Everything Works at Corporate
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Now, on to today’s article!
I met a new friend last week, Steve Worthy. He had an extensive career in retail leadership, and he now educates people on leadership (among many other things).
“I have a saying I like to use,” he told me, “everything works at corporate.”
If you’ve ever worked in retail, you know EXACTLY what he’s talking about. Everyone at corporate works the same hours. Broken things get fixed at corporate because, duh - we can’t sit in this glass office on our $3,000 laptops when things don’t work. However, many of these execs are fine with leaving things broken at the store level or telling us to do more with less and just “figure it out.”
Retail leaders are beyond resourceful. If corporate won’t fix it, we’ll figure it out ourselves.
When I worked for Anthropologie, we had walkies. There was an Urban Outfitters across the way from us. They also had walkies. Urban Outfitters owns Anthropologie. Our walkies shared the same channel.
Like running this high-volume behemoth wasn’t enough of a challenge, we had to try not to listen to what the employees at Urban were saying. It was so confusing and such an utter waste of everyone’s time.
No one at corporate knew what to do. They told us to live with it. I mean, yeah, why not? It doesn’t affect them at.all.
One of my peers, a department leader, got to Googling. She figured out what model walkie we used and how to get off Urban’s airwaves. We were all endlessly thankful. She made our jobs way more efficient by fixing the walkie issue.
This example is what Steve means when he says, “Everything works at corporate.”
Corporate execs have little incentive to fix problems at the store level. If you don’t have a tenacious, rebellious store leader, you may have issues that never get fixed.
When I say, “Hire leaders from retail!” this is what I mean. We will figure out a way to fix whatever doesn’t work at any cost - because we are damn sure not going to listen to that Urban Outfitters chatter all day if we can help it.
MAILBOX
Often, I get DMs and leaders express something along these lines -
“I want to be like this to others!”
Meaning like me - because I motivate people daily on LinkedIn.
Here’s the thing, if you connect with what I’m saying, you’re probably already that person to people that you lead.
Here’s how you can implement it ⬇️
LEVEL UP
How you can be a better leader today.
Be real with people. If something has gone sideways, say it. Let people in and let them help you solve the problem.
Understand that work is what we do for money. People work because they need money, not because they love you. Pay them correctly. Respect their time off.
Champion others. Celebrate the success of your peers and your team members. Give credit where credit is due.
These are simple acts, yet profound.
Show up, work hard, put the team first, and you’ll have a blast - because work should be fun sometimes too.
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You're the absolute best.
Ahhh yes. As my DM walks in with his shiny laptop from corporate, while I send him reports from my desktop that has no setup for conference calls. Joys.
Sounds like life in a field station for an airline. Work in a hub? Get nice shiny equipment and all kinds of resources thrown at you.
Work in a spoke? Learn a new definition of “just make it work” every day.