Skill Practice: Read Quickly

At university, you may be asked to read 40 or more pages a week for each of your classes¹. This entire chapter has about twenty pages of reading. Can you imagine reading twice that much every week for every class?

You might need to learn to read faster in order to be successful at university. Here are some tips for reading faster:

• Focus on speed. When you are practicing speed reading, don’t worry as much about comprehension. You will always understand a little less when you are reading fast, but see how much you can remember and still go quickly.
• Don’t go backwards. Try not to re-read sentences. The first time you read something, skip any difficult words. See if you can still understand the passage.
• Don’t use your finger. Sometimes you might want to follow along with your finger as you’re reading, but this can actually slow you down. Try reading with just your eyes.
• Focus on groups of words. You don’t need to skip words, but see if you can read a group of words from text at the same time instead of reading each word individually.
• Read quietly. It’s tempting to pronounce all the words in your head as you read. However, even if you have great pronunciation, this action can slow you down because your eyes can move much faster than the voice in your head.

For many university students, their goal is to read about 300 words per minute. This speed may be three times as fast as you read now. Reading quickly isn’t always the best strategy, but at times it’s crucial. You will practice this skill in the first reading of this chapter.

Pre-Reading

Reading 1: Exploring Business Careers

Mike Schlater Domino’s Pizza^[1]

Domino’s Pizza has more than 14,000 stores worldwide. These are franchises where individuals pay Domino’s in order to use their brand, advertising, and recipes. As executive vice president of Domino’s Pizza’s international division, Mike Schlater is president of Domino’s Canada with more than 440 stores. Schlater started his career with Domino’s as a pizza delivery driver and worked his way up into management. Schlater saved his earnings, and with some help from his brother, he was able to accept the opportunity to have the first international Domino’s franchise in Canada in 1983. Within weeks, Schlater’s store in Canada reached higher sales than his previous store in Ohio had ever attained. However, it was not an easy start. Schlater had to identify the international suppliers and get them approved to sell their products to Domino’s. This shows one of the challenges that organizations face when entering new global markets. To meet quality standards designed to protect a brand, companies must undertake an extensive review of potential new suppliers to ensure consistent product quality. By 2007, Schlater and a partner unified all of the Canadian franchises under one corporate umbrella, and Schlater is now president of Domino’s of Canada, Ltd., which operates more than 440 stores located in every province in Canada.

Such an impressive career path might seem like luck to some, but Schlater achieved his success due to determination and attention to detail. Luck did play a role in a recent event in his live, though. Schlater won $250,000 in a lottery. Since Schlater believes in philanthropy, he donated the entire amount to Cardinal Carter High School in his hometown. Over the years, Schlater has donated millions of dollars to foundations and charities, such as The London Health Sciences Foundation, because he now has the ability to indulge after spending decades climbing the corporate ladder at Domino’s Pizza.

The master franchisees of Domino’s Pizza’s international business, like Mr. Schlater, are individuals or entities who, under a specific licensing agreement with Domino’s, control all operations within a specific country. They operate their own stores, set up a distribution infrastructure to transport materials into and throughout the country, and create sub-franchisees. One particular benefit of master franchisees is their local knowledge. As discussed in this chapter, a major challenge when opening a business in a foreign country is negotiating the political, cultural, and economic differences of that country. Master franchisees allow Domino’s, and the individual franchisee owners, to take advantage of their local expertise in dealing with marketing strategies, political and regulatory issues, and the local labor market. It takes local experience to know, for example, that only 30 percent of the people in Poland have phones, so people are less likely to call for delivery and carryout needs to be the focus of the business; that Turkey has changed its street names three times in the past 30 years, so delivery is much more challenging; or that, in Japanese, there is no word for pepperoni, the most popular topping worldwide. These are just a few of the challenges that Domino’s has had to overcome on the road to becoming the worldwide leader in the pizza delivery business. Under the leadership of people like Schlater, and with the help of dedicated, local master franchisees, Domino’s has been able to not only compete in but to lead the global pizza delivery market.

Sources: “Domino’s Pizza Corporate Facts,” http://phx.corporate-ir.net, accessed June 20, 2017; Domino’s Canada website, https://www.dominos.ca, accessed June 20, 2017; Trevor Wilhelm, “Domino’s CEO, who lives in Leamington, will donate $250K lotto winnings to high school,” Windsor Star, February 27, 2015.