Sticky Learning Lunches #52: The Leadership Upgrade #2

Today's topic, The Leadership Upgrade part 2. "Worried if you change you won’t know what to expect? Part #2 of the Unique Leadership Coaching model ‘EVOC’ Obstacles, If you always did what you’ve always done. You’ll always get what you always got. Get prepared, get aware and plan for a better future.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Let's get this screen up there. Good afternoon. Welcome to today Sticky Learning Lunches. Just as always, given the last few seconds for people to arrive in the room for today's conversation. Cameron, good. See you. Thank you Colin. Darren, amazing for being here. As always, Fabian, always pleasure. Howard. Thank you very much. Ivy Mar Martin. Sorry, Matt Mohamed. Tim Victoria. Hello alone. I was gonna go for a different colored shirt today, but we had a minor wardrobe malfunction before four inch shirt.

Nathan Simmonds:

I know Martin, I'm sorry, I apologize. Wardrobe malfunction. I dunno what tomorrow's gonna look like, but we'll see what we can work out. CLA says, looking sharp. Yeah, I know, but we need to change things up. We need to keep things fresh. Last mouthful of tea, last few people arriving. So just as we're doing this, let's make sure we're setting ourselves up for success today. As always, first things first, mobile phones. Let's get those little airplanes lit up. Zero out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on what we're gonna be covering today,

Nathan Simmonds:

Following on directly from yesterday. Before we even go into the, the crux of what we're gonna be covering today. The key points we talked about yesterday. Actually, no, let me come back to that in a minute. You said we did okay. We talked about this yesterday in brief. You know, you said we ignored is the normal thing that we see in a lot of large organizations when we're looking to take on feedback and we're doing that self-evaluation.

Nathan Simmonds:

Often when we are doing these 360 feedbacks or these company surveys, we know there's quite a lot of information and we don't always feel like we're getting hurt. What we took on board yesterday, there was a lot of stuff that came up about feedback yesterday and about how to deliver feedback and how to give feedback to members of the management team and leadership team above you and how to give that feedback to your peers and in your teams.

Nathan Simmonds:

So the first thing that we did when we left that conversation, that call yesterday, is we have created a four part training session on how to deliver feedback that will be starting on July the 13th. I have just put the link in there for the future sticky learnings. So you can go straight in there first thing and make sure that you are booked in for tomorrow's section if you're not already.

Nathan Simmonds:

The other part is that in, you know, starting on July the 13th after we've done the HBDI profiles, the Herman profiles with Andy, again, we're gonna go into four sessions about how to deliver feedback. We're gonna look at how to do it, the structure of it, we, some of those nuances that come up when we talk to people and when we're working with different people. So we are going to tick a lot of the boxes on there to make sure that you can do this. Hope this is useful.

Part #2 of the Unique Leadership Coaching Model

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Right, last few people have arrived. Thank you everyone for being here. Let's dive in. Phones on flight mode, zero under distraction. Get your emails shut down. A hundred percent attention to what we're doing here. Make sure that you've got a drink available. Let's make sure you stay hydrated. Keep your brain lubricated so you can make this learning stick. And the third part as always is make sure you've got a fresh page for fresh thoughts as they come in. Okay? Top of that page, you're gonna write keepers.

Nathan Simmonds:

These are the things that you wanna remember and remind yourself about so that when you go back and reread it, you can reignite that thinking and come up with some new ideas that keep the idea expanding and you make sure this learning sticks part two of the leadership model. Let's go into this. Good afternoon. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. We are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

And the idea of these lunchtime micro learnings is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Whether that's from home right now, or whether it's helping to prepare you back, uh, return back to the office part two of the Leadership Model eoc. So we've already looked at the E, which is all about evaluation

Nathan Simmonds:

For those that were here yesterday, what was useful from yesterday, what have you taken away and what new ideas have come up since we got together yesterday. And I'd love to see those in the questions book just to keep this moving. Uh, thinking moving the first, so just as I get up the, the headlines of what we covered, we looked at self-evaluation, we looked at 360 feedback and the absolute need to, to do that 360 feedback.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we looked at a couple of different ways to approach that as well. I have gone back and I've spell checked that really rush document that we put together yesterday. There is a fresh one that will be being emailed to you if it hasn't already been done. So, uh, done so yet, but it's on its way out to you. What do we got? Self-assessment. Absolutely. How you see yourself versus how others perceive you.

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely. And going into that, there is no smoke without fire. So someone's feedback, someone's perception of you may only be a snapshot of time. It is still just as valid though 'cause that's their viewpoint on what you are doing. So make sure that you are, you are willing and able to take on board that feedback at the right time. All VA feedback is valuable, absolutely is a gift. Taking action on the feedback good still with people in your, uh, still with people in your charge, not people. Absolutely.

Nathan Simmonds:

These, the people in your teams, they are in your charge. You are not in charge of them. They are, you know, you are there to steward and support them. We're all visionaries, absolutely. Anyone tells you that. And not everyone is a visionary leader. It's a lie. We've got eyes in our heads, we have to lead ourselves, you know, in order to go and get the new job to lead our family to whatever it is. We've all got this capability inside us.

Nathan Simmonds:

The moment that you say someone can't do something, you are labeling them based on a bias or an opinion that's been formulated somewhere else. So the best thing to do is just remove that label and accept and acknowledge everyone has this capacity in them. So we looked at self-evaluation, we looked at the 360 feedback and as I said, you said we did. So the feedback, um, elements are in place now for the 13th. Make sure you are registered part two. Vision.

Nathan Simmonds:

Vision is all about obviously what you see. It's about where you want to go. It's about the thing that you can see in your mind that you want to create in the reality. We talked about this in goal setting. Thank you Colin for reminder me. We talked about this in the goal setting and the coaching for, um, training that we did. We talked about this in personal development plan. It's all about where you see you want to get to. And the thing that I say countless times, and I'll say it a million times again, is that people can only see as far as they can think.

Nathan Simmonds:

I don't know who said this quote originally. It's so very vital though. And so very useful. The idea is that, you know, if you haven't taken time to think about where you want to get to, how are you supposed to paint a picture that's gonna encourage others to go to the same place? This is the same analogy when we are looking at satnav, when we're setting goals. Satnav works on two pieces of information where you are self-evaluation, the postcode of here in the moment and the postcode of where you want to get to the vision.

Nathan Simmonds:

Once you have those two pieces of information, then the sat nav will work out the route to get you there where the traffic, uh, the roadworks are, the traffic lights, et cetera, et cetera, and the speed cameras and help you take the best route in order to make that happen. But the moment that you fail to put any either of these two pieces of information, what's gonna happen? Open question. If you are missing one of these two, two pieces of information when you are programming your, your, your route finder, what's gonna happen to your journey? What do you think will happen?

Nathan Simmonds:

You are lost anyway. Will take you there eventually it will do. You might find that, okay, something else coming in. Mystery tour, wasted time, no direction. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we need clarity in these two spaces. So once we've done this at the the self-evaluation, we can then start getting into the vision and start looking at some of the questions that we wanna ask ourselves. So let just share my screen. Let me know if you can see the screen forming. So there's the outdated feedback, 360 feedback form I started working on earlier. But then when we look at the evaluation, what I've said on here is a little bit of a little bit of this

Nathan Simmonds:

HQ Q equals QA high quality questions equal high quality answers. If you don't like the responses that you get, if you don't like the quality of the answers that are coming back, you need to adjust the quality of the question that you are asking in the first place. Your brain is a validation machine. I've said this before and I'll start again.

Sticky Learning Lunches #51 :The Leadership Upgrade #1

Today's topic, The Leadership Upgrade Part 1. Got promoted and wish someone showed you how to Lead? – Part #1 The Unique Leadership Coaching model ‘EVOC’ (Self) Evaluate, take a deeper dive into your leadership style and capability.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's wait for this, right. Okay. Just doing a screen share waiting for the last few people to come into the room. It is absolute pleasure to be here in front of the whiteboard again, so many eager people just looking down the list here at the moment. Alan, thanks very much for being here. Thanks very much. Andy's saying rocking the shirt. Thanks. It's a changing color scheme for me, Cameron. Long knot time. No speak. Really good to see you, Colin and Fabi and gerd. Howard Ivy, thanks for being here again. Martin, looks like the first time I've seen you here. Matt Brown, welcome back Ming. Good to see you, Mohammed, to be, I'm gonna go with Mt. Tim Moore.

Nathan Simmonds:

It is an absolute honor to be sharing this sticky learning lunch with all of you. Eager people. I'm not sure I've seen so many people in the room waiting to get in. This is phenomenal. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. Last few people arriving. Lee, welcome Victoria. Hello. Thanks for being here again. This is gonna be good. The weather outside is terrible here. My shirt is making up for the difference in the, uh, darkness that is outside the gray. So let's get everyone set up for success before we kick off today.

