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When I opened the email (below) from Heather Westing, the Subway development agent for Oregon and Southwest Washington, I was very excited:

"We are at the opening session of the Subway International convention. They just announced Larry Dennis Jr. of Oregon as the West Region Franchisee of the Year. Congratulations!!!" A few days later, we received the following press release:

The Subway® Restaurant chain recently honored Portland resident, Larry Dennis, with the Franchisee of the Year award. As a Subway Franchisee of the Year, Dennis is honored as the West Territory's Multi -Unit Owner for his accomplishments in building sales and increasing profitability while also achieving excellent store evaluations. He was selected from among the chain's more than 4,000 international franchisees.

Dennis has been a Subway franchisee for 10 years. He is actively involved with several community nonprofit groups including the Make a Wish Foundation. Dennis has 45 employees who service his five Subway stores in Portland, Tualatin and Clackamas.

Heather's firm was the recipient of the Turbo Charged Award in 2000. This award is made on the basis of an organization's commitment to developing their management team and for outstanding achievement in their industry. In 2000, Subway International recognized the Oregon territory as the Development Agent of the Year. Recent winners of the Turbo Charged award include Wildish Construction Company, recognized as one of the two safest construction companies in America for 2008, and Apollo Sheet Metal and Apollo Inc., ranked as the second safest company in Washington State for 2010. Both of these firms have utilized Turbo's Maximum Performance Improvement program, including Milepost 1, the Cultural Benchmark Survey (CBS), Milepost 2, the Leadership Team Advance (LTA), and Milepost 5, the Leadership Development Lab for hundreds of their key managers, staff and supervisors. A few days after receiving the email, when I had the opportunity to congratulate Larry, he was characteristically modest about his achievement. When I inquired further about the basis on which

the award is made, I learned that key considerations include growth in sales and the more subjective measure of customer satisfaction. Another important consideration is contributing to the overall success of the brand. Here is Larry's operating philosophy and strategy: "If an operator is so worried about food costs that they start talking about how many olives the ‘sandwich artist' used, that's where everyone's focus is. Conserving olives is all anyone is paying attention to. In our restaurants, the only thing we worry about is speed and service. As a result, we have lower than average food and labor costs. When your sales are up, which is driven by speed of service, all costs as a percentage of sales go down. Our strategy has always been to build sales through a superior customer experience."

What are you asking your team to pay attention to? How do you draw attention to and keep score of what you want people to pay attention to? How do you include your team in problem solving when performance measures indicate targets will not be met? How do you celebrate when achievements exceed your targets?

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