Chapter Eight. All we need is a little better every time
Ideas are the fuel for organizations. What you do with those ideas, how you convert them into action and improvements, is what then makes the organization grow and prosper. Space for improvement can be readily found in all areas, especially in technique, systems, presentation, recruitment, and performance. All retailers can benefit from a culture of everyday performance improvement but few try to. Don Taylor and Jeanne Smalling Archer, authors of the very helpful Up against the Wal-Marts, call this “kaizen,” as does Julian Richer in his awesome book The Richer Way. Others use different names for the same thing. Kaizen is Japanese for “continuous improvement involving everyone.”
I don’t think we need to slap a Japanese jargon word onto the making of improvements. For me the task is as simple, and as vital, as “let’s do it a little better every time.” That sets up a very simple question for your team members: “How could I do this again but even better?” Your mission statement comes in here because it helps define what “better” means for your organization.
Improvement in this sense isn’t necessarily about massive earth-shattering changes. What we are looking for are those everyday improvements: improvements in the ways in which we look after each other, our relationships with customers, and the quality and relevance of our processes. A typical example might be the discovery that one piece of paperwork can be integrated with some other process rather than be dealt with separately. Combining the two will save money and time—so that’s an improvement. It could be the realization that the rules of a promotion we’ve created can be simplified to the benefit of the customer, and that is an improvement too.
Gathering improvement ideas
You will need to have two things in place:
1. A way to gather ideas.
2. An improvements slot on the agenda for discussion at team meetings.
If you were to look at just one task or process in each daily team meeting you will have 7 improvements each week, 30 for the month, and 365 over a year. That’s awesome. Okay, so maybe you won’t get into this every day but you will still generate a significant store of improvement ideas every month. Working in this way is easy. You are not attempting to change the world in a day, you are just looking to change one little thing at a time. Every journey starts with just a single step—remember that.
Do you currently change anything each month? Does change only ever happen dramatically once a year? “Let’s do it a little better every time” puts you in the driving seat of change. Your team becomes a valuable engine of change.
Statistics can make you go blind—the measurement trap
Plenty of otherwise sensible people believe that you cannot improve that which you cannot measure. That’s dangerous, wrong even, and here’s why: Some of the most effective customer satisfaction-improving tools are un-measurable in a conventional sense. Smiling at a customer turns out to be one of the most effective ways to make them feel better about you and your company—how do you measure the number of smiles your team gives out?
Here’s something to think about: a number of aspects of sexual performance can be measured. Factors such as duration, the dimensions of various body parts, room temperature, heartbeats per minute, can all be easily recorded and measured (you might need somebody with a clipboard to come in and write this stuff down for you though). But do any of these factors automatically add up to guaranteed great sex? Of course not.
Measuring the wrong things is a real trap. This is a grim example but its worth telling; a U.S. Army general noticed that the daily success of the Vietnam War was being measured by relative casualty rates. A measure as crude and unpleasant as “if we kill more of them than they do of us then we must be winning.” Convinced this measure did not convey a useful picture, this general instead created a set of metrics that also took into account territory, specific objectives, and economic cost.
It is what the general said about his reasons for doing this that is absolutely relevant to retailing. He said, “We are only making important that which we can easily measure when instead we should be measuring only that which is important.” Just because you can measure unit sales easily, for example, does not make that the most important part of your business to concentrate your improvement efforts in. Customer satisfaction is harder to measure but far more important because it relates to unit sales made today, tomorrow, and next year.
Go with your gut feel
Use your gut feel and allow yourself to apply improvements even to those processes, tasks, and interactions to which you are unable to attach numbers. I’d like to ask you to consider valuing the power of your gut feel more highly. Gut feel isn’t random. It’s a guide, an instinct that tells you a certain path may be the right one to take. It is also that good sense which tells you not to do something. But it needs tuning: Books like this one exist to help you separate out correct gut feel judgements from other emotional factors such as fear or laziness.
Even science is now beginning to come round to seeing gut feel as something real and valuable. There is a credible theory that suggests decisions made on gut feel are more often than not the carefully calculated result of our experience and knowledge and that instinctive gut feel decisions get better as we add new experiences and knowledge to our memories. Think of your gut feel as a potent business weapon, a weapon that is unique to you.