Nathan Simmonds:

First things first, get the phones out. Let's make sure we're zeroing out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on what it is you are doing right here is, which is looking at your leadership skills and looking at your personal development as a leader or even how you are gonna help to develop your leaders. 'cause this is something that is still vitally missing or vitally important that is missing from modern work, modern society, humanity as a whole. And it's something that I'm very, very passionate about. So phones on silent. Let's eliminate the emails.

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's eliminate all of those distractions which are gonna stop you from learning here. Stage. Second thing, making sure you've got a drink available. Let's keep you hydrated so you can keep your brain lubricated and make this learning stick. And finally, the last stage of setting you up for success for this session. Fresh sheet, fresh thinking. So I want you to find a nice clean page in your notepad. And at the top of that you're gonna write keepers.

Nathan Simmonds:

And the keepers are the things that you wanna remember and the things that you wanna remind yourself about. So when you go back and reread it, it's gonna reignite that thinking. It's gonna get the new ideas forming and get the actions in place to keep you moving forward. Hope this is clear with everyone. I think this is the last few people in the room still look up more arriving. Beautiful.

Click the image to take a look at your leadership style with this sticky learning lunch

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's do this. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me. Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industries. Idea of these sticky learning lunches is to help you be the best version of you and the work that you do right now, whether it's working from home or whether it's preparing you to return back to the office. And today, what are we covering?

Nathan Simmonds:

We are covering evoc, EVOC. So lemme get this up on the whiteboard for evoc is a leadership coaching framework that I built in the MBM lab to help p compartmentalize their thinking, to give them a structure so they can do that self-inquiry and start to create their version of reality based on a leader. So it's about helping them to create the pictures in their heads so that they've got something to strive for and that they can show people around them where they're going and help to mobilize that team.

Nathan Simmonds:

I think I've dived straight in. I dived straight in with the content over enthusiastic, but we're gonna run with it and I'll pick up the other parts as we go in. So what does evoc EVOC stand for? Evo? The first part is to evaluate. And this means taking the time to look at yourself. It means taking the time to reflect on what you've been doing for the last year, two years, five years. It's about looking at your habits and the way that you behave and interact with people inside your business so that you can actually see what's going on.

Nathan Simmonds:

And that's the first stage we're gonna be looking at today. But then the next stage we're gonna be looking at tomorrow is we're gonna go into the vision. So where you want to take people, where you want to get to. When we're talking about leadership, it's really important and we understand this when we are leading, we are out front taking people there. Now if we don't know where we are going, how are people gonna be able to know if they want to follow you? So it's really important we understand where we are going and what our vision is.

Nathan Simmonds:

The truth is, and I heard recently that a great thought leader that often inspires me said that no, not everyone is a visionary leader. And right now I'm gonna call BSS on that. Everybody is a visionary leader. If you have eyes in your head, you have vision. If you are taking somewhere, going somewhere, you are a leader. 'cause you are leading the way for yourself or for someone else. Even if you throw a ball for a dog, you are a visionary leader 'cause that dog is enthusiastic and enthused by your behavior that it wants to go and get that ball and bring it back. So let's get really clear.

Nathan Simmonds:

As human beings, we have all, we all have the capability to create a vision and lead people there. The O stands for obstacles. It is not about. And when we get into this later on, it is not about being stuck by things, it's by about having the reality to see things as they are. See what your challenges are and then understand what it is you need to do to move beyond them. So you can get a real clear viewpoint of what's happening. And then take the right rea um, actions,

Nathan Simmonds:

Just . Let's get a fresh one so that we can go and create. So we can come up with some new ideas that are actually gonna help us beyond this. That gets us into this 'cause we understand who we are. I hope this makes sense to everyone. Everyone with me so far? Yes or no? I know I've dived straight in with the content. I've got really enthusiastic. I saw lots of friendly faces and went straight in. That's definitely a typo. Jamie , you meant to say All good

Nathan Simmonds:

So this is the model. So this has given us a four part structure, very similar to the grow coaching model with goal reality options and way forward. So we're gonna break this down. The first part that we want to do though is we want to get absolute clarity on who you are. 'cause if you don't know who you are, how is anyone else gonna know what they're buying into? If you don't know what you are capable of and what makes you tick, how's anyone else gonna be able to get involved?

Nathan Simmonds:

How's anyone else gonna help you achieve what you see in your head as the big picture for your business, for your department, for your family, whatever it is. So we have to take the time to do this evaluation piece. It is so absolutely vital. Who has heard of confirmation bias or biases, mental biases? Who has heard of those? Yes or no? Couple have got a mixture here. Yes. Bits no. Yes. Okay. High level view. When we have things like a confirmation bias,

Nathan Simmonds:

Primarily when we do a job interview, they call, they refer to this often as thorns and halos thing. You know, you see someone, um, I'm sitting there about to interview someone with my very bright purple shirt on and this person comes in with a, you know, a nice beard and glasses and a very nice purple shirt. All of a sudden I'm starting to get a confirmation bias. They look like me, they dress like me. They must be a good person. Therefore maybe I'll give them the job, not based on whether they've got the skills or not, but because they look a bit like me or they talk a bit like me. So we start to kind of, we sway our, we are, we have our opinions swayed based on what we think of the world.

Nathan Simmonds:

The challenge is when we're doing the self-evaluation piece, if I'm a leader or I've been in a position for a long time and I haven't got enough people around me to challenge my way of thinking or approaches, I start to think that my way is the only way I start to become blinded by my behaviors. 'cause maybe they worked with this group of people or in this project and I think that's the only way. So I just stick in that track, in that, in that groove and I just stay there. Boss bias, absolutely, Howard love it. I might have to use that one.

Nathan Simmonds:

So it's understanding that when we get caught in that rutt and we need to get a clarity on, you know, what is working, how am I interacting with people? How do I take the time to reflect on myself to make sure that I'm doing the best for myself and for those in my care. Questions has come in. It's uh, how honest someone will be in evaluating themself. Absolutely. So this is where we get this confirmation bias. We get a personal bias to ourself because we've been doing it for such a long time. We, you know, we've become blinded.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's like the horse with the shy horse with the, with the blinkers on. We don't see what else is going on. We just go, okay, I'm just gonna go there in this way and not think about anything else.

Sticky Learning Lunch 48: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 7.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon, sticky learning lunches. Welcome to Monday. Really great to be here. Really great to see you even in the virtual. We're just gonna give it a few more seconds while we're waiting for the rest of the people to arrive in the room. Just gonna have a mouthful of drinks. Gonna make sure we're getting ourselves set up for the day. A few more seconds. Good to see you, Colin. Thanks for being here. Darren, always a pleasure.

Nathan Simmonds:

Fabian, great to see you here again, Joe, lovely to see you. John, thank you very much for being here. First time attendee, I believe. Thanks very much for taking the time to invest in yourself in this session for today. Just as we're waiting for those last people to arrive, let's make sure we are setting ourselves up for success. So, first things first, before we even get into the introductions, let's zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention.

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's get the little airplane lit up. So we haven't got our WhatsApp, Twitter, our pings, buzzes, beeps or whatever, distracting us from what we're spending our time doing here today. Making sure that you've got a fresh sheet as well. Fresh sheet, fresh thinking. So you wanna make sure you've got a nice clean page in your notebook. And at the top of this, you're gonna write keepers and keepers are the things that you want to remember that you wanna remind yourself about.

Improve your category opportunities

 

Nathan Simmonds:

And when you reread that, it's gonna reignite that thinking. So when you come back to this learning from today and from our previous sessions, that you can go back, go back into that thinking and create some new ideas that are gonna help you deliver a better result in your business. And as you've just seen me with my drink, making sure that you have hydration.

Nathan Simmonds:

Make sure you are hydrated. Keep your brain lubricated so you can make this learning stick. I think we're good to go. Let's dive into today's session. Actually, before we do that, if you have not already registered for tomorrow's session, I'm gonna put a link in the box at the bottom there in the chat box for everyone. If you have not registered for tomorrow's session, now is the time to make sure you've got a copy of that link so you can get prepared for tomorrow.

Nathan Simmonds:

Tomorrow we're looking at the first stage of evoc, the self-evaluation, part of the leadership model that is in the chat box. Now, if that's gonna be beneficial for you, sign up for tomorrow's session. It's four part module of system. We'll be running through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday next week. If you know anyone else that would benefit from that, share that link with them as well.

