Common wisdom says that the larger a company the harder it is to get management to listen, especially when it goes against fundamental corporate practice.

Franchises are even worse and the longer they’ve been around the less they are likely to listen to a franchisee, let alone a new one.

But when they do the result can go way beyond the most optimistic prediction.

The frozen-yogurt giant credits the 32-year-old’s success with pushing them to embrace the self-serve model – a move that has reinvigorated the company and led to exponential growth.

TCBY had been around 30 successful years when Samuel Batt was approved for a new franchise in 2010.

He grew up eating TCBY, but wanted to incorporate self-service—enabling customers to choose flavors, toppings and quantity of each—in his new franchise.

Sounds old hat today, but DIY was just gaining traction in new venues back then.

Long story short; the powers-that-be said yes, as long as he kept the branding.

And within three weeks, his location was one of the top-five most profitable franchises in the country. (…) About half of TCBY’s nearly 500 franchises across the country have embraced the new model to great success, each doing from 25 percent to 200 percent better in sales than with the traditional model, Brian Mooney, director of operations for the Eastern U.S., said.

Management could have just as easily said no.

Compare TCBY’s attitude to Steve Ballmer’s at Microsoft; they are close to the same age—TCBY is just six years younger than Microsoft.

In 2007 Ballmer said, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

He didn’t listen to either his own people or the industry when they said that mobile and the cloud were the future—or maybe he was in denial.

But as I recall, Bill Gates didn’t listen when staff tried to tell him that the Internet was going to be really, really BIG.

Bosses at every level, not just CEOs, have a choice.

They can choose to listen and be flexible—or not.

Flickr image credit: jessica mullen

A couple of weeks ago I linked to stories about great women entrepreneurs. Today we’ll look at the guys.

A contributor at Fortune created a list of what he considers the 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time.

They are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Fred Smith, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Howard Schultz, Mark Zukerberg, John Mackey, Herb Kelleher, Narayana Murthy, Sam Walton, Muhammad Yunus

These founders created and then nurtured healthy, sustainable organizations that now have a combined market value of more than $1.7 trillion. They directly employ more than 3 million people…

Each of their companies sits at the nucleus of a thriving ecosystem that has cultivated and nurtured dozens if not hundreds of other enterprises.

There is a short profile of each at the link; considering it’s a kind of holiday weekend that’s enough reading.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: hellolapomme

Yesterday’s NYT Bits wondered who is the smarter of two Harvard dropouts, Bill Gates of Microsoft or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Neither bothered attending class, but Gates caught up “in a single intense burst during a separate reading period at the end of the term.”

Zuckerberg was to busy with Facebook to even do that. “So in an inspired last-minute save, he built a Web site with all of the important paintings and room for annotation. He then sent an e-mail to the students taking the class offering it up as a community resource. In a half an hour, the perfect study guide had self-assembled on the Web.”

Sorry, what Zuckerberg may not have been de facto cheating, but I certainly wouldn’t term it ethical. At lease Gates did the reading himself.

These two men, and other’s like them, are the role models for today’s students. I know, most people think it’s no big deal and a lot of them are very impressed.

I’m not.

No matter how successful they’ve become, they’re attitudes seem to belittle school, essentially saying that it’s OK to not do the schoolwork and pass in any manner you can.

Great examples to set for our future business leaders.

As to the media hype regarding entrepreneurs who start businesses in their dorm rooms, sure, there are a few that make it big. But the great majority of companies are started by seasoned business people and the most successful have advanced degrees.

Am I just a dinosaur, out of touch with acceptable behavior? What do you think?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL