Episode 15 - Interview With Retail Business Consultant and Author, George Troy.

In this episode, I interview George Troy. George is a widely read blogger, author, and consultant focused on retail business communities, including online and brick-and-mortar stores. He has enjoyed decades of real-life experience as a senior executive for some of the best-known and most successful retail companies in the US and globally. A specialist in apparel, footwear, sporting goods, cookware, and home furnishings, Troy has led the retail divisions of Deckers Outdoor (UGG Boots) and outlet divisions of Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn. Today, he reflects upon his years of experience and discusses his new book, The Five Laws of Retail.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Record, so I'm recording. We're live, this is grand. Welcome to Sticky Interviews. My name is Nathan Simmonds. I am working with MBM. We are the soft skills provider for the UK grocery and manufacturing industry. These interviews are about sharing the philosophies and the thinking of great people to help you be the best version of yourself. Today, I'm interviewing George Troy. Now, I've had some wonderful conversations with him from everything from chickens to squashes to the five laws of retail which is exponent, expert ...

This is his field of genius. I've been speaking to him about these, and I want to share some of these ideas with you, or get him to share them with you.

Nathan Simmonds:

I want to introduce him first. I've got his bio here and it's pretty decent reading for someone in the consultancy industry. This is good stuff. 35 years of real life experiences, a senior executive for some of the best known and most successful retail companies across the globe. A specialist in both men's and women's apparel, sporting goods, cookware, home furnishings, and he's even led a retail division of Deckers Outdoor, which we all know as Ugg Boots, Williams Sonoma, and The Pottery Barn.

Key successes, taken Ugg Australia retail sales from 0 to 400 million in the US, Europe, and Asia in just 8 years. That on its own George is a pretty decent celebration right there of a career.

George is currently a consultant with the Grayson Company, based in New York. He's also serving on the board of directors for two non-profit organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also, he's got a BA with honours from Berkeley in anthropology, which makes his storytelling unique to say the least, and he uses that as the backbone of his approach to his book, ‘The Five Laws of Retail’. Please, welcome George Troy to the camera and the interview. George, thanks for being here. Really appreciate this.

George Troy:

Well Nathan, thank you very much for that introduction. I'm glad to be with you. It almost sounds like he could never hold down a job.

George Troy - blower and author

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Well I think you've got the experience from the apprenticeships of some of your earlier roles, which then got you into Ugg because of that real life experience and the stuff that you cut your teeth with. You know what? Now you're a consultant doing that for other people. It just increases the impact you get to have on those businesses. You know what? I'd rather you didn't hold down a job because it means you get to go and see more people and do more good in the world.

George Troy:

That's true. That's true. Thank you very much.

Nathan Simmonds:

So look, for me, the big question first of all when I'm talking to people is why do you do what you do? What was it that inspired you to be where you are and do the things that you're doing right now?

George Troy:

Well there are a lot of things. Primarily, the book that just came out, The Five Laws of Retail, can I show that for a moment?

The Five Laws of Retail, and it's just released last spring. It's doing fairly well, and there's several reasons I did that. One is that I honestly believe, I know,

Episode 14 - Digital Wellbeing: Interview With Mich Bondesio from Growth Sessions

In this episode, I interview Mich Bondesio. Mich is a business-performance mentor, with a 20-year background in communications and project management. Her Growth Sessions mentoring programmes, workshops and talks support business people to build healthier cultures and develop more mindful approaches to work. Mich's clients include consultants, entrepreneurs and teams working in creative and digital-focused sectors. Today, we discuss digital wellbeing in more detail.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Sticky Interviews, this is Making Business Matter, MBM, the home of Sticky Learning and the trainer of Soft Skills to the UK retail and manufacturing industry, helping them to increase profits and sales. This interview series is all about speaking to great thinkers and sharing ideas to make that happen.