Nathan Simmonds:

Get 'em involved. There's gonna be some great content in there. I'm gonna be delivering the first stage of our leadership coaching model. It's gonna really help you take your game to a whole new level, Andy. Ready? I'm ready. Good. So look, welcome to today's sticky learning with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. And we are the soft skills and leadership development provider to the UK grocery and manufacturing industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

Idea of these learnings is to give you 20 minutes of micro learning to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do, whether that be from home or returning back to the office. Today we are covering part seven of the category management funnel, also lovingly known by MBM as the 73% funnel. 'cause what we, we have calculated is that 73% of your opportunities never make it to store. No, sorry, never make it to the store. And we want to help you improve that quite significantly. Andy, welcome to today.

Andy Palmer:

Thank you, Nathan. Good to here. Can't believe we're on day seven already,

Nathan Simmonds:

Day seven. And as you said before we hit go live on this, it's gone super quickly. We've covered some really decent content, you know, not even at the depth that we know that we can go to. There have been some absolute nuggets though, for people watching.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. I thinking, uh, picking up on what you've just said there about someone, uh, attending stay that hasn't attended the previous sessions, thank you for being here. Um, I'd also had some contact from people last week, send the missed sessions. So I'm thinking, right, I've got this right. That link that you've just put up, Nathan, will also allow people to view the sessions that we've run, those other previous six sessions that we've ran over our funnel. Um, if you haven't picked up on those or you wanna watch those again or watch 'em for the first time, they're, they're gonna be in that link as well.

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely. Click through, go and have a look. Well worth it. What are coming today,

Andy Palmer:

Nathan, we are colleagues in the circle on our funnel. Um, so we previously talked about agreeing category targets, understanding the shopper, understanding our channel, turning data and analysis into insights and recommendations, selling those opportunities and landing those opportunities. We're now gonna go all the way, all the way back round with evaluating, improve the key, key part to any project or anything that we ever do. Yeah, it's so often overlooked because we're on what we class as the PowerPoint treadmill that we just jump straight off one project or straight out of one presentation into another.

Andy Palmer:

So I'm gonna share just a one tool with you today, um, of how you can evaluate more effectively. Um, somebody can just take away and and do. So we're gonna get into that in a moment. The other bit I'm gonna ask for right now is we've got some more time today to spend on questions, uh, challenging me, probing me appropriately, um, on category management, on any of the seven stages that we've, uh, gone through. So if people have got questions now, maybe, uh, start to consider them, get 'em in the chat box when we get to that in maybe 10, 15 minutes time.

Andy Palmer:

Um, Nathan can start sharing those and we can hopefully just bring this topic to life even more. Um, and at the same time answer some questions that you may have, um, again, take away and add continued value.

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely. So any questions that are coming up because we're getting into that evaluation, evaluation stage. I get my words out today. Any questions that are coming up for you today from this funnel from previous or any other category management challenges that come up today to day to follow those questions in? I think so we can start looking at those.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. Now we've covered a heck of a lot and I've realized I've got a really busy whiteboard behind me. But that's largely some of the things that we pulled out. There's been loads of three letter, uh, things to hang our, uh, hack, hang our hats off. We'll come back to those maybe in a little while. But today is really about evaluating and improving. And of course I've got maybe not by design, another three letter tool to share with you.

Andy Palmer:

So Nathan, I'll ask you to slide down just a couple on, on the slides. Um, I wanna share this tool with you. That was perfect. Um, PMI typically, as I said, we'd move from project to project, presentation to presentation, maybe not taking that time to figure out what good, great, better, could have been worse, getting those kind of learnings. We are all about continuous improvement.

Andy Palmer:

We think this is a terrific tool that you can use in the moment for pretty much any situation. So for example, our category category management. Um, we could use this to evaluate, um, a cell when we've been in sort of see the buyer and we're putting our recommendations. We could then do this quick evaluation afterwards, or we could do it right at the top and say, right, let's, let's have a quick look at our, uh, agreeing category targets. What was, what can we learn from that?

Andy Palmer:

So this tool works very, very simply, but yet super powerfully by saying what was positive? What was the things that were really good, we can take, make some notes on what was good, got the category, target came up with it really, really quickly. It's tangible, it's smart, and we can start to pull all those positive learnings out.

Andy Palmer:

We can look at then from a minus point of view, what was not so good? It took us a long time to get there. Actually. We had to, we had to kind of go round circles a few times next time, let's not do that. Let's, uh, start with our end in mind first and work backwards. And again, we're listing all the things that weren't so great that we want to do differently next time. The last part I for interesting, those things that you just didn't see happening could be maybe down in the, uh, the sell part of the funnel when we're presenting to the buyer and the buyer says, ah da, go, oh, that was really interesting.

Andy Palmer:

Didn't see that coming as a curve. Didn't see that coming as a question. Didn't see that coming as an opportunity. Again, let's capture that 'cause it's worth being aware in future, something similar could come up. Yes, we can get into big evaluations, we can organize meetings, we can get a bunch of people in a room. We can create all sorts of 120 step, uh, review points.

Sticky Learning Lunch 48: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 6.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon, sticky learning lunches. Just making sure we've got screen share on there. Welcome to today's session. Yes, I'm not wearing a white shirt, it's Thursday. Just gonna give it a few seconds while we wait for the last people to arrive in the room. If anyone's got any opinions about the shirt today, I'm more than happy to hear them. What do you think, on a scale of one to 10, one terrible, 10, phenomenal, happy. Let's go with the ratings on that. Just while we're waiting for everyone else to turn up.

Colin:

I say that it's certainly better than the sound and I'm, uh, supporting today.

Improve your category management opportunities

 

Nathan Simmonds:

8.5. Thank you, Colin. I'll, I'll take that and run with it.

Colin:

Nine for me. Thanks Colin.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, finally.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's make sure we're setting everyone up for success. First things first, as always, let's get the mobile phones up. Let's get the little airplane lit. Zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. Also, making sure we've got a drink. Let's make sure we're staying hydrated. We're in the thirties here in the south is getting warm. Let's make sure we're looking after ourselves. Keep, keep ourselves hydrated and keep the brain lubricated.

Nathan Simmonds:

Also, fresh sheet, fresh thinking. Get yourself a blank page. Make sure that top of that you've written, keep us and these are the things you want to remember and remind yourself about when you reread them so you can reignite that thinking and really make this learning stick. It's the end of the week for us in the sticky learning. Before we go any further, and before we go into the introductions and get the session rolling as well, if you have not signed up for Monday session, which is the last one of the 73% funnel, now is the time to do that.

Nathan Simmonds:

We'll get a link into the chat box so you can click through there and sign up for Monday's session. We've also got Tuesday's session. We're gonna move into the leadership coaching model, evoc, which I've designed. It's all gonna be about self-evaluation and getting really deep on who you are, what you bring, and how you develop yourself as a leader as we move through the course of next week as well. So if you haven't already signed up, now is the time to do that.

Nathan Simmonds:

We are on, let's do this. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, making Business Matter, home of Sticky Learning, and we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sessions is to give you a 20 minute, 20 to 30 minute micro learner. It's gonna help you be the best version of you in what you do right now, and also preparing you to go back to the brave new world, that whatever that might be as we move into the future. What are we covering today, Andy? Do

Colin:

A Okay. Nathan. Today we are covering, landing those opportunities in store. So it builds this funnel continually does by targets, shoppers, our stores, our insights and recommendations, selling it through to landing it. So it today's about landing it, it's about that, uh, last hundred yards, ensuring that all that time and effort and analysis we've put in actually hits the shelves. It hits the shelves, right? Um, so for meLearning opportunities in store, why the funnel flows is largely about preparation.

Colin:

Um, what we're trying to ensure happens is that those recommendations that you make to the buyers that you've sold to the buyers don't just look good on paper, that they actually can work in store and then giving them, uh, sustainability for the future. So getting into this one, um, there broadly, two groups of people that work for supermarkets, those that work in offices and those that work in stores.

Colin:

Yes, of course, there's some other areas, but broadly speaking, those two groups of people, this is really about bridging that gap between those particular areas. Um, talks about, it's the last 100 yards. Um, it's a difference between ideas generated and where they are implemented. So I'm gonna start with a quick story. Um, one of my colleagues may be in this afternoon, this story is actually, um, uh, about him so many years ago, and he'd probably tell us it was about 20.

Colin:

I think the reality was it was probably maybe 30 or 40 years ago. Um, he was an up and coming, uh, frozen foods buyer, and that buying department at, uh, this particular supermarket was trying everything to drive sales. They would draft in suppliers, they would go through all the analysis, through all the skew level, store level by week analysis. And it was all with a view to try and getting availability sorted, uh, in, in frozen foods.

Colin:

Hundreds of spreadsheets, lots of analysis hours spent on it. Nothing was improving. So my colleague himself decided, you know what? Maybe I need to get out to stores. So he did out of his desk, off to stores, and he spent some time working in stores, spent a few days observing what colleagues are doing. He spent a few days helping colleagues in store, putting stuff into the shelf. A couple of weeks later, he pulled and gathered the guy buying team back together.

