the postal operations manual is not the same as the objective of a business franchise operations.  You are out to make money and lots of it.  You are out to take over a market from stiff competition and one way to do that is to foster a corporate culture of innovation mixed with compliance.

These may not be strong values you see in the postal operations manual. If you can take a look at that document, you will see an excellent template for running a huge multi-national franchise operation.  Learn well those lessons from the postal operations manual.  But do not let that template take away the sense of cooperative management, entrepreneurship and innovation that you want in your franchise managers.  After all, nobody is going to “go postal” in your franchise chain. Instead they should pour that energy into making piles and piles of money for you and for their franchise as well.