I wish I had more space here to go into instinct and gut feel in more detail but you want to read more about shops and that. Luckily there are already two brilliant books out there you can read instead: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (Penguin, 2006) is really good at explaining the process at work in instinct-led decision-making and See, Feel, Think, Do by Andy Milligan and Shaun Smith (Marshall Cavendish, 2008) is even better at helping you to build your confidence in using gut instinct to make decisions. If you only fancy reading one, get Andy and Shaun’s—it’s really very, very good and you’ll get a lot from it.
Making improvement work for you
Let’s do it a little better every time. As well as running through ways to apply this idea at team meetings, you will need to create an environment in which the team feels comfortable to try things, and to suggest things. If you are the kind of person who greets every new idea with “I’d love to change that but ...” or “I can’t see that working” then soon people will stop trying and suggesting. Equally, if members of the team feel that you are likely to discipline them for making mistakes then no one is going to want to try anything new for fear of punishment.
Get the culture of improvement established. Allow your people to question how they do things and you will benefit enormously. Make that an everyday occurrence: little steps but lots of them, and you and your customers will feel those improvements take hold.
Room for improvement
The best retailers do not stand still when successful. They strive to keep the momentum, to keep growing and to keep moving forward. That growth and movement is inspired by tiny little everyday improvements just as much as it is by sweeping change.
Here are some of the categories in which you will always be able to find lots of opportunities to improve things. The thoughts listed here are a deliberate mix of actual ideas and of pointers to get you looking in the right places for ideas of your own.
You might like to pick out a single line during daily team meetings and have the team come up with some thoughts and ideas on that theme.
Improvement and customers
• Consider everything from the customer’s perspective.
• Encourage customers to tell you their complaints (the most cost-effective research you’ll ever do).
• And listen to them sincerely when they do.
• Think about the type of people who come into your shop—who are you missing?
• What do customers prefer about your competitors (ask them)?
• Talk to customers all the time (ask staff to tell you one thing at each meeting that they’ve heard from a customer).
• Aim to improve average transaction values.
• Use eye contact more.
• Walk your store like a customer would.
• If you can, get hold of former customers and ask them why they don’t love you any more.
• Use email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and similar to communicate with customers; it’s cheap, powerful, and very direct.
• Whenever you are resolving a customer complaint, ask customers how they would improve your service.
• Think carefully about the integrity of your pricing.
• Send them stuff they might actually like to see.
• Where can you add value to the customer experience?
• What can you promise today that is better than yesterday?
• Run surveys.
• List the benefits of doing business with you and then tell customers about these benefits.
• What do other people do well that you really ought to be ripping off for yourselves?
• List all the things in your store that regularly delight customers—then think about how to double the list.
• Are you leading by example?
• Write down a list of all the processes that touch customers directly—all of them.
• Then do a list of all those that don’t—can you strip any of these out?
• Make it easy for customers to give you feedback—use the internet, suggestion boxes, receipt surveys, telephone aftercare calls, open evenings, and everything else you can think of.
• Get customer opinion on new products before you put those products into your range.
• Ask customers to tell you “what’s missing.”
• Ask customers to tell you what they like about your store.
Improvement and you
• Read stuff.
• Get involved in the business community—join your street or shopping centre advisory committee or the chamber of commerce.
• Talk to your business neighbors.
• Ask people about your management style (and listen openly when they tell you).
• Learn from those below you as well as above you.
• Seek out examples of great retailers and learn from them.
• Sign up to every Internet resource you can find—here are three useful sites to start: www.theretailbulletin.com, www.nrf.com, and the fashion-biased but still very useful www.Racked.com. Equally, there are loads of great retail Twitter feeds—mine is called TheseRetailDays, if you would like to hear more from me.
• Get a subscription to Retail Week and learn to read between the lines. (Why did so and so make that choice? Why is X thriving? Why is Y on its uppers?)
• What things do you do outside of work that might be useful inside?
• Make an honest list of your strengths.
• Then one of your weaknesses.
• Go on courses.
• Sign up to every training and seminar resource you can initially—the more you go on the better you will become at recognizing which ones are going to be truly useful in future.
• Naff as it might seem, set life goals and then yearly goals for yourself—what do these goals tell you about the areas in which you will need to concentrate personal improvements?
• Listen to people more than talk to people.
• Open your eyes!
• Go shopping more often—do things your customers do.
• Read the trade press.
• Learn from competitors.
• Learn from people outside your sector.
• Maintain your standards.
• Get rid of the “yes” men and surround yourself with people who challenge and inspire you.