Colin:

What he then did was placed 50 pairs of gloves down on the table and said, there's our issue. It doesn't matter how much analysis we do, it doesn't matter how much, uh, how many recommendations we come up with. It's about this. And everyone kind of went, what do you mean it's about gloves? What then went on to explain was that the insight he got from working in the stores, but frozen food was cold.

Colin:

And so because frozen food was cold, everyone in store avoided filling or replenishing that particular part of the store. By providing gloves to the stores right across the estate, they were able to increase availability. So they made it just in that little bit easier for people to go, do you know what? We pick up those cold cardboard boxes, open it, put it on the shelf, just make life a little bit easier. The point of that really about closing the gap between what we see behind our screens and within our spreadsheets and bits of paper to what actually happens in true reality.

Colin:

So finding your gloves is the kind of, or the equivalent of, is my real challenge to use for this afternoon. Find those gloves, close that gap between the analysis that you do and the opportunities that you are recommending. Making sense, Nathan?

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely. And it's the real life stuff and what you see on your computer screen and from where you are sitting is completely different to the reality inside a store. Now you are in, and geographically you may be twenty, thirty, a hundred and fifty miles away from that location. So you have no idea actually what's going on in the head of the individuals that are supporting you. Make those opportunities land. You have to be there.

Colin:

Yeah, I, um, gonna share another little model. Why not? Um, we, we looked at the staircase the other day. This is another staircase I seem to like staircases and, uh, three letters or, uh, acronyms this week. This is, um, effectively the, the staircase of learning. Some of you may well be familiar with it, but I actually think it works really well for, for this particular topic as well. It draws up, got these two areas. There. Not a big fan of this work, but it makes sense. Unconscious incompetence. It's the things that we don't know.

Colin:

And this is typically what can typically be the area that some category managers tend to reside in. They don't know what they don't know. Sometimes getting out to stalk and, uh, can help that. I often think about this as, uh, my 8-year-old, she doesn't know, she can't drive. She sees Daddy get in the car, do some stuff like this, do some stuff like this, move his hands in the car, get to be, she has no idea.

Colin:

She couldn't jump in that seat. Over time, we move them into conscious incompetency, start to become aware of the things that you both can't do. Sometimes it's getting out to store and going, you know what? Hadn't appreciated that loves example. It's a great place to start. So for me, this was my son, uh, probably a few years ago when he started asking these questions, he was getting slightly closer to taking that first, uh, driving lesson and he started asking, put your feet up.

Colin:

You going there? What's that bum for? What's that lever do? How are you getting in the car to do that fee? And he moved from, I don't know, I can't do it through to my God, I know I can't actually do that. I'm gonna need some lessons. Absolutely. He then starts taking some lessons and he moves into conscious competence. He's now aware he can do it over time.

Colin:

And to ask anyone in the room who's done a drive recently and to ask you how many gear changes you make providing you've got a manual car, you're not gonna know because you're doing that stuff unconsciously. So you then move into unconscious competence and it's about taking our cashflow managers ourselves on this journey through, dunno what I don't know. Now I know what I dunno through to now I can do it. And then finally making this stuff just automatic so we're not just sitting behind spreadsheets.

Colin:

We're spending some time in store and we're now unconsciously competent on that new level of knowledge that we've got. Um,

Sticky Learning Lunch 48: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 5.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to day five. Is day five of the yeah, of the category management funnel. It is Wednesday. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning with me, Nathan Simmons and Andy Palmer, resident expert on category management. As always, we're just gonna give it about 30 seconds to wait for the last people to arrive in the room, and then we are gonna crack on. Good afternoon, Colin. Good afternoon, Fabian. Good afternoon again, Mikayla, good to see you.

Improve your category management opportunities

Nathan Simmonds:

Thank you very much everyone for being here. Good afternoon, Gemma. Just joining the room. We are just gonna give it a few more seconds and then we are going to get on with today. But while we're sway for those last people, on a scale of one to 10, one being terrible, 10 being phenomenal, how are you? How is your day? Let me know. Let's see how people are feeling on this. Fine Wednesday with the Gloria Sunshine and ISS A 10. That's good.

Nathan Simmonds:

We've got an eight coming in from Colin. Thanks very much. Right. I think it's time to get this show started. Mr. Palmer, welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons and Andy Palmer idea with these sessions is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Coming from MBM making business matter, the provider of leadership development and soft skills to the grocery and manufacturing industry, and we couldn't be more pinpoint and more niche when it comes to category management in this space, we are hitting day number five of the funnel.

Nathan Simmonds:

And this funnel lovingly known as the 73% funnel. Because the reason why is why it's helping you to highlight why 73% of your opportunities, your category management opportunities, never make it to store. And we've been breaking this down for the last five day or four days, sorry, day five today. Andy, what are we covering today?

Andy Palmer:

Today, Nathan? Good afternoon. No, today we're covering selling those opportunities. So building on everything we've done back end of last week, beginning of this week, got our targets. We understand our shopper, we've got a good handle on the channel that we're, uh, presenting to, analyzed all our data and we pulled together our very succinct presentation. So today's about making that stuff land with the buyer, the person, that office, that buyer.

Andy Palmer:

So we've got a few things to share with you today that hopefully increases or hopefully will increase your chances of success when you've got that opportunity to be out there pushing the recommendations that you are suggesting. So without further ado, um, I'm gonna share one thing straight away with you. Um, cool. About four years ago, the IGD ran a, an industry survey and part of this capability and partnership survey, it said that too often trust is the single biggest barrier to getting proposals into action.

Andy Palmer:

It comes back to trust. I've mentioned it a little bit, you know, the last few days we've certainly talked about credibility. So today I wanna really bring to life what trust is about for you then to consider. How trustworthy am I, how trustworthy is my team? Could this be one of the reasons why when not getting our recommendations across the line, were not as influential as we could be? So we're gonna talk about trust. Um, in true blue left brain style, I'm gonna bring this to life, uh, using the medium of a formula.

Andy Palmer:

So bear with me as I lovingly create it up here and then hopefully explain it in a way that really resonates with you. So let's talk about trust. Trust is what you need with the buyer. It's what you need with colleagues that you work with. It's what you need with your partners, your friends, your family.

Andy Palmer:

Because if you're trustworthy, you are far more likely to get what you want when you want it in an appropriate way. So in order for you to have trust, there are three component parts to this. The first one, credibility. Credibility. Stick to the kind of world of category management at the moment. So credibility, this is going to come from the knowledge that you've got, the experience that you've got, the things that you say and do, and the way in which you communicate.

Andy Palmer:

Tthe understanding you've got of the category. So if you've got credibility, you are far, likely, far more likely to have a high level of trust. So first one's credibility, making sense, thumbs up, Nathan. Good, two thumbs up, loving it, credibility. Second one, reliability. Reliability is about the commitments that you give and how you follow up on them.

Andy Palmer:

So if you say, yes, I'm gonna get you that report by five o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, and they don't get it until 11 o'clock on Friday evening, they will see you as less reliable. So it's about the commitments that you give, the deadlines that you commit to. Um, and it's really about helping them to see that if you say and you are gonna commit to do something, that you are reliable enough to ensure that it absolutely happens. You've got credibility, reliability, and the third part, just gonna fit it in next to where my head's gonna be, intimacy, appropriate intimacy.

Andy Palmer:

This is how well you know the person, how well the person knows you. So if you take those um, times at the appropriate moment to discuss something you may have in common that could be going, running or swimming or an interest in a certain sport or activity that you do, you have those connections, you have intimacy, appropriate intimacy, you get to know people, you consider those people in your world, either professionally or personally who you trust and those who you don't trust, I can pretty much guarantee that you will typically put it back to one of these three factors as to whether you've got high trust or you'd like more trust.

Andy Palmer:

Making sense so far, Nathan? Readability, reliability and intimacy. Okay, there are numerators are below the line are something called self-orientation. Um, I'm gonna simply sum this up as ego. It's how much you talk about yourself versus how much you're prepared to listen to others. Um, so for example, if I came into these webinar and I was only talking about all the experience I've got, how great the company, uh, how great a company we are, how marvelous I'm, how nice my shirt is, and I talk about only about me, I could come across potentially as being rather egotistical.

Andy Palmer:

If I take time to interact with my audience, ask them how they are, how they're feeling, what they're up to, what's on their mind at the moment, I can balance that ego off and make it less about me, more about them getting that balance. So no matter how good you are at the credibility, reliability, and intimacy part, um, that can be diluted if you have a big ego and your self-orientation is very, very, um, only about you.

