Opening a remote office is a milestone. It’s a boat approaching Plymouth Rock. Don’t mess up the landing.

The company headquarters is the mothership and its internals will exactly replicated throughout the country.

Each remote office is a franchise.

This can be a problem when the ‘franchisor’ is urgently trying to appeal to the aesthetic and ping-pong senses of millennials. Let’s look far past those excesses and focus on the particulars that can be recreated in each remote office.

The home office should have a color scheme that includes all the details and minutiae that a franchisor has to consider.

The welcome area, reception desk, carpeting pattern, paint schemes and wallpaper, pictures on the wall, conference room table, chairs, phone system, cube sizes and design, collateral materials displayed on the same shelves in the same way, lighting fixtures, signage.

Everything exactly the same, just smaller.

This is an investment in both the home office and its subsidiaries, it’s not cheap and it’s an attention to detail that is exhausting. It is a design that is entirely transferable. Winning is game of inches, this is just one of them

• Employees will feel disconnected from the mothership. A good franchise office solves that. Some part of the intimacy with the corporate office can be preserved with this remote office familiarity
• We want the employees to know they are working within a disciplined system
• It is comforting to the prospect to know there is rigidity and processes and the consistency is a display. It’s business decorum to give prospects and clients a tour

You may think it’s ‘corny’, The prospect won’t

The End?