To be a resilient and successful retail leader, industry executives need to ditch the “meeting after the meeting” and create a corporate culture that is based on greater transparency and more effective communication.
This was the core theme of a session at the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit titled “The Resilient Leader: Understanding and Anticipating the Changing Consumer.” Christine Barton, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group and Pierre Dupreelle, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, took the stage to interview Rob Brooks, chief operating officer at Saks Global.
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Brooks, an industry veteran who has held various positions at L’Oreal, Macy’s, Saks and Saks Off 5th, and the Hudson’s Bay Co., among others, keyed up the conversation by saying resilient leaders surround themselves with really smart people. “I’m not a marketer. I am not a merchant in any discipline, but I wanted to make sure I surrounded myself with really brilliant people,” he said. “I got a great merchant when I was in Saks Off 5th, and the head of marketing is here today, Kim Miller [now president of Saks Off 5th].” She’s a rock star in so many different ways and makes you look smarter and allows you to be part of a team that really is empowered to do their job. So, I think it’s simple: hire good people and kind of get out the way and let them do their jobs.”
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Brooks said the foundation of his leadership style and approach is based on three pillars: transparency, communication and accountability. “If you do those three things in a consistent way for your team, your team is going to feel empowered, your team is going to feel unified, and your team is going to really, truly believe that they belong within the organization and they have their space in the organization,” he said.
Dupreelle and Barton then asked Brooks to explain how this translates into meeting shoppers’ needs. Brooks said retail takes a “First Team” approach, where a unified C-suite sets the tone for the entire company, trickling down to the store associates and improving the overall shopping experience.
“When there’s dissension or confusion, a lack of communication, a lack of trust, it just erodes the fabric of the organization and you’re not going to be able to achieve your goals,” Brooks said. “I firmly believe that for us at Saks Global, our focus is delivering the best possible customer experience that we can for our customers. And that is woven through the entire fabric of our organization. We think about it both internally as our internal organization. We think about it externally from the customer; and how we ensure that there is no confusion around the path forward for us as a business.”
This approach requires “an abundance of communication for leadership to the most junior levels within the organization.” Brooks said if he’s “a junior member of the team and I understand the goal of the organization and I’m empowered to do my job and we’re going to communicate, talk about how I’m doing and the overall concept of what I’m doing and how that feeds into the greater picture of the business, I’m going to do all I can to be successful. And I believe that to my core.”
Brooks reiterated the importance of building trust through clear communication. “I’ve lived in organizations where this was the problem: the meeting after the meeting,” he said. “If you are having meetings after the meetings, you don’t have a unified goal, you don’t have a unified message, you don’t have a team that’s built on trust, you don’t have a team that’s built on collaboration and it’s going to create dissension throughout the organization.”
Brooks, Dupreelle and Barton then discussed the positive impact of having a unified goal, and a “North Star” to keep everyone on track. But they acknowledged that it is not carved in stone. Flexibility is needed and when consumer demands changes, retailers need to pivot and try new approaches.