Andy Palmer:

So for you, my challenge back today is to consider those four areas both for yourself initially. Um, I know rank them out of 10. Am I personally, am I a nine out 10 here, or four outta 10 here? A six out of 10 here, zero outta 10 here. Start to figure out where you could potentially increase your trust by dialing up or dialing down certain parts of this formula. Um, I said credibility is about, uh, the experience and the knowledge you've got.

Andy Palmer:

Reliability about commitments that you give to timescales and intimacy, how well, uh, that person knows you and how much you're prepared to get to know them. Lemme pause for a second there, Nathan. Um, cum, is that working for you? It's working for you. I'm hoping it's working for our audience today.

Nathan Simmonds:

And do you know what, for me it's working absolutely fine, but, and I'm gonna put this question out to everybody who's here now, rate yourself one to 10, CRI. So in each of those areas, rate yourself on a one to 10 right now in the questions box so you can start to really bring this to life in your own eyes and make it visible. Okay, how credible are you? One terrible 10, phenomenal. How reliable, how, how much, what level of intimacy do you have with your main buyers?

Nathan Simmonds:

Think about one of the buyers you're working with, one of the supermarkets and answer those questions now. And while you're doing that, you know, it's the way that we create sales is through know, like, and trust. So when someone knows you personally, your content, when they like what they're seeing, you're creating that trust. But then that trust, as you say, comes from that credibility, reliability and intimacy.

Nathan Simmonds:

And depending on where you are, scoring yourself in each of those three areas comes out of knowing your supermarket, understanding your shopper, and being able to turn that stuff into opportunities. It works in all three of those, you know, credibility, knowing your shop and knowing your supermarket reliability, turning that into opportunities that actually that hit the mark in those spaces. And having the intimacy with the people that you are connecting with to actually go and reflect on those things to make sure it's working and and working to build each other up, including yourself and the the buyer them as well.

Andy Palmer:

Agree Nathan. And on that, um, point I made on uh, back on day one last week when we talked about the pie chart. Account managers taking care of slice of the pie category managers taking care of the whole pile,

Sticky Learning Lunch 47: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 4.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Sticky lunches. I don't know, is that the right way? Getting this? Yeah, I'm just getting my screen up here. Bear with me while we get that going. Share screen. Oh, hold on. There we go. That was the problem. 'cause I wasn't the presenter.

Nathan Simmonds:

Okay, now we're, now we are here. Okay, we're in. Welcome everyone to today's sticky learning, uh, with me, Nathan Simmons and Andy Palmer, resident expert in category management. We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for the last people to arrive in the room. And then we are going to crack on and share stage four of the 73% funnel. Let's just give it a moment. Let's make sure we're setting ourselves up for success.

Improve your category management opportunities

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Mobile phones up and higher. Let's make sure the little plane is lit up, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on you and what you are doing here. Let's make sure also that you are hydrated here, is getting warmer here in the uk. Thankfully, we might actually have a summer this time, who knows? Um, although according to the government, they have canceled some of this year, but I don't think technically you can do that.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's make sure you're staying hydrated, you're keeping your brain lubricated. And also let's make sure you've got a fresh page for fresh thinking. So let's get these ideas. Any ideas that Andy is sharing, any questions that I asked that trigger a new thought, let's make sure we're getting them down there on that sheet so that you can go back and remember, reread and reignite that thinking to keep your learning sticky. I think we're almost on time, but do you know what?

Nathan Simmonds:

I'm actually gonna say this at the beginning of this episode, rather than at the end of it, if you have not registered for tomorrow's sticky learning lunch, I'm putting that if it's, if you cannot see it in the chat box right now, I'm putting that in the chat box. Hold on. He says, bear with me. I'm putting the link in there for tomorrow's session and all our future sessions in the chat box right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

So if you have not already registered for tomorrow's session, for next week's sessions, whatever it is, the link is there. Please click on that, get that screen ready for you to go in there and register for the future sessions. And also, it's there for you to copy and paste and share to your friends if you know someone that's gonna get value from category management. If you know someone that's gonna get value from, uh, a deep dive on their own leadership skills in the next week, share this link with them.

Nathan Simmonds:

Let them know about sticky learning lunches and get them involved in these classrooms to help them take their thinking to the next level. Let's do this. Welcome everyone to the rooms. It's good to see you all. Thank you, Tim. Good to be here. McKayla. McKayla, good to see you. First time. Fiona, Fabian, Darren Collin, thank you very much for being a greatly appreciated. Let's dive in. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter.

Nathan Simmonds:

We are the leadership and development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. I do with these sessions is just to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do, especially in category management. Andy, welcome back for day four of this. Thanks very much for being here. What are we covering today,

Andy Palmer:

Nathan? We are now moving down into the fourth stage of our funnel. This is around turning and analysis and understanding into opportunities. So this is where the fun sex stuff happens. Um, we back in last week, talked about green category targets and more, better understanding our shopper. Yesterday we, uh, covered understanding our channel or our supermarket. Today we're getting into turning analysis from all those various data sources and information that we have, information turning those things into opportunities. Then for the next few days, we'll then figure out how we can sell those opportunities and those opportunities in store and close off our funnel by taking some learnings back. That's what today's about.

Nathan Simmonds:

Great, and Andy dropped the word in there, sexy about the analysis side of thing. Andy is very blue, he is very analytical, so he is gonna use words like the sexy when it comes to data. It's not everyone's cup of tea. What I will say is, though data is absolutely vital, you know, we can't always make the right decision. What it is though, is when we get that information, then we can make better decisions on what it is we're gonna be doing in order to get to know our supermarkets better, in order to get better, know who are, um, our shoppers and our preparers and our eaters are, and making sure actually we're creating the right opportunities for those people when they go into our stores as well.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. I thought it was worth, uh, me just kind of caveating the, the blue comment, uh, as opposed to blue may, may have certain meanings, um, but it also from, from our kind of, uh, terminology means I am very analytical, very left brain thinking. It's one of those, uh, psychometric profiles that puts me in a quadrant that happens to be colored blue as opposed to maybe how I

Nathan Simmonds:

Your actual emotion .

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how big a hole I was digging. Um, but there we go.

Nathan Simmonds:

But look, you know, and that's a great, that's a great lead. I was gonna say, that leads us on, we have looked to booking in some future sessions around HBDI and profiling, um, and I think that's a great lead into that. Now, if you are interested in understanding your, your psychometrics psychoanalysis on what we do in those, on those profiling, there's also that link that's gonna take you through to those future sections. We'll cover some of that as well, so we can get into that in a bit more as we progress in the coming weeks. So let's dive in. What does, what does section number four this funnel look like? And I'm gonna skip along that slide so you can see a bit more of this as we go in and

Andy Palmer:

Great stuff. Um, yeah, so it, it's taking all of the information that we've got and right now out in the world, there is a ton of data. We know that qualitative data, quantitative data, and, and typically we see most category managers and category analysts get lost in the data. There is just such a volume of it. Um, they jump into the data, uh, and effectively we look at it, it's a bit like a black hole. They just kinda get sucked into this thing.

Andy Palmer:

And then the time is spent generating charts and tables and graphs and hundreds of these various different pages. But actually what we're really looking to do is challenge the people we work with to come up with insight, true insight that leads to recommendation. We talked about it yesterday. Let is absolutely more, it's not about presenting. A nice big deck is about presenting real hard, powerful category management opportunities that can drive a category forward.

Andy Palmer:

Um, I've got a huge toolbox of techniques and calculations and formulas and things like that. Now we're not gonna be able to cover all of those. So I've got a sample that we can share with you today. If you're hungry for this and you want to know more because this is an area where maybe you wanna improve on, then hey, let's, let's start that conversation, uh, um, later on this afternoon. More than happy to kind of, uh, explore that with you to ensure that, uh, you're, you're getting this bit right because getting this bit right just means everything we do with our category management is underpinned with solid data, powerful recommendations.

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. I'm just looking here, just making sure I've got all the right information to hand. So where have you seen, and when you talk to other companies about this and look for examples, where have you seen good examples of this data being used?

Andy Palmer:

I think it's, it's any company that has clarity on what we talked about on day one, having that target and then tailoring what they're doing to achieve that. So there are 1,000,001 examples of where it's done particularly well. And equally there is the, a whole range of suppliers out there that are not doing it well. They're, they're getting all this data and then they're not focusing on what's really important. What's really important is using the data to back up things like hypotheses. And for me, I believe briefly mentioned this the other day, this is one of my biggest tips.

Andy Palmer:

If we can start with hypothesis or hippos as we, uh, lovingly call them, um, we can then more better focus our, our time and our effort into understanding those. So it's that stuff that starts, I believe market share's going out. I believe we've got less customers than we had last year.

