Honor lies in honest toil. – Grover Cleveland
Moving a retailer from a firefighting mindset to a planning mindset is no small task and requires a lot of emphasis on education, change and butchering sacred cows.
It also invariably requires a technology investment in a new planning system. In theory, the technology piece of this is pretty straightforward, particularly if you choose off-the-shelf planning software that adheres to a few key fundamental principles and meets your core requirements. You bolt it on top of your ERP, master data flows in and you run the batch. Then forecasts, plans and orders flow out. Easy peasy.
To make all of this work, you need a dedicated team that includes:
- A mixture of folks from the business who can drive change – grizzled veterans with a lot of credibility across the functional areas (especially Merchandising, Supply Chain and Store Operations) combined with some whiz kids who may be a bit wet behind the ears, but are eager to learn. Their job will be to design new processes, change existing processes within the business and be the “tip of the spear” for driving the change, both internally and with suppliers. You can optionally augment this team with consultants who specialize in this space and bring experience from prior projects.
- A technical team who can understand the mission, develop data maps, built and test the integrations, design the batch schedules and course correct when things don’t work out exactly as planned. This team can optionally be supported by the software company and/or system integrators to do some of the heavy lifting on many of those tasks.
- An implementation team from the software provider who can work with the business folks to train your team on the new system and aid with configuration, data mapping/structure and workflow design.
That sounds like a dream team, doesn’t it? But is it enough?
Not quite.
Remember earlier when I said that the technology piece of the puzzle is “easy peasy”? Well, that’s only a relative description when compared to the change effort. In absolute terms – and from bitter experience – the technology stuff is often NOT “easy peasy”. At all.
This is why you always need one more person to augment your dream team: The Legend.
Every retailer has at least one of them, but usually no more than a handful. It’s the person whose name always comes up when these types of questions are asked:
- Where the hell are we supposed to find that data and who manages it?
- I can see the number on the screen, but how the hell was it calculated?
- Why the hell did we decide to set things up this way?
These people often (but not always) have grey hair, are closer to the bottom of the org structure than the top and generally toil away in anonymous obscurity until a really big problem needs to be solved – then they’re the ones called upon to solve it. Losing one of these people would be more risky and disruptive to the organization than if the CEO was taken away in handcuffs for insider trading.
The Legend could have virtually any job title in any functional area of the organization, but the actual job description can be summed up in one word: Everything.
The Legend is a critical resource for any initiative that requires master data or touches legacy systems in any way. So, basically all of them.
They know where all of the bodies are buried and often need to throw some cold water on project teams who may have the notion that things are “easy peasy”. They don’t do that to block the path or to be a buzzkill. They just don’t want people wasting their time or making unrealistic assumptions that will foul things up. Don’t worry, they’ll eagerly help you to steer clear of the rocks, because they know where all of the rocks are.
But getting their time to help will be difficult, because they are always being pulled in ten different directions, not to mention tasked with keeping the lights on when more mundane day-to-day issues arise.
They are the critical resources that must contribute to any major transformation, but they are also the people that the business can’t afford to lose to a long term project.
In spite of all the power they wield, they are generally not protective of their knowledge or interested in defending turf. If a promotion offer came along, they may seriously consider it, but they probably won’t be actively seeking one out.
They’d be glad to write up detailed documentation and/or transfer some of their expertise. Maybe you can get some time on their calendar to get that going – there’s probably a 1/2 hour block available 4 months from now.
For ethical and technological reasons, cloning is not really an option right now, so how do you get valuable time from people who have none?
- In the interest of long term success and stability, put some of your initiatives on hold and free up some of their time to cross train some junior folks on the more mundane tasks.
- Bring in some contractors to backfill some of their “lights on” work and produce documentation while they work on more important matters.
- Recognize their value and set aside an important role for them when you get to the other side of your change endeavour.
And it never hurts to give them a hug every now and then.