Do You See What I See?
Roles have a lot to do with perceptions
Just spent a week at Habitat for Humanity working with an amazing retail team from across the country. The coolest part was the diversity of roles. There were representatives of many levels of retail, from senior leadership to sales floor staff.
For me, a huge takeaway was the various lenses people look through depending on their daily responsibilities. In a session, I might naturally see the fiscal impacts of an initiative, or process, and store managers might see staffing and executing issues. Front line staff looks at how something impacts their workday and workflow.
For example; we talked a lot about donor experience. Most donors just want a problem solved promptly. In my role it’s a numbers game, for a manager it’s staffing and facility capacity. For store staff, it can be “where are we going to put this stuff”. Marketing wants to get the word out regularly. Shoppers are looking for that next great deal.
That’s a lot of stakeholders for one core component of second-hand retail.
For me, the reminder was to ask and understand the ripple effect of decisions and changes. No surprise, front-line staff already has most of the practical answers to about anything you can throw at them. They need to be heard. Then they mostly need the freedom to solve issues as they come up.
A little about the picture.
Retail people are not the best at sitting. One of the smartest things the facilitators did was to have fidget stuff on each table. A lot of great pipe cleaner art was created this week. I particularly loved this one.
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A quote: Fix What Bugs You, Paul Akers
Other resources:
The links below will take you to some simple spreadsheets I have come up with that might help.
Production Tracking Cheat Sheet
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Tim Gebauer - Thrift Merchant