Andy Palmer:

I believe there's an opportunity by driving X, Y, or Z. And then it's about testing them. If we can develop those hypotheses first, as opposed to just jumping into the data, data and, you know, getting lost in 101 Excel tabs, then test it, prove it right or wrong, we will then be able to start on a journey of understanding where the true category recommendations are. Um, there's 1,000,

Sticky Learning Lunch 46: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 3.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches. And welcome to the first day of the week. We are gonna be diving back into the category Management funnel with Andy Palmer and myself, Nathan Simmons. We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for the last people to arrive in the room. And then we are gonna crack on with part three of this funnel. Let's just give us a moment to make sure everyone's here. Let's get everyone set up for success right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

First of all, before we get into introductions and, and the recaps, mobile phones, let's make sure they're on flight mode. Let's zero out the distraction and get a hundred percent attention what it is we're doing right here in this investment in ourselves and the businesses that we love and work in. Secondly, making sure that we've got our hydration in place, making sure we're staying hydrated, keeping the brain lubricated and making sure that we're just looking after ourselves.

Nathan Simmonds:

Temperature space, we're going up here. Again, let's make sure we're looking after ourselves physically so we can increase what we're doing mentally. Third part to this then is fresh page, fresh thinking. We're gonna be covering some new ideas that potentially you haven't seen before that may be there to support you, invigorating what it is you do inside your business. And this page is gonna be those things that you want to remember.

Nathan Simmonds:

So whether it's things that Andy says, or questions that I ask, or questions or ideas that we share with each other in this group, that we wanna take a note of that so that we can go back and remind ourselves and remember what it is by rereading these ideas. That just helps take our thinking up another level and keeps that learning sticky, which is the whole idea of MBM Ready for this. Andy?

 

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Ready? Nathan?

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. So, welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM. Also joined by Andy Palmer, expert in category management, who's gonna be delivering part three of today's session. We are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry, MBM making business Matter, and it's all about making that learning stick. As I said earlier, Andy, day three, all yours. Where are we going to next?

Andy Palmer:

Thank you, Nathan. Roy, as you said, we're gonna go stage three, which is getting into the crux of understanding our supermarket or our channel or whatever route to market that we've got. So, brief recap on what we covered at the back end of last week came in at the top of the funnel talking about agreeing targets, where we looked at this stuff around here, way of purchase frequency of purchase penetration, selecting a target that you can focus all your efforts and resources and time into achieving.

Andy Palmer:

From there, we then came down into Thursday and we talked about understanding your shopper, exploded that apart and started talking about shopper preparers and eaters. Those three very distinct group with a nice overlap. And again, more better understanding how we can use things like pen portraits or purchases and hierarchies to get into the crux of what their motivations are, what their barriers are.

Andy Palmer:

Today we're continuing down, and stage three, we are looking at knowing your supermarket or knowing your channel depending upon the market you're in. So this, this one kind of on face values, pretty almost self-explanatory. The bit, I wanna just try and take thinking a little bit further, that actually if you've got if you've got an alignment of the recommendations that you want to make and you're not getting them over the line it's about making sure that you understand your, your supermarket as well as you can.

Andy Palmer:

That you are then making recommendations that are aligned with their thinking, and that's in line with the buyers KPIs to, to ensure that you're just setting yourself up for success. We've seen it so many times that we've seen suppliers going in and they're making recommendations that suit their business. Sometimes they suits the the customer shopper, the pair of the eater, but what they're not doing is fitting perfectly with that corporate requirement or that need that the buyer has and the buyer.

Andy Palmer:

When we're talking about the buyer, we're talking about the person sat in the retailer's head office making the decision responsible for these purchasing decisions. So all the recommendations we want to, we wanna make sure they're absolutely aligned with what their need. Now what in reality does that look like? It looks like you guys more better understanding their needs, so the needs of the buyer. And we can come at that from their personal point of view by understanding what their targets and their goals are for their categories that they own. And at the same time, more better understanding the corporate requirements.

Andy Palmer:

So we look at corporate social responsibility. We can look at the retailer's overall vision or overall strategy. That way when we're then coming down, we're making our recommendations to absolutely fit with what works for them. Soon as before where a supplier was trying to drive they're trying to drive spend into the category, they're trying to trade people up and move them up through various tiers trying to expand weight of purchase, weight of consumption, and all the recommendations were aligned to achieving that.

Andy Palmer:

That was their target. The challenge that they had was that the supermarket was trying to really push through a period of value for money. They were trying to almost kind of position themself in the market that they had good value for money and actually how they were trying to set up and manage their, their particular area was looking to achieve those things. So in one hand, we've got, let's drive value for money. In the other hand, we've got the supply trying to drive spend.

Andy Palmer:

And as you can imagine, there was a conflict as the suppliers were coming in or the supplier was coming in and making their presentations and their recommendations. It was, no, no, doesn't work, not gonna work for us right now. Maybe one for the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You may have experienced these kind of, these pushbacks and these challenges.

Andy Palmer:

You can more, I guess more get yourself set nicely by making sure that you know what the buyer's requirements are, what the retailer's requirements are. Once you've got that, then you are, you are, you're making recommendations that just align perfectly with the with their category their category requirements. How can you do that? It's reasonably straightforward. This isn't a massive, complicated part of the funnel.

Andy Palmer:

You go that saying that you're gonna be attending conferences, whether that's one's run by the, the retailer or run by someone like the IGD who do some superb conferences each year to get really into the importance of that particular retailer strategy. You could do something very, very pragmatic and set up something like Google Alerts where every day or every week you could dictate this yourself. Every day or every week you would get an alert come through to your inbox giving you the most up-to-date relevant news that's coming outta them.

Andy Palmer:

So is they're issuing press releases and they're making statements in the in the media to the city or what have you. You can ensure you are at the absolute forefront of that. Likewise, in the UK we've got something called Cam City where we get key account management news. It's created from various different data sources. And again, you can have something like that delivered to your inbox. So you are absolutely at the forefront of knowing what's going on out there. Again, what's going on out there? It's down to you as well. Can you get out to store more often? Can you challenge your colleagues to become the eyes and the ears on the high street so you can see what's going on.

Andy Palmer:

See what's happening in other categories, and get a feel for the things that are moving for you to then say, actually that's gonna work with us. And then it's about those discussions with the buyer around, here's what we're suggesting, here's what we're suggesting it, here's the background data to back it up and we know it's aligned to your strategy. 'cause We're listening. Once you've got that, your credibility goes through the roof, the buyer knows you are there and you, you've aligned yourself nicely with their requirements. So Nathan, is that making sense so far? I'm just kind of appreciate scratching the surface as as ever with our half hour that we have.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, for me it is making absolute sense. I guess the key thing to take it into, and I'm already coming up with some ideas and concepts in my head, but now have you got any examples of where this understanding has had a significant impact on a change when delivering to a supermarket?

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. something I'm get into. So yes is the, the short answer, the slightly longer answer is something I'm really looking forward to covering on Thursday when we get into understanding credibility, and it's those suppliers that are going in with that stuff in their head and able to articulate it,

Sticky Learning Lunch 45: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 2.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with me, Nathan Simmons, and also the delectable Andy Palmer delivering to this week. And for the next week, we're just gonna give it a few minutes while the last people arrive, and then we're gonna dive into today's content. Just gonna give it another 30 seconds or so. While we're doing that, let's just make sure we're setting ourselves up for success. And I'll give people a reminder when we go back into this very briefly, let's make sure we're lighting up those phones.

Nathan Simmonds:

Get the little airplane, lift up, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on what we're doing here today. The investment in yourself and the learning that you're about to get. Also, making sure that you've got a fresh sheet, fresh sheet for fresh thinking at the top of that page. You're gonna write keepers. Those keepers are gonna be the things that you want to remember and remind yourself about so that you can reread them and reignite that thinking.

Nathan Simmonds:

So as you are looking at the category management funnel, it's gonna help you get more clarity on what your targets are, know who your customer is, and knowing who your clients and your supermarkets are, all these key elements, by making sure you're documenting these key points can be absolutely vital, right? Today we're not gonna be doing too much screen sharing. So we've got Andy on camera one. We've got me on camera two.

Nathan Simmonds:

I'm gonna be here to be asking questions as we go through to making sure we get these points across. We're gonna start with a recap from part one just to make sure we're following that train of thought. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna fly in and start looking at how to understand your shopper is absolutely vital for making this work. Andy, what have we got for day two?

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Excellent. So yeah, thank you Nathan. Today, absolutely more about understanding the shopper, keeping the shopper at the heart of all the decisions we make to help grow our category sales, our category profit, whatever measure we've got in place, which links us nicely. Back to what we talked about yesterday, right off the top of the funnel. Agreeing category targets the importance of having ideally a single focused point with a timeline that we want to achieve it and making sure we hit it focuses all our time and all of our efforts on getting what we want from this category.

