The Time You Never Had for Planning as a Store Leader
Many retail store leaders have more of something they thought could never happen - time. Unfortunately, but out of necessity, many stores and businesses are closed to help protect the communities they serve. This week's news also brought many announcements of furloughs for retail leaders and associates. This is also a scary time for a lot of people. After being in retail for my entire career, it is heartbreaking to hear the stories and see the news. But, we must all believe that brighter days will come. A new future will be defined. As leaders, keeping eye looking ahead is necessary, albeit difficult in the moment.
Is there a small silver lining that could come from this? Finding time to think quietly or plan intently had been a luxury few could find. Some extra time is something many leaders may have for the next few weeks.
We know that it is likely that our retail landscape will be forever changed by the events that continue to unfold each day. Customers will shop differently and expect more when life begins to return to a normal state. Beginning to contemplate what that might look like now is an important step that leaders can take to help ensure they hit the ground running when stores begin to reopen. We should take advantage of the new found time you may have to use for thinking and planning for what a new future could look like.
Build a vision statement for your location
What would you like your business to look like in the future? There are so many bad things that we are facing right now, so use some of this time to think about what the good things can be in the months ahead. How might you serve your customers differently? What does success look like for the long-term? There may be an opportunity to start from (as close to) scratch as possible when we begin to get back into stores and businesses that have been forced to close down for several weeks. Introducing a new vision statement to your team is a great way to paint a new forward-looking picture for everyone. A chance to rally the team around being something you thought wasn’t possible before. People will be looking for the hope the future holds so they can put the challenges we are facing right now behind us. A bright new vision can provide that ray of hope and create a common goal for everyone to work towards.
When building your vision statement, don’t be afraid to go into great detail and examples of what it will look like. A good vision statement isn’t a quick sentence. It should be a well-defined picture of what the ideal version of your business will be. That could be a paragraph, or it could be several pages. Don’t let a word count be the barrier to clearly defining what you want your business to look like. And you don’t have to wait for anything new from your corporate office - you know what you want your store to look like and how that can happen within the business parameters you normally work within.
Create activities and training for reopening?
Where were some of the areas you wished you could have spent more time training on before your store(s) closed? Is there a way to begin to get ahead of that while you have some extra time? You do not need to wait for your training department to put together formal training for everything. If customer engagement was an opportunity in your store before - you can develop some simple practice sessions that can help them engage differently in the future. That could be as simple as writing down six to ten scenarios that are relevant to your business and use as a list to ‘practice’ with when you get back to your store.
How will you serve your team and your customers differently?
This may be part of your vision statement as well, but define what you will do differently to specifically support your team and your customers in a different way. Many people will have experienced some very difficult situations in the past several weeks. They may have been sick themselves, known someone that had been seriously ill, or worse. Factor that into how you engage your teams and customers in the weeks ahead. The awareness of social distancing, cleanliness, and the availability of sanitization devices will be a new norm. How will that factor into how you are supporting your team as well? People may need more support and reassurance when they return to work than they ever needed before. In some cases, you may have many new team members when you restart your business. How will you help them gel together and build a new, stronger team? Use the time you have now to begin those thought processes so you can be ahead of that curve when it comes time to get started.
Businesses will start again. While it may never be quite the same, life will regain a sense of normal in the future. We can use the time we have now to reimagine what might be possible. Inevitably, when the time to begin again comes, it will happen quickly and there will be multiple things going on at the same time. Being prepared ahead of that time will allow you to manage through it much better and position yourself to ramp up your business as quickly as possible when the opportunity comes.
What are some of your vision ideas for how your business will change for a new future?
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