🧪 It's Called a Pilot. But Is It Really?

🚨 "We'd love your feedback on this." 🚨

...and somewhere, an operator is already composing their response while quietly assuming it won't change a thing.

I want to be fair here, because I've sat in enough rooms on enough sides of this conversation to know it's more complicated than it looks.

Corporate usually means it. They genuinely want to know what's landing and what isn't. And operators genuinely want to give useful input. Everyone's intentions are fine.

The problem is the word "pilot" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and nobody's stopping to ask whether everyone in the room is using it the same way.

💬 Some Context

For years, the go-to promotion for this network has been what I'll call SaveX$OFF. Families signing up during a promotional window saved a fixed dollar amount off the registration fee.

Two things made it work at the operator level. Families understood it the moment you said it. And operators could answer every follow-up question without reaching for a binder. That combination, easy to explain, easy to trust, is rarer than organizations realize when they're designing promotions from a boardroom.

This year there's something new. I'm not going to get ahead of the official announcement on the details, but the value proposition takes more than one sentence to land, which means the enrollment conversation gets longer and the room for misunderstanding gets wider.

Eight instructors including me are running it this summer.

September rollout is already confirmed.

🤔 What Kind of Pilot Is This, Exactly?

Here's the question I keep circling back to, and I think it's the one most organizations forget to answer before they send out the invitations.

John Kotter, whose work on organizational change is worth every page, draws a clear line between two very different uses of a pilot. One is a genuine test: you run something in a contained environment specifically to decide whether it should scale. The outcome is genuinely open. The other is what he'd frame as a short-term win strategy: you run something in a contained environment to build confidence, surface friction, and create momentum for a rollout that's already been decided.

Both are legitimate. Both are even smart, depending on what you're trying to learn. But they are not the same thing, and treating them as interchangeable is where the frustration starts.

Building on that distinction, here's how I'd break down the pilots I've seen inside franchise networks:

The decision pilot is the real thing. Genuinely testing whether something should happen at all. The outcome is open. This is what most operators picture when they hear the word.

The communication pilot is about figuring out how to explain a decision that's already been made to the right audiences. The what is settled. The how is still being worked out.

The readiness pilot checks whether the field is equipped to execute. Not whether the strategy is right, but whether the infrastructure, the materials, and the people are ready to deliver it.

And then there's what I'd call the preview pilot: the launch date is set, the campaign is built, and a small group gets the first look so they can surface friction before it hits hundreds of operators at once.

All four of these produce real value. The preview pilot especially, when it's run well, can be the difference between a September that builds momentum and one that buries field staff in support calls from operators who were never properly set up.

The issue is that operators almost always assume they're in a decision pilot. When the outcome turns out to have been set before they started, the whole experience gets filed under "we were used for optics." And that is a trust problem with a long tail.

🧠 Same Pattern, Different Costume

I wrote about this in my last post from a different angle. Franchise organizations have a habit of using language that implies more openness than the structure actually supports. Asking for feedback on a memo that's already been approved. Inviting input on a policy that's already been finalized. The language says "we want your perspective." The structure says "we've already decided."

Operators are not confused about which one is true. What erodes trust isn't the decision. It's the gap between what the process was called and what it actually was.

And here is the part I want corporate to sit with, because it matters more than the optics do:

When operators stop believing that their participation changes anything, they stop bringing their real observations. You get the polished version of their feedback. The version that sounds constructive but doesn't tell you that families are going blank at step two of the explanation, or that the promotional materials don't answer the one question every parent asks in the first three minutes of an orientation.

That specific, unfiltered, in-the-room intelligence is the whole point of running a pilot with real operators and real families. You cannot manufacture it internally. You cannot reverse-engineer it from September enrollment data. It exists only in the eight conversations happening this summer, and it is only available to you if the people having those conversations believe you actually want to know what they found.

🔄 What This Pilot Is Actually For

Here is my honest read of what we are doing this Spring, and I mean this without trying to be too spicy:

This is a communication pilot. Possibly with a readiness element. The decision to run a new promotion in September has been made. What hasn't been fully worked out yet is how to explain it to a family sitting across from you at an orientation, what materials instructors need to feel confident presenting it, and where the conversation is most likely to stall.

That is genuinely useful work. It is worth eight instructors' time and attention. A smoother September for the other several hundred centers in this network is a real outcome worth producing.

But operators can only deliver that if they walk in knowing that's what they're being asked for.

An instructor who thinks their feedback might change whether the campaign launches, will spend their summer advocating for SaveX$Off. An instructor who understands they're stress-testing a communication approach will spend their summer paying close attention to the moments that don't land, which is exactly the data that makes September better.

Kotter's point about short-term wins applies here too. The pilot itself becomes a short-term win for the network, but only if the people running it understand what winning looks like. Right now, that definition hasn't been shared clearly enough.

💫 Today's Spark: Name the Pilot Before You Run It

The fix doesn't require a new process or a longer brief. It requires one honest answer to one question, shared upfront with everyone who's being asked to participate:

What kind of pilot is this, and what is actually still open?

Tell operators which parts of their feedback can change something structural and which parts will shape how the thing gets communicated and supported in the field. Don't make them figure it out halfway through the summer when the September date comes up in conversation and the penny drops.

This isn't about lowering expectations. It's about directing energy. Operators who know what they're being asked to find out will bring you sharper, more specific, more actionable observations than operators who spend three months wondering whether any of it matters.

🔥 Ignite Action: The Participation Clarity Test

Before the next pilot, advisory session, or feedback process goes out, run through these. Corporate teams, this one is built for you. Operators, you are allowed to ask these questions before you agree to participate.

✨ Final Word

I'm running this pilot. I'm going to show up to orientations, watch how families respond, note where the explanation loses them, and figure out what I need that the current materials aren't giving me. I'll send that feedback in because the operators getting this in September deserve a runway that's been properly cleared.

What I won't do is pretend I'm testing whether it should exist. That's not the job here, and saying otherwise would waste everyone's time including mine.

For the operators reading this: I know the instinct when something feels like a foregone conclusion is to disengage. I'd push back on that. Not because your skepticism is wrong, it's earned, but because the communication pilot is where your specific experience is actually useful. You know what families hear when you explain something. Corporate does not have that knowledge and cannot get it any other way. Use that.

For the corporate teams reading this: your operators will show up for September if they feel like this summer meant something. The way to make it mean something is to be specific about what you're asking them to find out. The ambiguity doesn't protect the process. It just produces worse data.

Name the pilot. Run it honestly. Close the loop when it's done.

That's how you make the next one easier to fill.

📣 A pilot is only as good as the question it was designed to answer. Make sure everyone running it knows what that question is.

—Tina 💫

I work with franchise organizations and leadership teams on the communication layer between corporate decisions and operator implementation. If this resonated, let's connect: tina@tandemspark.coach