Andy Palmer:

So yesterday we briefly talked about what f and pen, which was how much people are spending, how often they're buying, and how many people we've got buying, and maybe picking one of those as an example and targeting then our efforts towards achieving that. So yes, there was about agreeing a category target.

Andy Palmer:

Once we've got our category target, we can then start to move down and we'll continue to move down our funnel over the next few days. Kicking back off again on Monday. Today's about understanding the shopper. When we get into Monday, we're gonna be talking about understanding the supermarket or the channel that you are selling into. From there, it's about identifying opportunities, then about selling those opportunities, adding those opportunities down at stage six, and then coming all the way back round with evaluating and improving to keep this continuous cycles mythology absolutely alive.

Andy Palmer:

As I mentioned yesterday, these stages work together. But yeah, at the same time, they're not so much of a start, stop, start, stop. It's very much an overlap with that recycling that's gonna be going on. So we've got a category target. Today we're gonna be talking about understanding the shopper.

Andy Palmer:

I'm sure I'm preaching to the converter on this. Keeping the shopper at the heart of our decision is absolutely paramount to everything we do within category management. There is no good us making decisions on our range, our promotional plan, the products we've got out there in the myriad of other levers and buttons that we can push and pull if we're not considering who the end user is.

Andy Palmer:

And effectively that's us. We are the people that push trolleys, carry baskets, pick things up off the shelves, and yet too often we kind of put them over here and, and leave them out of our decision making process. So it's absolutely key that we keep ourselves and the rest of those people that are out there purchasing at the core of what we're talking about. So a few things to share with you today.

Andy Palmer:

Let me lemme sign and place where we're at today. So with three category targets, we're now in stage two understanding our shopper. A couple of things to share with you on this. First one, we have been doing category management for a very long time and time to time again, we see that often only a third of this particular area is focused on. And third that we see most clients work on is the shopper, the person who's actually buying the product. I wanna offer you an alternative that allows you then to consider some other areas.

Andy Palmer:

So I'm gonna introduce the concept of the shopper, the preparer and the eater. There's three different groups. Again, there can sometimes be one and the same thing. If we consider the shopper preparing eater, those who are buying it, those who are preparing it, and those who are eating it, we can then start to make some seriously powerful informed decisions on the stuff that we try to do.

Andy Palmer:

So let's not just think about the shopper, let's also consider those other groups, bringing that to life for a moment. Then what do we mean by the shopper pernita? Pretty sticking over there. Shop perta. What do we mean by that? So shopper, it's us. We're out in the supermarket. My wife will send me to the shops and she'll say, can you go and pick up some pack of fish fingers? I'm the shop, I'm buying those fish fingers. I'm looking for all the right cues in the store to entice me to pick up a certain pack.

Andy Palmer:

It's gonna be around price, packaging, what's in it? If it's added Omega-3 or something like that, they're the things that are going to entice me to make that perk decision. And then coming back fish, maybe hand 'em off to my wife. Maybe I'm gonna be the cooker, but I'm gonna be preparer for that particular meal.

Andy Palmer:

So I'm taking my fish fingers, of course I'm adding some additional elements to it. Am I then I may be not against eating fish fingers, but it could be for my daughter. She's eight years old. She loves fish fingers, so we're gonna cook her fish fingers, some, maybe some mashed potatoes, some other stuff that goes with it. She's the eater. We are then three potentially very distinct groups. And on this occasion, maybe they don't overlap one person's shopping, one person's cooking or preparing another person's eating.

Andy Palmer:

And yet other times the shopper pairer and eater could be the same person. The important thing to take from that is how can we consider the decisions that we're making to more better influence mode? More importantly, understand those three different areas. So shop, consider those and then consider what you can do differently as a result of really fully understand them. Is that making sense so far, Nathan? Let me, lemme bring you in for a second. Is that making sense to you?

Nathan Simmonds:

It makes absolute sense to me. And the, the way that it gets me thinking is often when you start a business or you're selling a service, the idea is that you fall in love with the problem. So a lot of businesses and a lot of I guess kind of category management, people doing the same sort of thing will fail, is because they fall in love with a solution. This is a great idea, this is a great product. It looks like this, this is gonna sell millions.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then they put it out there and they're like, no, it doesn't because no one likes what we're talking about. 'cause It doesn't solve the problem for them. And the, the story that comes to mind is when they were talking about washing powders previously, and they were, they were talking, oh, well we need, we need to make these sheets whiter than white.

Nathan Simmonds:

You know, the whole ba ultra thing, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these sorts of things. Wenatchee, I think in the fifties or sixties, when they did that research, it had nothing to do with whether the sheets were white. It was to do with whether or not it actually smelled good. So they were selling all this, you know, spending all this money on advertising campaigns to make these pictures of these beautiful, and actually all we needed to do was sniff it, did it smell good?

Nathan Simmonds:

So he was understanding the problem of the shopper or the needs and the problems of the shopper, the preparer and the eater. And having an idea of how to bridge all those gaps to make sure that every one of those individual groups is happy. So you sell more of that product.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. I talk about this in kind of the realms of what are their barriers and what are their motivations to purchase, what, what's going to entice 'em to, to pick it up, entice 'em to use it, entice 'em to eat it, and what are the barriers preventing those things. Once we understand that, we can then make, as you said, more informed decisions.

Sticky Learning Lunch 44: Increase Your Category Opportunities

Today's topic, Increase the Number of Category Opportunities Landed Part 1.

73% of your Category Opportunities Never Make it to Store.

You will learn: - Each of the 7 parts of the MBM Category Management Funnel. - How each part is essential to creating an effective Category Management approach. - Various tools and techniques to support each stage of the process.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's learning. This is going to be slightly different. As I said before. This is gonna be a super niche presentation series, talking about category management. We're just gonna give it a few more seconds while we're waiting for the last attendees to arrive in the room. It's gonna give that a moment. Welcome, Colin. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Darren, thank you for being here. It's appreciated, FAAB, and good to see you again. Jim, I think this is your first time attendee to these sessions.

Nathan Simmonds:

Thanks very much for being here. Really appreciated, Tim, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you very much. Let's get you guys set up for success initially. So as always, what I wanna make sure we're covering is getting our mobile phones. Let's get the mobile phones, get the little airplane lit up. Let's zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on what we are doing here today.

Nathan Simmonds:

Also, making sure you're hydrated, so making sure you've got a drink available. Herbal teas for me today. Let's keep ourselves, you know, keep ourselves hydrated so we can keep our brains lubricated. And also making sure that we've got a fresh page for fresh thinking. So we want a nice blank page. And at the top of that, we wanna write keepers. We also wanna write in there the 73% funnel, which is what we're gonna be covering today as we talk about category management.

Nathan Simmonds:

And Andy's gonna be covering more of that in just a second. Top of that page, keep us, these are the things you wanna remember. These are the things that you want to be reminded of. And these are the things when you reread it, it reignites that think, and it makes the learning stick, which is what we are here to do now. That's what MBM is all about. So let's see who's got coming in, right?

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's get into this. I've got my notepad and my pen ready. I've got a series of questions to be firing into Andy as we go through this. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with myself, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM. I'm joined today by Andy Palmer, resident expert on category management. And the idea of these training sessions is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do.

Nathan Simmonds:

And whether that's whether you are when you are at home or returning to work, or preparing to return to work, it's about pushing this thinking. It's about helping you take your business to the next level. And as we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the UK grocery and manufacturing industry, it's right that we talk about category management. Andy, this next seven sessions, they're all yours and you're gonna take us through this, please, you know, take over and let's see what category management is all about and how it can help these people.

7 Simple Ways To Understand The Category Management Process

 

Andy Palmer:

Lovely, thank you Nathan. Welcome everybody. I'm super excited to be sharing this content with you. Over the coming days, we're gonna take you through our seven step category management process session each day, looking at each different stage of the funnel, bringing it to life now to manage expectations. I guess we're only gonna be scratching the surface but hopefully leaving you hungry to want to reach out to us afterwards and learn more. Learn how we can support you with category management.

Nathan Simmonds:

So starting with that, what is category management? It's one of these topics that's been wrapped up quite heavily and shrouded in a dark mist of jargon and complicated terminology. In essence, it's about helping you as a business to be able to identify more opportunities, sell opportunities, and land those opportunities in store. The crux of category management is really about suppliers working in partnership with retailers and making sure the consumers, the shoppers needs are at the heart of any decisions that are made.

Andy Palmer:

So whereas we see our account managers taking care of certain slice of the pie, we have our category managers that are there to take care of the whole pie. So as category management has, has developed over the years where it's first started in its inception back in the 1990s for me this is really now about a business as usual principle. Not something that's dipped into once every six months where people lock themself in dark war rooms and generate 1,000,001 different spreadsheets.

