The wrong question
cost me years.
For years running a successful franchise, I asked the same question.
Why don't they care the way I do?
I said it in the morning when a team member repeatedly came in late. I said it when standards slipped and sales processes were not being followed. I said it to myself at closing time when the team were frustrated they had to stay behind because of a customer, or because we had to tidy up.
The question felt reasonable. It felt justified.
But it was the wrong question entirely.
Because it put the problem in the team. When the real problem was that I had not yet built the conditions for them to care. The fog was mine to lift. I just did not know it yet.
The right question turned out to be this: why haven't I designed the conditions for them to care?
That shift changed everything. Not the team. Not the business model. The question.
Within six months of sitting in that frustration, unable to find an answer, I got to work building one - building standards, creating clarity, designing the conditions - the business reached break-even for the first time in over seven years. Within fourteen months net profit had increased significantly. Net promoter scores and Great Place to Work scores lifted.
The team that had been the source of the question became the proof of the answer.
They were capable all along. They just needed the conditions.
That experience - the frustration, the wrong turns, the moment of realisation, and the results that followed - became SOAR and The OCRE Method™. Built from the inside of a real business. Tested with real people. Refined through years of working with franchise networks and business owners who were asking the same wrong question I once did.