Nathan Simmonds:

Today, we've got Mich Bondesio with us. I hope I pronounced that right, I've never checked the pronunciation of your last name, Mich. I do apologize if that's horrifically wrong. Talking to us today. Thanks very much for being here, Mich. I'm just going to give the guys a quick rundown of who you are, where you come from, and I'm going to get into these questions, okay?

Mich Bondesio:

Okay.

Mich Bondesio: performance mentor

 

Nathan Simmonds:

So the first thing, Mich is a business performance mentor with a background in communications and project management. Her grow sessions, mentoring programs, workshops and talks support businesses, people to build healthier cultures and develop more mindful approaches to work, which we all need in this day and age, before this and after this. Originally from South Africa, Mich is currently based in the northwest UK, her clients are consultants, solopreneurs, and small teams working in creative and digitally focused sectors around the world. Mostly in the creative space, as far as I'm aware at this point in time.

Nathan Simmonds:

Mich, thanks very much for being here.

Mich Bondesio:

Thanks for inviting me.

Nathan Simmonds:

It was huge, we started to have a bit of a get to know you, which had nothing to do with this interview series, and as that conversation developed and sprouts came out of it, I was just like, some of the stuff you're talking about is absolutely vital for people to be hearing, from a mental health point of view, from an isolation point of view, which we're all in right now. I think the majority of people are just starting week three. I know I, we're a week before that because our work's starting to slow down, the face-to-face work started to slow down a little bit. So we've been isolating for, this would be the beginning of week four.

Nathan Simmonds:

And as we were talking about that you were just saying there's going to be some critical crunch points that come up through this that you're kind of aware of. I just thought, you know what? We've got share this. We've got to give this to people in the work space and they need to hear what you've got to say about this, to support those consultants and the culture that's coming up out of this.

Nathan Simmonds:

So first of all, thank you as I just said. Please tell everyone what you do and why you do it.

Mich Bondesio:

So, as you mentioned I'm a communications consultant and business performance mentor, and I want to help people to develop more mindful approaches to work because for the past 20 years I've worked in high pressure deadline driven environments and industries and sectors, which have very unsupportive work cultures, and I've also experienced burnout first hand and my burnout was so epic that I wasn't able to work for more than a year. So I have first hand experience of being socially isolated and very unwell and not having a work environment that was supportive of my recovery during that point.

Mich Bondesio:

Episode 13 - Conscious Culture: Interview With Natasha Wallace from Conscious Works

In this episode, I interview Natasha Wallace, the author of The Conscious Effect: 50 lessons for better organizational wellbeing. Natasha is also the founder of Conscious Works, a coaching company that helps leaders to lead consciously. Today we discuss conscious culture in more detail.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to the Making Business Matter Podcast. Currently, we're meeting niche leaders and change-makers. Those exciting people that are helping to make business future proof. Today we're going to be speaking to Natasha Wallace from Conscious Works. So a little bit about Natasha, we've got her blurb here, her bio.

Nathan Simmonds:

A lady with a particular interest in what causes leadership discomfort. She recognizes that ladies are time poor and under pressure. Natasha is helping them to focus on who they are and where they need to be. Allowing them to achieve the best results for themselves and their teams.

Nathan Simmonds:

With a career in high HR leadership and organizational development, roles across a range of sectors, and her most recent role was as a people and development director, which is blessed her with a depth of practical experience for building cohesive and impactful teams. And now her work is all about sharing this with other people.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome Natasha. Really great to be interviewing you. First and foremost, I want to find out a bit more about you. We've had a bit of a conversation already.

ConsciousWorks - coaching company

 

I want the people listening to this to find out a bit more about you. So, who are you and why do you do what you do?

Natasha Wallace:

Okay. I've spent my career working in HR. Predominantly in organizational development roles. I've always led HR teams. But I've always had a particular passion for how you create great cultures. And how do you optimize the performance of business whilst keeping people happy? Because I've always believed that those two things should sort of work in synergy with each other.

