Striking Franchise Gold: How to Actively Gather Tacit Knowledge Before It Slips Away
- jantimms3
- Jul 29
- 10 min read
Updated: Aug 28
There’s a gold rush happening in your franchise network - but it’s invisible to the untrained eye.
Every time a franchisee figures out a smarter way to close sales…
Every time a support manager spots a recurring challenge across regions…
Every time a supplier or client shares a hard-won insight…
You’re sitting on potential franchise gold - if you know how to capture it.
In the first article of this GRASP blog series, we explored why avoiding a franchise brain drain is critical to sustaining performance. Now we’re diving deeper into the first essential action: GATHER.
In franchising, know-how isn’t just important - it is the product. It’s what you sell. It’s what gets replicated. And it’s what fuels consistent, profitable growth.
But much of that know-how lives in people’s heads. It’s unspoken, undocumented, and dangerously easy to lose. That’s why you need to go looking for it - proactively, repeatedly, and systemically.
In this article, we’ll explore how to seek out this “crude oil” that drives your franchising success engine - the tacit knowledge hiding inside your network. You’ll discover seven high-impact places to explore, and how to build the habits, tools, and culture that turn invisible insights into unstoppable momentum.
Why Gathering Tacit Knowledge Matters
In high-performing franchise networks, the secret to consistent success often isn’t found in manuals or systems - it’s found in people.
It’s the way a franchisee handles a difficult customer with empathy and turns the situation into a long-term relationship. It’s the subtle way a field support manager asks the right question at the right time to unlock a breakthrough. It’s the insight your suppliers share when they’ve seen a solution work in another business context.
These insights are forms of tacit knowledge - the know-how that’s gained through experience but rarely written down. It’s intuitive, context-specific, and often incredibly valuable. But unless you make a conscious effort to gather it, it stays hidden. Or worse, it disappears when someone leaves or moves on.
Too many franchise systems treat knowledge as something static - like content to upload or compliance rules to follow. But the franchise networks that lead their category understand something different:
In franchising, know-how is your competitive advantage - and gathering it must be an ongoing, intentional practice.
When you treat knowledge as an asset worth investing in - and put the systems in place to capture and share it - you unlock real leverage. You reduce duplication of effort. You shorten learning curves. You replicate what works faster and more effectively.
The good news? Tacit knowledge isn’t a scarce resource. But it is easy to overlook unless you know where to look, and how to encourage people to share it.
Let’s look at the mindset shift needed to get started - and the real story of a man who went looking for gold and discovered the power of having the right tools and systems to do it efficiently.
Adopt the Right Mindset - Become a Knowledge Prospector
A few years ago, I spent time in Kalgoorlie, one of Western Australia’s most famous gold mining regions. That’s where I met John - a former electrician turned full-time gold prospector. He was eager to show me the nuggets he’d found, and even more eager to tell me how he’d gone from the occasional lucky strike to regular success.
At first, John told me, he relied on instinct and chance. Sometimes he found something. Often he didn’t. It wasn’t until he invested in training, specialised tools, and a system for locating promising ground that his fortunes changed. He learned from people who’d already walked the path - and he used their tools and techniques to get better results, faster.
There’s a powerful parallel here for franchise networks.
Too many businesses treat knowledge gathering like gold panning in a stream - hopeful, inconsistent, and hit-or-miss. But the ones that strike real value treat it like structured prospecting. They use defined methods. They equip their people with the right tools. They embed knowledge gathering into how the business runs.
Just like John, they stop relying on chance and start operating with purpose.
Let’s take a look at seven practical locations inside (and outside) your network where valuable know-how is already waiting to be discovered - if you know how to spot it.
Where to Look - 7 High-Impact Locations for Gathering Tacit Knowledge
Let’s explore seven practical and proven ways to actively uncover the know-how that drives franchisee success.
One of the simplest, most powerful ways to surface useful know-how is to embed short knowledge sharing moments into your regular meetings.
These are brief (2–5 minute) opportunities where team members share something new they’ve learned that could be useful to others. It might come from a recent client conversation, a conference, an external network, or simply from doing the job well.
Think of it as creating a habit of curiosity and reflection - but making it part of the agenda.
It’s best to lead by example. Have a few shares prepared early on to model what you’re looking for. For example:
“At last week’s marketing forum, I saw a demo of an automated communication tool that lets franchisees customise local campaigns easily.”
“I spoke with a peer in another network who runs monthly ‘lunch and learn’ sessions for their franchisees - might be worth trialling.”
“In The Ultimate Franchising Success Formula book, there’s a section on onboarding that gave me a new idea for how we could refine our mentoring program.”
Once these moments are established at head office, encourage field support managers to introduce them into meetings with franchisees - and encourage franchisees to adopt them in their team huddles, too.
Over time, this habit can ripple outward - extending to interactions with suppliers, clients, and partners. Some of your most valuable insights may come from those who see your network from the outside and offer a fresh perspective.
These moments don’t take long, but done consistently, they change the way your network thinks - from operating on autopilot to becoming actively curious, reflective, and growth-minded.
Franchise advisory councils and regional meetings are often underused when it comes to knowledge gathering. They’re typically focused on agenda-driven problem-solving - but carving out even a small window for sharing insights can uncover a wealth of practical know-how.
One example from the research: a marketing manager who supported franchisees with local campaigns held monthly regional sales meetings. Each session included an open exchange of tactics that had worked well. She then carried those ideas into other regions - creating a simple but powerful flow of ideas across the network.