• Appoint an honest and strong assistant manager—they will soon let you know where you have room for improvement.
• Improve the balance of your life: You look after shops—shopping is fun, try to see it more that way.
Improvement and colleagues
• Reward people for improving things.
• Consider issues from your team’s perspective.
• Don’t get mad with people for trying.
• Let grown-ups think for themselves—empower people to make their own improvements.
• Encourage talk, talk, and more talk—leave every feedback channel open all the time.
• Give people a look at these lists.
• Buy employees a copy of Smart Retail for Christmas—remember to wrap it up nice; in fact, get your Dad a copy too, and all your friends.
• Recognize people’s contributions.
• Don’t rip off your staff.
• Never criticize employees in front of anyone else.
• Build a great culture founded on trust and respect.
• Tell people you are upset with them whenever they make you feel that way.
• Are your job descriptions a jargon-filled sack of nonsense?
• Feel free to build friendships but never forget that you are the boss—keep a perspective.
• Encourage the team to be open with mistakes.
• Have a laugh together.
• Always, always celebrate success.
• Be human in your relationships—if someone is going through a life crisis help them cope with it.
• Share the numbers—let the team own them as much as you do.
• Pay a customer service-related bonus.
• Smile when you walk through the door every morning even if you don’t feel like it.
• Make sure everyone knows about all available courses and seminars.
• Put aside cash for training.
• Let good people go on courses you’ve been on—use training as a reward.
• Be specific with instructions.
• Sales assistants get closest to your customers—listen to what they tell you about those customers.
• Challenge people and encourage them to challenge themselves.
• Teach by example.
• Show people that the best way to do things is to consider solutions rather than dwell on problems.
• Get the team involved in all the big decisions.
• Help employees to see that it is customers, not you, who pay their wages.
• Hold regular one-to-one appraisals but be prepared to allow employees to tell you what they think of you, of your business, and of the team too.
• Have a team meeting every single day—just 15 minutes’ worth but make those minutes count.
Improvement and costs
• Take a firm and consistent line on employee theft—always fire proven thieves and prosecute wherever possible.
• Walk the fine line between minimizing customer theft and creating an unappealing high-security atmosphere.
• Prosecute shoplifters.
• Anything the customer doesn’t see only ever needs to be functional and cost-effective—but don’t short-change staff on a place to eat their lunch or get five minutes to sit down and catch up.
• Try to get stuff done right first time—especially the solving of customer complaints.
• Negotiate everything.
• Pool resources with your neighbors.
• Swap cost-saving ideas with them.
• Keep track of all supplier rebates and discounts.
• Tell the team when you’re close to earning a rebate and explain what needs to be done to get there.
• Get more than one quote!
• Find the special group rates negotiated by your trade association.
• Listen to what customers tell you they think is important—anything they don’t rate highly is probably not worth spending so much cash on.
• Cut out the middleman wherever you can.
• Recent design graduates are a much better and more cost-effective option for your advertising and direct marketing than an ad agency is.
• When placing print orders, or booking a TV or radio ad, always demand the agency discount—this is a 10–20% discount that printers, radio stations, and TV channels give to agencies; just because you book direct doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the discount too.
• Make good use of government employment programs but listen to your conscience—if it looks like slave labor, it probably is slave labor.
• If an employee isn’t pulling their weight and you have tried hard to help them, you have to let that person go.
• Do any members of the team have any skills that might mean you can avoid hiring in a tradesman? Pay the employee a proper bonus for any above-and-beyond jobs that they do though.
• Be sure that you understand how your customers have found out about you—improve or cut any activity that is not driving traffic.
• If you pay employees a profit-related bonus then that will in itself help limit some of the unnecessary expenditure—so long as you are also sharing the store profit-and-loss information.
• Use your ideas program to harvest all the cost-saving ideas the team can come up with.
• Consider sharing savings with the employee who identified them.
• Be nice to suppliers and let them pay for stuff if they want to.
• Get rid of the waste—any process that does nothing for customers, or for you, just has to go.
• Look at these processes all the time.
• Reuse things whenever you can.
• Teach employees how to promote the business when they are outside of work.
• Ask the team if they know a way to get hold of something cheaper—years ago when we bought a horribly expensive color photocopier, it wasn’t until the behemoth was delivered that one of the warehouse workers said “New copier? I could have got you a discount, my Dad’s regional director for Canon.”
• Talk to your landlord as much as you can, get a relationship going, and negotiate support when you need it.