Natasha Wallace:

My career has seen me manage culture change projects. I've lead the development of leadership development programs and co-design, co-facilitate those. I do a lot of work around talent management and career management. I spent 10 years in professional services up until starting my own business.

Natasha Wallace:

That was quite interesting actually. Being with an organization for so long because it's about how do you sustain the performance? How do you put things in place that are actually going to work for the long term? And I worked as part of a partnership. Our whole modus operandi I guess was, well we called ourselves a ‘Succession partnerships’. We were developing people for the future.

Natasha Wallace:

So we wanted to put as much into people and get them as I guess, developed as we could because we would hope that some of those people would take over the running of the business in the future. I was immersed in a world where sustainable performance was really, really important.

Natasha Wallace:

And that's part of what I do now is; how do you help leaders to work in a way and operate in a way, run their businesses in a way that they can achieve performance? Because that's ultimately what we are trying to do in organizations, but without sacrificing wellbeing.

Natasha Wallace:

Then I burnt out myself. I didn't achieve high performance without sacrificing wellbeing, so that was my own personal experience. That was a real wake up call to me. So about three years ago I hit the wall, so to speak. It was a real surprise for me because given that in my mind I was somebody who understood how to achieve sustainable performance and also had to take care of people.

Natasha Wallace:

I guess part of the role of the HR professional is making sure that you are taking care of the people.

E12 - Professor Damian Hughes: A Change Management Catalyst and Professor of Organisational Psychology and Change.

Read the Interview Transcript Below:

Jo Palmer: 'We are doing an expert interview, and today I'm with Damian Hughes. We are talking largely about organisation development. So rather than me introduce your credentials, Damian, I think you'd do a better job than me.'

Damian Hughes: 'Well, thanks for inviting me on, Jo. It's a real honour to sort of chat with you. For anyone listening it's probably easier to explain the jobs I do, to give some context. So I'm a professor of organizational psychology and change, that's my main role. But I work as a consultant psychologist across a wide range of organisations from business to sport to education. And then the third job I do is I write. So I've done a number of books very much around the topics of high performing cultures and how and how to make change happen.'

The Barcelona Way

Jo Palmer: 'Fantastic. Before we get into organisational development, let's touch on your most recent book, The Barcelona Way, which is currently ranking on Amazon's best sellers. Damian, what was your inspiration for writing this book?'

Damian Hughes: 'Yeah, so I got approached a number of years ago by a publisher who asked if I'd be interested in writing a book on the topic of culture. And I said I'd love to do it. They said, would I be interested in trying to make it a little bit more accessible by viewing it through the lens of a sports team?'

DH: 'Now, while that sounded an intriguing challenge, the reality is, like a lot of businesses, a lot of sports teams sort of pay lip service to the topic of culture. So they'll tell you how important it is. But their genuine level of investment, or interest, or focus tends to be quite minimal. So we narrowed it down to three teams that genuinely use culture as a competitive advantage. So the first one was the New Zealand Rugby Union team. The second one was the New England Patriots in the NFL. And then the third one was FC Barcelona.'

'Choose Barcelona'

Damian Hughes: 'So I think it was air fair costs that meant the publisher said, "Choose Barcelona." But the reality was, it was the one that I felt had almost been unexplored and it was really rich to link it. So what the idea was was, I looked at culture through the lens of how Barcelona had decided to follow this process known as a commitment culture. And a commitment culture is where you have a really clear set of principles or behaviours, and you've got a really clear sense to why you exist. And what all the evidence says from all the research on the topic is a commitment culture tends to be a lot more successful over a sustained period than any other type of culture.'

DH: 'So I look at the different types of cultures, but then specifically this idea of a commitment culture and how that can be used and harnessed within any organisation, so anywhere where people are coming together for a common cause, how you can use it to then drive competitive advantage.'

Damian Hughes, the interview will conduct of him explaining organisational psychology and change

 

How Long Did it Take?

