From the Sales Floor to CEO - is it still possible? (PART 1)
I was struck by the recent news that Ted Decker, CEO of The Home Depot, had instructed all corporate employees to spend one eight-hour shift in a store, every quarter. This seemed a good, enlightened idea to me. The only surprise being that it was necessary to suggest this to head office folks in the first place. As a CEO, one of my (many) mantras to my central teams over the years, was that ‘the truth is out there!’. Analysis of data would only ever give you part of the answer; nothing could replace seeing your initiative live in a store, with a first-hand view of how store team members and customers were responding to it.
This also made me reflect on the many important skills that are developed in stores and – despite this – how rare it is these days for someone to make the journey from the sales floor to become a CEO. It seems much more common for a typical retail CEO to have a background in finance, marketing or merchandising. It often appears that those from the retail vertical tend to remain there; maybe achieving a board seat but, even then, most often in the operations discipline. Why is that, and what should a talented early or mid-career retail operations person do to give themselves the best chance of getting the top job?
Having made this journey myself, I want to share my thinking on what I’ve learned along the way and how I navigated the challenges. Let’s start by reminding ourselves about some of the stellar skills you develop in a career that starts in a store, that can give you an incredible advantage:
1. People management and team building.
Stores can be a demanding environment and not everyone is able to thrive there. Long hours, shift work, weekend working, high labour turnover and increasing levels of crime can make it a tough place to earn a living. For better or worse, it’s not like office work. The early-career manager soon learns the power of surrounding themselves with great people and working hard to make sure those great people stick around. This builds a deep understanding of recruitment and the importance of culture and motivation in driving performance. It is a critical skillset for executive leadership.
2. Resourcefulness and problem-solving.
Store roles require an endless balancing of efficiency and effectiveness. Problems big and small pop up every day. Half the night crew get sick; the key breaks in the safe lock and you can’t access the till floats; the main delivery is late and all your staff are scheduled early… it’s endless. And coping with all of this tests your resourcefulness and ability to problem solve at pace. If you can make it through, it builds a deep confidence that you can deal with anything that gets thrown at you later in your career.
3. A deep knowledge of store operations.
From an early stage, you learn about logistics, managing inventory, scheduling staff and what it takes to create a smooth, seamless customer experience. The world of the store requires effective managers to be highly detail orientated. This level of granularity is invaluable for a CEO to be able to challenge and support their central teams as they design and build improvements to the customer proposition. Importantly, you also learn to avoid the quest for perfection in favour of what can executed in the most impactful way.
4. Customer-centricity
When you’ve worked at the front line in a store, where you’ve spent every day trying to meet the needs of your customers, it’s inevitable that you develop a deep understanding of customer expectations, preferences and pain points. This is pure gold in your future career for developing policies that deliver real value for customers and in creating a customer experience that can be applied consistently to allow your business to differentiate itself and to win in a challenging market context.
5. Leadership and drive
in your first management role in your store career, you aren’t only managing people, you are leading them. And leading then in a numbers-driven context with lots of measurement and reporting; where your performance is laid bare against targets and your peers. You learn quickly about applying your drive to the delivery of results, to you winning by the team winning – not just about serving your own ego and the drive to ‘look good’. It is an incredible school to develop authentic leaders.
Retail operations is a true meritocracy, you don’t get noticed unless you deliver results, but if you do deliver results, progress can be very fast. There’s no question that as a ‘school’, an early career in stores can help build a powerful skillset for anyone with ambitions to make it to the top job.
That said, the CEO role requires a strong understanding of the complexities of the whole organisation and the many interdependencies which have the potential to create or destroy value. Climbing the ladder in the retail function often reinforces a deep, but narrow expertise. So, what could be missing in the skills toolkit and what can a rising retail star do to equip themselves to make it to the top? I’ll cover my thoughts on that in part 2.
