What Being Agile in Every Sense Means in Retail Now
Over the past several articles, I have tried to illustrate that being agile (think nimbly) is more than a buzzword. And adopting an Agile mindset is more than a program; it is a fundamental shift of the way you and your team think about achieving success sustainably. Born from software companies to quickly iterate and develop updates, it has the framework built to be used in a multitude of environments. This methodology doesn’t have to be reserved for a corporate environment. It can be applied to any setting if you are willing to experiment and understand the fundamental principles of getting things started, make adjustments, and improve quickly, but over time.
This table from the Quorso Manifesto compares the differences between the Agile application in the software environment and the retail implementation. The key elements mirror each other. The outcomes are largely the same, simply manifesting themselves relative to the needs of different industries.
You will also recognize that the principle approach follows many leadership ideas that I have mentioned multiple times. Concepts such as planning, coaching, following up, empowerment, working through your team, and simplicity are core components to building an Agile workflow. To simplify this even more for leaders who run stores or districts each day, I have narrowed this down to five fundamental steps.
Build the actions
Everything begins with a plan and an analysis of where you currently are at. Most leaders intuitively will know where obstacles may exist that they want to address. And as we mentioned in a previous article, Using Data Effectively for Successful Retail Leadership, we have plenty of data to review to find opportunities areas we want to improve. The goal shouldn’t be to look for the ‘perfect thing to fix’ but rather an area where you can quickly make a difference. Build your action plan (quick, things that can be implemented locally, through your team, based on their feedback as well). Define the actions you want to take and engage everyone to ensure they understand the desired outcomes and changes that will be made. Keep the plan narrow and simple, starting with one thing before expanding to others.
Connecting back: We are engaging the team as well as empowering them to define the actions and provide feedback on them. We are moving to action versus continuing to analyze the data, and deciding based on the local knowledge. This step highlights the first three elements of the manifesto.
Measure the outcomes
Begin to immediately measure the changes and outcomes you are seeing. Leveraging observations for a lead measure indication can be the best way to get early reads on the actions. If your plan called for staff members to ask new questions or present a product in a new way, measuring is as simple as watching to see if they are doing that. Your lag measures of daily sales reports can affirm whether those actions are having the desired effect. Providing coaching along the way helps to set the team up for success. If some employees are adopting quickly, but others are not, how can you leverage the learning from some to assist the many? Peer coaching may be advantageous to allow the team members to learn from each other to ensure everyone feels comfortable about the new changes.
Connecting back: Use more than reports that tell you after the fact what has happened. Coaching and observing provide opportunities to see what is really happening and provide feedback and assistance in the early stages of change. This emphasizes the need for the local team to make the difference versus waiting for instruction from a more centralized approach at a regional or corporate level. This approach also highlights adapting to specific needs versus just following a plan. The plan helps to get you started, but the daily realities need to be addressed on the fly. Coaching and observations allow you to make those ‘on the floor’ adjustments to help bring success.
Make the adjustments
As the data begins to flow, the need to make changes to the initial hypothesis will be necessary. This is the true beauty of thinking in an Agile way for agile outcomes. These adjustments do not have to wait for weeks or months until a corporate direction comes out or until a District manager visits the location again. These adjustments can be made in short windows of time based on the observations and information you are processing with your team daily. Ask team members how they think it’s going, review the results with everyone and ask for input on what could be improved. Quick five-minute discussions are all that is necessary to make what could be a sweeping change in a short period of time.
Connecting back: Making adjustments as you go really incorporates all elements of the manifesto. Your engaged team provides feedback on what is working for them. The coaching validates that. Continuing the actions and making the changes allows the changes to work towards the sustainable approach you are looking for. Prioritizing that over waiting for weeks worth of reports will get you to the desired outcome much quicker. Again, these shifts are being made locally and not waiting for others to provide global direction. And, through all of this, we are learning, changing, adjusting, and not trying to make it all work back to the exact items laid out in the initial plan.
A word of caution here: conceptually, this is not meant to create chaos in environments where well-defined processes are established for store teams to work within expectations for labor standards or specific brand standards. At Chick-fil-a, trying to change ‘my pleasure’ to something different because you think it would be easier is not the idea here. But I can guarantee you that some ideas we now see in restaurants about improving getting in-app orders to customers via walk-up or through the drive-through came from store-level learnings that started at a single location and then were shared and spread across the entire network. That is the spirit of using Agile to make improvements in the retail space.
Reinforce
As you make your changes and fine-tune the steps and actions for everyone, the coaching begins to embed the process. It should feel like as time progresses (and this may be in a matter of days, not weeks or months), you will move from many ideas to just a few producing measurable results. All members of the team can then replicate these. This becomes the new expectation and will allow this to become a go-forward strategy for delivering results in the area you sought to change.
Reinforcing the process used to show how everyone had a role to play within the change is the best way to illustrate that thinking in a new way can lead to success for everyone. The engagement builds, and as new action items are created, more people want to engage quickly and fully. This will only accelerate the ability to make the changes in the future. And, most importantly with a process that fuels success, it also establishes sustainability. This prevents you from ending up in a loop of addressing the same areas of your business. You believe you have reached a pinnacle only to find a few weeks later as you shifted your gaze to something different that the original area has fallen back to where it was before.
Connecting back: This step also reinforces almost all elements of the manifesto – keeping your team engaged, moving quickly with actions, making the adjustments locally as needed, and learning on the fly.
Repeat
Now that you have a good formula for acting quickly, iterating, improving, and embedding, you can apply it to the next area you want to improve. What works is worth repeating. In time, you will find your formula for success with your team. The good news is that time variables can be much quicker when embracing an Agile mindset and workflow.
I suppose I should have made this last piece a part of the steps, but I implore you to make this last thought one you don’t compromise – SHARE your learnings and successes. Too often I hear from leaders that have found success with new ideas that they wanted to ‘ensure it worked’ before they told their District Manager or peers. As we have discovered, it doesn’t take months of data to determine your success. Share your ideas and results along the way. Every retailer’s success comes from the combined efforts of the stores within the chain. The competition is always outside the company and not your peer down the road. (I know that sometimes we have compensation or reporting that may confuse this, but truly, other stores within your organization are not who you should see as competition.)
Working in new ways and embracing what could be seen as a radical change in thinking can be scary. I hope the last few articles have simplified the notion of what a mindset shift can look like. The Agile workflow can feel big and complicated. It has complex elements, especially in a large organization where it is applied to systems processes. However, I do believe there is an approach that can be taken in retail locations that utilize the premise of Agile and make it very approachable and usable for store and district leaders to implement. Start with the core elements mentioned in the first article and connect them to the outcomes shown on the chart above in this article. You can then follow the five simple steps to get started in defining a new way of working in your store. I am confident you will then be able to apply this new workflow to many aspects of your business.
How will you get started in adopting an Agile mindset for your business?
Join other retail leaders in continuing their development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com. SUBSCRIBE today to receive FREE leadership tips directly to your inbox and monthly newsletters that provide many tools to help further develop your leadership skills all at no cost. JOIN NOW!
No spam ever – just leadership goodness.