Jo Palmer: 'Fantastic. Brilliant. How long did it take you to write it, Damian?'

Damian Hughes: 'It ended up being about three years. So I was back and forth from Catalonia for about 18 months, back and forth doing interviews and things like that. But a lot of the research in terms of the most recent research and the papers, that took an awful lot of wading through to be able to give people sort of the idea that it isn't just about sport, it's about people that just happen to work in sport in this case. I'm lucky enough I've done a number of books, Jo. So what I've realised now is that you have to really be intrigued and love the topic, because it ends up dominating an awful lot of your waking hours. So it was a real three-year labour of love.'

Favourite Book

Jo Palmer: 'Wow.

You start a task and another one comes up. You do that, and another one comes up. So, you then do that. Until - you guessed it - another one comes up! You are task switching.

You've spent months preparing for that date with destiny. The presentation that will make or break your career. You know you are ready, yet somewhere deep inside there's a voice that says you're not good enough. You don't belong. In short, there's a metaphoric post-it note on your head saying, 'FAIL'. You need to learn how to build confidence and change that voice.

Do you have a looming deadline that's still some way off? You know that if you got a jump on it and made an early start on that presentation you will undoubtedly tinker with it until the last minute, wasting more time!  Listen to our podcast to learn some useful tips to help you stop procrastinating and start learning to trust yourself.

Emails are an essential tool. Yet, we were never really trained how to use them. Listen to our latest podcast to learn some practical email writing tips to help you improve your email effectiveness.

E7 - You Do Your Best Work Under Pressure? You’re a Tight Deadline Junkie

Do you leave everything to the last minute? Do you find yourself burning the midnight oil time after and time to meet deadlines? Yet, somehow, every time you pull of a masterstroke of genius and deliver. You deliver, not just on time, but you deliver your best work. You might just be one of the many tight deadline junkies. Listen to this podcast to learn more.

Read the Tight Deadline Podcast Transcript:

"Deadlines are a fundamental part of working in business. Are you one of those people like a baseball player? Running for the home run, and you slide in on the last base just as the umpire says, "Yep, you're home"? My name is Darren and you're at the home of Sticky Learning MBM, trainers to the UK grocery industry, and experts in making learning stick."

"Today I'd like to talk to you about tight deadlines. A lot of people are one of those baseball players that just slide in and get the home run, and you might say, "What's wrong with that?" I'd say nothing, except the stress that it causes. Then people will say to me, "Ah, but I do my best work under pressure". I'd say to them, "Research disagrees". In fact, when we're stressed scientists have proved that our IQ drops to that of a teenager. So when the adrenaline is running, when the cortisol is going around our body, what's happening is we're getting ready for fight or flight for the sabre-toothed tiger, but of course, they don't exist anymore."

Leaving Things to the Last Minute

What happens at work is when we really need to be our best, make our best decisions, what's happening in our IQ has dropped. So, you think that you do your best work under pressure, it's not true. What happens is you get very stressed under pressure and you seem to get a lot done, but let's look at that a whole different way. A lot of people slide in, getting their deadlines done just on time. A bit like when they go for a train and they're almost proud to jump on the train having run across the platform as the doors are bleeping. "I made it," and yes you did, but let's look at the stress that that caused, and was it really worth it?

"There is an alternative, and it's not going to be an alternative that you'll want to embrace, because part of you really likes to the rollercoaster ride of that adrenaline rush. Here's my challenge. You've got a manager who is erratic, disorganized. Often sliding in at last base just to get the deadlines done. Whilst that's quite exciting, is that really the person that you would want to work for? Would you prefer someone that's more measured? That knows what they're trying to achieve? Let's call it strategic thinking, and has a really good understanding of what the plan looks like for the next 12 months or the next few days, but isn't trying to hit deadlines just as they happen or passed."

