How to give your GM instructions they'll follow

A GM reads a message from the owner standing up, between two other things. Most of what makes it work is what it leaves out.

Owners and district managers tend to write the way they think: the whole picture, the reasoning, three ideas for what might help and a reminder about something from last week. The GM reads the first line, then a customer walks in. Whatever was in line four does not happen. This guide covers how to write an instruction a GM can read in ten seconds and act on the same shift, how to put a number on it, and the mistakes that make good GMs stop reading.

Store, number, one thing, when

"Castle Rock: catering down 22% on last week. Make 10 office-manager calls today." The GM knows which store, why it matters, what to do and by when. Anything more is a second message.

That sentence has four parts, and each one does a job:

• Store: which building this is about. Even a GM with one store should see it, because messages get forwarded and screenshotted.
• Number: the figure that changed and what it is compared with. "Down 22% on last week" is a fact the GM can check. "Catering has been soft" is an opinion they can argue with.
• One thing: a specific, physical task. "Make 10 office-manager calls" can be done and counted. "Focus on catering" cannot.
• When: today, this shift, before Friday's schedule posts. Without a time, the task joins the list of things the GM means to get to.

A useful test is to read the message aloud and ask whether the GM could start on it before finishing their coffee. If they would need to call you back to ask what you meant, rewrite it.

Put a figure on it when you can

A number tells the GM how much the task matters next to everything else they have going on. The simplest version compares this week's rate with the store's own recent rate, then turns the gap into dollars.

• Excess cost = (this week's rate - normal rate) x this week's net sales.

This works for discounts, voids, refunds and comps, because each one is a share of sales the POS already reports. Use the store's own recent weeks as the normal rate, not another store's, so the GM can't dismiss it as an unfair comparison.

The message to the GM then writes itself: "Provo: discounts 4.5% of sales this week against your usual 2.8%, about $510. Check the discount report in your POS today and find which code or shift is driving it." For more on what to look for once they open that report, see how to spot discount and void problems.

Some things should not get a dollar figure. Hourly labor is a good example: a store that is short-staffed through a rush loses sales that never appear in the labor number, so a "labor excess" in dollars can be a guess dressed as a fact. State the rate and the comparison instead. And if a figure is only a rough estimate, say so.

One instruction

"Check the report, fix what's wrong, coach shift leads, and hit last week's rate" is a morning's work, and the last clause is the one that gets remembered. Send one. The rest can wait for the weekly check-in.

Long instructions fail in a predictable way. The GM does the easiest part, or the most recent part, and believes the job is done. Then the owner sees the number has not moved and assumes the GM ignored them. Both people are frustrated, and neither did anything wrong except the message.

If you have three things to say, rank them. Send the first today. Hold the second until the first is done or until the weekly check-in. Often the third stops mattering by then.

Name where it lives

"Use this week's report" sends a GM looking. "The discount report in your POS" doesn't.

GMs work across several systems: the POS, the scheduling app, the inventory tool, the delivery tablets, the brand's portal. "The report" could be any of them. Name the system and, where it helps, the screen:

• "Next week's schedule in your scheduling app" rather than "the schedule".
• "Sunday's count in your inventory system" rather than "your counts".
• "The void report in your POS for Tuesday close" rather than "check the voids".

If the thing you want the GM to look at only exists in your own spreadsheet, send it with the message or reword the task so it points at something they can open.

Say it the way the store says it

If a phrase would sound odd said out loud in the store, it's the wrong phrase. "Review the current-period discount report and correct any control gap" is four phrases for check this week's discounts.

Some swaps that help:

• "Optimize labor deployment" becomes "cut one closer Tuesday to Thursday".
• "Drive guest engagement" becomes "ask every table how the burger was".
• "Address throughput constraints" becomes "open the second register from 12 to 1".
• "Ensure compliance with standards" becomes "redo the walk-in temperature log tonight".

The plain version is shorter, and it tells the GM exactly what you want done. It also shows you whether you know what you want. If you can't say the plain version, the instruction isn't ready to send.

Make replying easy

An instruction with no way to answer is a one-way street. The owner never learns whether it happened, and the GM never gets to say the number was wrong. Agree on a short reply format everyone uses, such as:

• DONE: it's handled.
• LATER: I'll get to it, not today.
• WRONG: the number or the task doesn't match what I'm seeing.

WRONG is the most useful of the three. A GM who says the figure is off is often right: a refund posted to the wrong day, a catering order that moved, a sync gap. Ask what they're seeing and fix the data before you push again.

Step-by-step: writing a GM instruction

1. Pick the one store and the one figure that changed most against that store's own recent weeks.
2. State the figure and what it is compared with, in one line.
3. Write one task a person can do this shift, starting with a verb.
4. Name the system where the GM will find the report or screen.
5. Add a time: today, this shift or before a named day.
6. Add a dollar figure only if you can calculate it from the store's own numbers.
7. Read it aloud. Cut every word that isn't store, number, task or time.
8. Send it, and ask for a one-word reply.

Common mistakes

• Sending three tasks in one message, then judging the GM on the one they didn't do.
• Comparing the store with the brand's best location instead of its own recent weeks.
• Pointing at "the report" without naming the system it lives in.
• Using office language a crew member would never say aloud.
• Sending a task every day whether or not anything changed. A GM who is told to fix things that don't matter learns to skim the one that does.
• Multiple people messaging the same GM about different priorities on the same morning.
• Treating "the number is wrong" as pushback rather than useful information.

If you oversee several stores, the same rules apply to each GM, with one more: agree internally who sends what, so no GM hears from three people at once. How to manage multiple franchise locations covers the weekly rhythm around it, and how to keep good restaurant general managers covers why message overload matters for retention.

Where Franlever fits

Every lever Franlever sends a GM follows these rules: one store, one figure, one thing to do, in plain words. Franlever connects to the POS and other systems, measures each store against its own normal range and the brand's median, and sends at most one lever per store per day to that store's GM by email or text. GMs reply DONE, LATER or WRONG. Some mornings it says nothing needs attention, because a message with nothing to do is one the GM should not have to read. See how AI COO works.

General information for restaurant and franchise operators, not legal, tax, accounting or financial advice. Figures in examples are illustrations, not predictions or promises of results. Laws and platform policies change and differ by location, so check the current rules and talk to a qualified advisor about your situation.