Can you imagine a chicken restaurant without any chicken?

Well, this is what happened to KFC last year; 646 of its 900 UK stores closed because it had run out of chicken.

The cluck-up happened when KFC switched its delivery contract from a specialist food-delivery company to shipping giant DHL, who’d vowed to set a new delivery standard when it was awarded the gig.

DHL admitted these major delays and disruptions were down to operational and administrative issues.

The Scale Lesson this week isn’t about pointing the finger, or whether or not it was a bird-brained decision to switch distributors.

It’s about the importance of alignment and getting the right team, processes and systems in place, without which your business will fail to meet demand.

Here’s the ‘Secret Recipe’ (and it’s so simple) …  

It’s human nature to want to believe that there is always a complex secret behind any business success.

In reality, all that an efficient business has done is apply some rules, discipline and a way of practicing those rules until it becomes a perfectly executed magic trick.

The illusion is the seemingly effortless way in which a business is able to grow in both size and profitability.

The secret is a brilliant system operating in the background that has been carefully planned and set up, shared harmoniously throughout the business, designed with alerts and lessons in place to slowly perfect the process, and simply waiting for the final curtain to come down on a fabulously successful performance – the owner’s exit plan.

If you fail to have the right systems in place, then you’ll remain stagnant at best.

If you’re looking to change any systems or processes, however big or small, then please remember to consider how this could impact your entire business.  There will always be new.  But new does not always mean better…