Does your business have multiple locations, branches, or offices?
Here’s a question worth asking:
Am I running ONE company with multiple locations? Or am I actually running multiple companies that just happen to share the same name?
There’s a BIG difference.
As businesses grow and expand geographically, something interesting tends to happen. Each location gradually develops its own way of doing things. It’s one of the biggest frustrations that so many of the companies I work with are experiencing.
Processes vary and don’t quite mesh with everything back at “the mothership.” Expectations are different from location to location. Different leadership styles take hold. Different cultures create a more complicated set of values. Accountability is all over the place, depending on where you are.
And before you know it, the customer experience, employee experience, and financial performance can vary dramatically depending on which location someone walks into.
Sound familiar?
This is one of the biggest challenges I see with growing, multi-location organizations that we work with all over the country.
The good news? It’s fixable.
One Company. One Vision.
One of the foundational principles of the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®) is getting everyone in your organization 100% on the same page with where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.
Now imagine how much more important that becomes when your employees are spread across five, ten or even fifty locations.
Every location should understand and embrace the same:
- Core Values: The behaviors that define your culture, regardless of location.
- Core Focus™: Why your company exists and what it does best.
- Long-Term Target: Where the organization is ultimately heading.
- Marketing Strategy: Who your ideal customers are and what makes your company unique.
- 3-Year Picture™ and 1-Year Plan: What success looks like and what you’re collectively working toward as a whole.
- Quarterly Rocks: The most important priorities that move the business forward.
When these aren’t clear and consistently communicated, individual locations begin creating their own versions of success.
And that’s where alignment starts breaking down.
Centralized vs. Decentralized: Where Do You Draw the Line?
Here’s where things get especially interesting.
Not everything in a multi-location business should be centralized. But not everything should be left up to the individual locations, either.
Finding that balance is critical.
This is one of the most important items we work through when I coach teams with multiple locations. 100% of the time, there are items that are in the wrong bucket causing major chaos.
Centralize too much, and you create unnecessary bureaucracy, slow decision-making and frustrated local leaders.
Decentralize too much, and you invite inconsistency, inefficiency, duplicated efforts and a fragmented culture.
The key is determining which decisions, functions and processes belong at the company level and which should remain at the location level with some flexibility allowed.
For example:
Consider centralizing:
- Core Values, vision and company-wide expectations
- Branding, marketing standards and customer experience expectations
- Financial reporting and key performance indicators
- Technology platforms and operating systems
- Hiring standards and leadership development
- Core business processes and quality standards
Consider decentralizing:
- Local relationship building and community involvement
- Day-to-day scheduling and staffing decisions
- Local sales and business development activities
- Location-specific operational adjustments
- Decisions requiring immediate customer or market responsiveness
Of course, every business is different.
A bank with multiple branches will have different requirements than a construction company, retail organization or professional services firm.
The goal isn’t to make every location identical. It’s to make every location consistently excellent and so that everything make sense as it all flows back to your headquarters.
Your Accountability Structure Matters More Than You Think
Another major challenge in multi-location organizations is determining who is accountable for what.
Does each branch have its own leader responsible for its profitability?
Which decisions belong to the local manager versus corporate leadership?
Who owns sales? HR? Marketing? Operations?
And perhaps most importantly, who has the final say when there’s disagreement?
This is where the EOS Accountability Chart™ becomes incredibly valuable.
Rather than building your organizational structure around people, titles and historical responsibilities, you build it around the functions your business needs to succeed.
Clearly defining accountabilities and decision-making authority eliminates the confusion that often slows down multi-location businesses.
Your people should know exactly what they own, what they’re measured on and when they need to involve someone else.
And they better be able to see exactly how it all comes together to make the overall company successful as a whole.
Standardize the Processes. Empower the People.
Here’s a principle I encourage multi-location businesses to embrace:
Standardize what matters. Allow flexibility where it creates value.
Your customer shouldn’t receive a dramatically different experience depending on which location they visit.
Imagine if every time you ordered your favorite coffee at a Starbucks it tasted completely different… it’s about quality control.
Your employees shouldn’t have completely different expectations simply because they work in another branch.
And your leaders shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time the company opens a new location.
Document your core processes. Get everyone following them. Establish consistent Scorecards and measurable expectations.
Then give your local leaders the freedom to execute within those agreed-upon boundaries.
That’s how you create both consistency AND autonomy.
The Ultimate Test: Can You Scale What You’ve Built?
Here’s one final question.
If you opened five more locations tomorrow, could you confidently replicate what makes your best location successful?
Or would you be crossing your fingers, hoping each new manager figures it out?
That’s the difference between having multiple locations and having a truly scalable business.
When you establish a shared vision, clear accountability, consistent processes and intentional decisions around centralized versus decentralized operations, something powerful happens.
You stop managing a collection of independent locations.
You start building one cohesive, scalable and ultimately more valuable company.
And whether your goal is to grow, improve profitability, reduce your involvement or eventually exit your business, that’s a company worth building and that now has great value to it.