Why is every location learning the same lesson hard way?

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Your team solved this problem last month. So why is another location working it out from scratch?

Maybe an experienced supervisor found a better way to train a new hire. Maybe a crew figured out why a routine task kept going wrong. The lesson helped the people who were there.

But the instructions never changed.

Now another team hits the same problem. A manager gets pulled into another call. A new employee learns through a mistake someone else already made.

That’s a frustrating way to spend the experience your organization has worked hard to build.

When useful lessons stay with the people who learned them, the rest of the business keeps paying to learn them again.

This is something I wanted to get into with John Evans, founder of EverLine Coatings and Services, a pavement maintenance business he developed into a franchise network across Canada and the United States.

I’ve known John since the early days. One part of his story offers a useful way to think about this.

He spent winters writing his operations manual. Then he spent the summers testing it. Then he went back and changed what he’d written.

The work kept teaching him something, and he kept building those lessons into the instructions.

Your team keeps learning too. The question is whether your playbook has a way to keep up.

Build What Your Team Learns Into the Playbook

Here’s something I’d try this week.

Pick a process that keeps generating questions or workarounds. Sit down with someone who actually does the work, open the current instructions, and walk through a recent example together.

Ask:

• Where did the instructions help?
• What did you have to figure out for yourself?
• What would have made this easier for someone doing it for the first time?

Choose one improvement to test. Agree on who will try it, what a better result would look like, and when you’ll review it together.

If it works, update the shared process and show the people who use it what changed. If it doesn’t, you’ve learned something before asking every location to do it.

Give Experience Somewhere to Go

John’s support system has evolved a long way from those first manuals. We talked about franchisees learning from each other, using data to improve coaching, and where AI can help.

What I appreciated was how much he still values the human part: experience, judgment, and someone who understands what it feels like to be the owner facing a difficult day.

That matters beyond franchising. A supervisor or site leader can spend years learning how to handle situations the instructions barely touch. Giving that person a way to improve the playbook lets others benefit from what they’ve learned.

It also sends a useful message: your experience has value here.

The full conversation is worth a listen. For this week, start with one recurring question and follow it back to the process behind it.

Leighton