Knowledge sharing doesn’t need to be complex - it just needs to be consistent and valued.
Some franchise networks create dedicated forums specifically for knowledge exchange - such as leadership workshops, topic-based roundtables, or themed peer-learning events.
These can be held in person or online, and often bring together high-performing franchisees and their teams to share what’s working - and what’s not.
One standout example from the research involved a network that ran regional leadership workshops three times a year, plus a national conference. These workshops focused on sharing insights, team building, and practical problem solving. They were deliberately structured around specific themes to keep the learning focused and actionable.
These kinds of forums not only gather knowledge - they strengthen relationships, build trust, and reinforce a shared commitment to improvement.
There’s no better way to understand what’s really happening on the ground than by stepping into a franchisee’s shoes.
Some of the most successful franchise systems require head office team members - including senior leaders - to spend time working in franchise locations. Not observing. Working.
Answering phones. Serving customers. Handling the day-to-day realities of frontline operations.
This is not a compliance visit or a secret shopper exercise. It’s a deliberate learning opportunity. It fosters mutual respect and generates insights that can’t be captured in a report.
For franchisee onboarding, shadowing an experienced operator as part of a mentoring program is an excellent way to surface and transfer tacit knowledge early in the journey.
But this only works if you treat it as focused exploration. Phones off. Laptops closed. Be fully present and engaged. The insights you gather this way are often the ones that change how you think - and lead.
While often informal, buddy up and shadow remain some of the most effective ways to pass on real-world, experience-based know-how.
For new franchisees or team members, having a designated buddy - someone to model the tasks, answer questions, and explain “why we do it this way” - helps make learning stick.
However, there’s a risk: if the insights exchanged during shadowing remain unspoken or undocumented, the knowledge transfer ends with the moment. You gather insight, but you don’t retain it.
That’s why buddying and shadowing need follow-up: reflection, discussion, and ideally a process for extracting and capturing what was learned. We’ll explore how to do that in the next article on “Refining” knowledge.
Sometimes the best ideas come from outside your system.
Franchise leaders, support staff, and marketing specialists can benefit enormously from engaging with their peers in other networks - through national associations, industry forums, leadership groups, or informal communities of practice.
Whether it's a Franchise Association, a TEC group, or a roundtable of peers in similar roles - these environments give leaders a space to learn, reflect, and bring fresh insights back into the business.
Suppliers, consultants, and training partners can also be valuable sources of external know-how - if you invite them to share what they’re seeing and learning across the sector.
It’s not about copying what others do. It’s about understanding what’s possible - and adapting it for your context.
Finally, one of the richest sources of tacit knowledge is sitting right in front of you: the practices of your highest-performing franchisees.
But if you want to understand why they’re outperforming - and how to replicate it - you need more than anecdotal praise. You need a structured best practice study.
What are your top franchisees doing differently? What habits, attitudes, and routines are driving their success? What patterns show up across the crew, systems, or customer experience?
Follow up with interviews and surveys to dig deeper - and don’t forget to involve the teams behind the scenes. Often the best insights come from those closest to the frontline.
By identifying and validating the behaviours that drive success, you create a blueprint that others can follow - and a foundation for future training, coaching, and recruitment.
Embedding Knowledge Gathering Into Your Culture
Finding and gathering tacit knowledge isn’t a one-off activity - it needs to become a habit embedded into how your franchise system operates.
This starts with leadership. When your executive team models curiosity, reflection, and knowledge-sharing, it sets the tone for the rest of the network. Franchisees and team members follow what’s reinforced - not just what’s said.
But culture isn’t shaped by slogans. It’s shaped by consistent routines.
Make knowledge sharing a standing item in meetings. Train the support team to spot and capture valuable insights during franchisee visits. Build in reflection points at the end of projects, pilot programs, and campaigns. Use onboarding and mentoring to pass on experience-based learning, not just compliance procedures.
As knowledge gathering becomes normalised, it spreads. Suppliers and clients begin to engage more deeply. Franchisees bring ideas forward without being prompted. Partners begin to contribute, not just consume.
You’ll also notice a shift in mindset - from passive delivery to active improvement. A network that shares what it learns becomes more agile, more resilient, and more innovative. That’s a powerful cultural shift.
And there’s something else worth noting.
In the highest-performing franchise systems I studied, knowledge sharing wasn’t seen as a threat. In fact, some CEOs from competing networks met regularly to exchange insights. They recognised that sharing ideas lifts the standard across the entire sector.
By contrast, in lower-performing systems, there was often fear - fear of others stealing ideas, or of being exposed. But the evidence is clear: the benefits of structured knowledge sharing far outweigh the risks, provided you strike the right balance between protecting your IP and building trust.
Franchise networks thrive when knowledge flows freely - not just internally, but across relationships, industries, and communities. The stronger the learning culture, the stronger the network.
In Summary
Tacit knowledge is everywhere in your franchise system. But unless you deliberately gather it, you’re relying on luck.
Whether it’s the quiet insight of a support manager, the tested wisdom of a top-performing franchisee, or the fresh perspective of a supplier or peer - every bit of knowledge that’s shared, captured, and passed on strengthens your foundation for future success.
The seven locations we’ve explored today aren’t theoretical. They’re drawn from real-world practice - from franchise systems that are building momentum by making learning a daily discipline.
Don’t leave it to chance. Build the systems, train the people, and lead the culture that makes knowledge sharing a natural, expected part of how you grow.
Start gathering the knowledge that drives results - and turn insight into action across your network.
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