Businesses with many individual units — be they hotels, restaurants, or manufacturing plants — struggle with the same problem: a wide “bell curve” of performance that includes some high-performing lead units and too many low-performing laggards. One respected retail chain we researched included 80 highly profitable stores and over 100 that lost money every year.

Fixing this “bell curve” and making all your units high performers requires effectively addressing 3 problems. The first is a lack of clarity about key performance drivers. Most multi-unit businesses track unit performance along dozens of measures. But many aren’t sure which of these measures are the real drivers of long-term financial performance. Is it labor efficiency? Guest satisfaction? Revenue growth?

TruePoint works with key line leaders to build and then test a model of which measures are the true drivers of long-term financial success. Knowing the few factors that drive performance lets unit managers focus on the few things that matter most, reducing overload and raising performance.

The second problem is that most leaders, while intuitively understanding that each unit is different, tend to manage all their units in the same way. For example, a division manager may push all of her stores to focus on excellent guest service. But this strategy will be ineffective in a new or struggling store that has not yet solidified its operational capabilities — attentive service is of little value to a customer who has waited in line for 20 minutes or whose order is out of stock.

Recognizing the differing needs of individual units helps the corporate center to manage performance more effectively across the chain. An insightful segmentation of units — not by geography or size, but by what they must do to improve performance — allows the corporate center to provide each unit the right resources it needs to grow, rather than trying to make one size fit all. This segmentation also helps units with similar needs to form “communities of practice” where they can learn from each other and dramatically accelerate their performance. For example, stores in economically depressed areas with high turnover can share customized strategies for recruiting and retaining high-performing employees.

The third challenge — and the most difficult — is a chronic shortage of strong unit managers. Everyone knows “a good general manager makes a good unit.” But there are never enough good GMs — great businesses must learn to build their own. Unfortunately, leadership development programs aren’t enough; too often they result in “a changed manager returning to an unchanged business.” The key to developing unit leaders is to help them achieve breakthrough results inside their own units.

TruePoint’s supports this approach with our Unit-Level Breakthrough, a simplified version of our Strategic Fitness Process adapted to an operational level. This reliable process generates dramatic performance improvement in the unit, and simultaneously builds the unit leader’s capability. For example, a Steak n Shake restaurant that used Unit-Level Breakthrough reduced its food waste from $1,200 per month to near-zero. The general manager in this unit became highly effective at engaging employees to drive performance, and went on to triple sales growth and cut employee turnover in half.

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