Why retail leaders should visit their store ahead of Christmas
Stephen Spencer
Arriving at a new client visitor attraction early yesterday morning, and not seeing an obvious entry point to the management offices, I followed an employee into the cafe kitchen, where I met the cafe manager. Introducing myself, I noted that she seemed pleased to see me. "I don't normally see anyone down here", she explained; whereupon we had a very informative conversation that prepared me for the assignment more usefully than all the papers I had read in advance.
Most people who know me will know that I often say that I worked in WHSmith - "when it was a good shop"! There I had my first role model in business: the Winchester store manager (who went on to a stellar career in the company) treated every customer as an honoured guest, and lit up the shop floor whenever he was there - which was a lot. I later joined Hamleys of London, where, in the final years of its semi-autonomous incarnation within the pre-Ralph Halpern Debenhams Group, the managing director was to be seen daily on the shop floor, talking to employees and customers - I still think of one of his "red lines" whenever I see boxes of stock sitting unopened or unattended on the shop floor, during trading hours! At Christmas time he and the whole executive and buying team would work on the shop floor, most usually operating tills and chatting to customers whilst wrapping their purchases.
What I learned from all of this was simple: retail IS detail, and the only way you can lead a successful retail business is by taking a genuine and active interest in what - and who - is on your shop floor. Tom Peters (whose LinkedIn profile describes him as a 'Frothing, raving “people first” fanatic', calls this approach "MBWA - Managing By Wandering Around". I've tried to adopt the same approach, both throughout my career as a manager and leader in organisations, and even (perhaps, especially) as a consultant.
I see so many managers who are just (genuinely) too busy to spend much quality time at all among, and engaging with, their people and customers - and yet, I guarantee that there are myriad improvements - from marginal gains to whopping great blinding flashes of the bleedin' obvious - waiting out there to be discovered and exploited.
It's a serious challenge for business - at a time of an unprecedented level and range of challenges. For any organisation however that needs to improve productivity and achieve more with less this Christmas, and in 2023, there is an inexpensive and hugely fertile, place to start, and it's called the shop floor (actually, at Stephen Spencer + Associates we call it the "Customer Universe", but that's another story). So why not relocate your next internal meeting there? Perhaps you too will meet someone special who tells you "I don't normally see anyone down here" - the perfect cue to start a very valuable conversation.