Tight deadlines: Egg timer running out

 

The Last-Minute Multiply Effect

"That's exciting, but the stress is huge, and multiply that as a cascade from top to bottom in a company. The guy at the top is working on a last-minute tight deadline. Because he couldn't think further ahead than a few weeks. That cascades to the next level down. The next level down. And by the time it gets to middle management or below they're running around like headless chickens. Stressed, making decisions at last minute on something that's probably pretty important for that company. This would not be the image I suggest you want to portray."

Why Do People Just Hit or Just Miss Their Deadlines?

"So, let's look at why. Why do people just hit or just miss their deadlines? Why not turn in a report a few days before? Well, the reason is they don't trust themselves. Let me say that again. The reason is, they don't trust themselves because let's imagine a scenario. You've got to write a presentation for a customer in two weeks time, Thursday by 5:00. The meeting happens on Friday at 9:00 AM. Now,

Episode 6 - Not Having Effective Meetings? Are You Wasting Valuable Time? Answer: Have More Meetings!

We spend most of our working lives in them. Yet, they are rarely an effective use of our time. In short, we simply aren't making the most of them. In fact, the problem is we aren't having enough of them! Listen to this podcast to learn how to have more effective meetings.

Here, we argue, that shorter and more regular meetings will keep your team on track. This will allow your meetings to be more effective.

Read Effective Meetings Podcast Transcript:

"Meetings, you're having them all day long and they're not as effective as they could be. You know this. My name is Darren and you're at the home of Sticky Learning, MBM, Trainers to the UK Grocery Industry. This is another short and sticky story about meetings. Along with emails, you spend most of your time doing either those or meetings and they're not as productive as you want. Most people feel this, they could be a lot more effective and maybe in the past, you've reached for a book or you've done some research online to try and figure out how to make meetings more effective. And what you've probably found is that the advice is about setting objectives."

Setting Objectives

"Objectives are good advice, it's just not great advice and that's because of how many people really set objectives for meetings? They do for the really, really important ones, but beyond that, the day to day meetings, they don't. Smart objectives would be ideal, but for me it's the difference between if you've seen the film, A Few Good Men, it's the difference between paper law, as Sam says, when he's fighting a court case with Tom Cruise, the difference between paper law and trial law is the difference between someone writing a book who was intellectually right. You should have objectives for meetings, but in reality, it ain't going to happen. So let me see if I can share a story about how you might do it differently and I'll follow up with some practical tips that I hope will help."

Have More Meetings to Get More Done

"When I was a kid, we had maybe more changes of seasons than we seem to now. We had extreme summers, it seemed, and extreme winters, although maybe I look back at my old childhood with rose-coloured glasses. I remember going to school one day and it had been snowing all night. I'd woken up, I was probably about nine years old, and how excited I was that snow was on the ground, and walking to school was really exciting. You've probably had that feeling. And throwing snowballs at each other all day, going out to the playground, fabulous."

"Over the next couple of days, the snow fades and it's not as exciting, but playing with snowballs, the best place to get your snowballs to get them into a ball was at the bottom of a tree where the snow had drifted up against the tree. You probably know what I mean."

"So you've got up to the base of the tree, grab a load of snow, make it into a snowball and throw it at the nearest kid. Fabulous. My point of saying that is if you were to look at a tree when it's snowed, you'll see that the snowdrift is on either side. I'm suggesting that to have more productive meetings, you should have more meetings. You won't find that in any book. And if the tree is a meeting, then what happens is the actions, and the things that get done, are the snow to the right and the snow to the left of the tree."

Are you wasting valuable time in meetings?

 

Making Meetings More Productive

"So if you want to get more done from the meetings, you want people to take more actions, you'll find what they do is think, "Ah, I've got a meeting today at two o'clock. Damn, I should have done the action from last week." And people do their actions either just before the meeting or they come out of a meeting and think. "Okay, I'll get that done while it's fresh in my mind." So they get their actions done just before the meeting or just after the meeting."