Us versus them

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been speaking a lot to both franchisors and franchisees and have come to a conclusion that there's a bit of a 'them versus us' relationship going on. Franchisees are moaning about their franchisors and vice versa. This struck me as strange, because surely both parties are supposed to working toward the same goal - success of their business - and if they're not happy, why are they not having a frank and open discussion about their issues and concerns to try and sort them out?

I guess the problem with keeping things secretive and moaning about things behind people's backs is that resentment builds up, not to mention a negative message getting out to new potential franchisees (which may not necessarily be true).

I hope any Exceptional Thinking franchisees will always come to me with any issues rather than keeping it all to themselves and I want to do the same with them. I've seen communication issues create problems many times in organisations and my policy will definitely be the more open the better.