Great Clips, Inc.
Create a vision everyone in the organization understands, supports, and works to achieve.
“The most powerful leadership tool I have found is creating a vision everyone in the organization understands, supports, and works to achieve. When everyone in the organization supports the vision it makes decisions easier because there is a clear focus. People begin to think long term and are willing to accept short-term investments of time and money to make the long-term vision a reality,” says Ray Barton, CEO of Great Clips, Inc.
Great Clips, headquartered in Minneapolis, is North America’s large stand fastest-growing hair salon brand in the $50-billion hair-care industry. Established in 1982, Great Clips has perfected a system for delivering competitively priced, high-quality haircuts and perms to men, women, and children. The company began franchising in 1983, and today, nearly 1,900 Great Clips salons operate in 85+ markets across the United States and Canada.
At the company’s first convention in 1988, when the organization was six years old, Barton, in his opening speech put up a slide that said:
3,000 by 2000
Great Clips Leads the Hair-Care
Industry into the 21st CenturyGreat Clips is a 3,000-salon hair-care chain with operations
coast-to-coast and annual sales in excess of $1,000,000,000.
Ray explains, “At the time, we had less than 200 salons open, no real plan, no money, and no business talking about 3,000 salons. We knew our industry would change and someday, someone would have 3,000 salons under one brand. Why not us? Our goal was always to be the leader, the best, and the biggest.
“People throughout our organization began to talk about 3,000 salons. At first people talked about how impossible and unrealistic the dream was. We kept talking and dreaming and using the vision 3,000 by 2000 in all of our communications. Soon everyone was talking about what we needed to do to make our dream a reality. Our conversations and the way we thought as an organization changed.
“In January of 1990, we held a franchisee meeting called ‘5 to 50.’ The meeting was to help franchisees develop business plans to grow. Only select, invited franchisees attended.
“At the end of the meeting we presented a more detailed vision for our organization in the form of a mock Wall Street Journal article dated July 13, 1999. It described how we would look ten years in the future. The franchisees attending signed the article and many put a number by their name indicating the number of salons they would open. They now owned a piece of the 3,000-salon dream.
“Vision is the dream of what can be. Creating the picture and making it come alive in people’s minds helps focus efforts toward making the dream come true. Having a clear picture of where you are going and what you want to be helps people understand why they are working so hard. It is not work for money; it is work to create something, to do something others could not do and thought was impossible. Very exciting. Very powerful.
“ 3,000 by 2000 was our vision. Everyone believed in our vision and that we could make it real. It changed the way we did business and the way we dealt with each other.
“By establishing our vision, and making it very simple, measurable, and clear, we created a team effort to make it real. Great Clips, Inc., and the franchisees made huge investments of money, time, and effort. The dream helped us set priorities and make decisions.
“We haven’t yet opened our 3,000th salon, but we will; our timing was just a little off. Because we had a dream, we are now North America’s largest and fastest growing salon brand, and we truly believe we are the best.
“We currently have 1,900 salons, and will have over 2,000 by the end of the year. We will open over 250 salons this year, and will reach our goal of 3,000 salons.
“Great Clips is recognized throughout the industry as the industry leader. Our vision is the same, but the words we use to communicate have changed to ‘Clearly #1 . . . The Dominant Haircare Brand.’ Our vision drives our every decision.
“Thinking long term is part of creating a vision. From the very beginning, we had a strategy to develop only a few markets at a time. We did this so we could afford to support our franchisees and they would have the marketing necessary to build our brand and to separate themselves from the local competition.
“Shortly after we began franchising, a prospective franchisee from a market that we were not currently developing sent us a signed agreement and a check for the $10,000 franchisee fee. We had no way to attract additional franchisees in the market. No support system was established, and we had several markets that we needed to continue to develop before adding new ones. We needed the $10,000, and it would have made things easier in the short term; but it most likely would have caused problems for us in the long term. We sent the check back because we believed in our strategy and long-term thinking.
“Leadership is difficult to define and even more difficult to learn. I have studied leaders and tried to learn how they were able to create a vision and then lead people to make that vision their own. A leader must have a strong belief in themselves and the willingness to take huge personal risks by throwing a stake in the ground, stating their vision, and continuing to communicate the vision even when it seems impossible and others doubt. The communication must be consistent and constant, and the leader’s actions must support the vision.”