Andy Palmer:

It's actually about a very simple structured approach that we're gonna come to but helping you be able to identify more opportunities. So we're gonna talk you through our funnel. We're largely gonna do a brief introduction to the funnel in a moment and then help you understand what each of those different areas look like. So it's about agreeing catch free targets at the top.

Andy Palmer:

We're gonna talk about that a little bit more today about keeping the shopper at the heart of our decisions. We're getting to that a little bit more tomorrow then around understanding and knowing the channels that you're in. So what supermarket or particular retailer that you're focusing your efforts. Then getting into the good stuff, getting into identifying opportunities. They're gonna come from lots of different areas with capture management.

Andy Palmer:

It's very, very data-driven. So often we can get lost in that and we're gonna help you to not get lost in that. But around identifying the opportunities, then it's about selling those opportunities effectively, landing those opportunities in store and then coming back around our funnel evaluating, improving, ensure that you've got this consistency and we've got the cycle going on now to manage expectations. And just like caveat why these funnel stages literally build on each other, it's a bit more like think about it as a Venn diagram.

Andy Palmer:

They've got to overlap. You are gonna do some level of recycling back through different areas. It's not that chunk start, stop, start, stop all the way through. So we've got this process, we're gonna bring it to life a little bit more today. Hopefully that then generates some questions for, for you. Once we've got those questions, we'll be able to bring it to life. So we'll spend about the next 10, 15 minutes some questions to Nathan, to me some questions from you guys as well. And we'll see if we can bring this topic a little bit more to life and hopefully help you realize how you can identify, sell, and land some more opportunities.

Nathan Simmonds:

And for me, Andy was talking about the questions. If you do have questions, you've got the question box, please get them in there. I'm watching this to, for Andy to support in this conversation. If anything comes up and you want to go deeper into that, let's bring that up. And if it's appropriate to answer it here and now, we will do. If not, we can take that offline and we'll get in contact with you separately to help support that.

Nathan Simmonds:

The other thing that Sarah so lovingly reminded me of is if you are looking at the screen with the cameras on at the moment, I'm gonna drop off that screen and sit in the background and watch what's going on. But there's a gray bar in the middle there. If you wanna make the webcams bigger, click and hold on that gray bar, pull it down and you can make the presentation just that little bit smaller so you can see more of what's going on in the whiteboard. Okay, as I say, any questions, get 'em in the question box and I'll be paying attention in the background. Thanks very much.

Andy Palmer:

Great stuff. Thank you Nathan. Okay, so we're talking about our funnel here and we've got these seven steps that I've briefly covered. As I said, we're gonna work through each of those different areas over the next seven days. We're gonna start today with agreeing category opportunities. So more often than not we work with clients and they're busy doing category management in a way that they've already done it.

Nathan Simmonds:

Recently we started working with a client and they said, yeah, we've got all this data, we've got all this information, we're at the beck and call of the buyer. And I said to them, okay, great. So what are you looking to achieve with your category? And they said well, whatever the buyer tells us to do, we will do it. Whatever opportunities pop up, we will make them happen.

Andy Palmer:

And if we spot some along the way ourselves, we'll get those landed as well. And that's fine. That's not necessary the wrong way. Where we try to steer them to was actually, if they have a single absolute clarified target, all of the efforts are then focused on achieving that. And it's not the scatter on approach to, they seem to be working towards its far more sniper rifle. It, it's there, we've got our category target or we're gonna go after that.

Andy Palmer:

That then means all the time and the resources and the efforts they put in are focused on achieving one thing. And that doesn't mean to say that category target can't change. And it will of course adapt and develop. But actually once you've got that category target, it then allows a far more joined up approach to, to take place and not just becoming kind of quite reactive.

Andy Palmer:

As I mentioned earlier, category management, very, very data driven.

Sticky Learning Lunches #43: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Improve your time management the these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Here we go. We're in. It's one o'clock. Bam. Right on the notes. Sticky learning lunches with me, Nathan Simmons. Hello everyone. Thanks very much for being here and it's amazing to see so many enthusiastic people already here. Vij, good to see you again. Victoria, thank you very much for being here. Tim, always a pleasure, Howard, really appreciate you being here. Colin, as always here, every time if I had a Blue Peter badge, especially for you, Colin, you, I will be sending it to. Amen. Thank you very much. And Andy, really appreciate you being here so early, ready for this session. Massive gratitude to all of you.

Nathan Simmonds:

We're just gonna give it 30 seconds while we wait for other people to arrive and as they do we'll, and I'm gonna give it a few more seconds. Fiona, hello. I'll just get everyone in here and then we'll kick off today's session for the final hurdle in the time management system, which is all about taking action. Sticky learning badges sound like a great idea. Do you know what, actually, as you were saying that there's some parallels here between the content that we're delivering online for the sticky learning lunches, uh, and the way that we approach online training. And I was talking to a peer in another organization about this.

Nathan Simmonds:

There's some parallels between social media and what we're doing here. And if you look at things like Facebook, you know, when you are in a group, they do badges. They give you little award stickers so that you can say when you are in a group, whether you are a, a visual storyteller or rising star or whatever it is. And actually sticky learning lunge badge. Yeah, that'd be a great idea. Now I've done it. I think I've just made another piece of work for myself. I might have to get one of the graphic designers on this.

Nathan Simmonds:

We'll get some pictures up with some badges of the people that attend the most. Got our pens ready. I think we're good to go. How are we doing the today before we dive in? How are we today? One being terrible, 10 being phenomenal. Where are we rating ourselves in our week already on a Tuesday. Where are we got some eights? We've got a six. Okay. Six. There's a couple of sixes. This doesn't fill me with joy.

Nathan Simmonds:

Got you. No, back to backs today. Good. Nice. That was a 10. Thank you Victoria, for, for paying attention and making use of this wherever we are. Whatever number you've rated yourself at in relation to the week you're in right now, whether that be because of lockdown and you're still in isolation, you've got cabin fever, whether that be frustrations of your time management system not working, whether that be, you know, other frustrations or other problems coming up. Let's ask one straightforward question that's gonna make help to make a shift.

Nathan Simmonds:

What's one thing that you can do right now that's gonna help you to shift from wherever you are in that rating, on that sliding scale to the next step? What's the one thing that's gonna help improve the situation right now? Let me know in the questions box. You can write it down for yourself as an action that you need to be taken that's gonna help you shift. You are in direct control of the environment around you. Let me rephrase that. You're in direct control of how you choose to respond to the environment around you.

Nathan Simmonds:

One of those six is going Stop procrastinating me, not you, Nathan. I was gonna say, crikey, you don't know me well enough, Abby to tell me to stop procrastinating, but you are right. I was this morning, but we'll talk about that later. And anyway, you were part of the procrastination workshop. You know the three sessions we did around that. So you have some of those tools to make you or help you do that.

Nathan Simmonds:

If you need to revisit the session, by the way, we'll put the link in there, therefore, uh, the previous workshops. So you can go and have a look at those ones as well. Let's dive into this. Pay attention. This is about action. So it's time to act one 30. Ba we're going, I didn't attend that, but need to. Okay. In the in, in the chat box, if you have not register already registered for the future sticky learning lunches or shared that link with people that it's relevant to, we are gonna share the link for the future sessions.

Nathan Simmonds:

On that link is also all the, all the previous sessions that we've delivered up until now. So you've got over 40 sticky learning lunches in there, covering everything from the grow coaching model to procrastination and getting things done and all the way through to time management and everything in between. If you haven't already already registered, the first call to action today is click that link and get registered for the future sessions tomorrow we're gonna start by covering something super niche, which is category management.

Nathan Simmonds:

If there are people in your business that would benefit from understanding category management at a much deeper level, we are gonna be doing seven sessions with our in-house resident expert, Andy Palmer, taking you through the 73% category management funnel. I'm gonna be facilitating that conversation and it's gonna be delivering some exceptional level of expertise to make sure that we wait.

Nathan Simmonds:

That, that you have absolute clarity in that space. So the link's in there below. Let's get on with today. Come on, I'm, I'm jabbering 'cause I'm excited as always. Number one, mobile phones. Let's do this. Zero out the distraction, light up the little airplane, a hundred percent attention on you, making sure you've got a drink, fresh tea, whatever it is, staying hydrated. Good weather, keeping the brain lubricated and your notepads fresh page, fresh thinking at the top of that page you're gonna write keepers and these are the things that you want to keep hold of, that you wanna remember, okay.

Nathan Simmonds:

That you want to remind yourself about when you reread them so you can reignite that thinking and make the learning stick. 'cause that's what we're here to do to help you make that stuff stick. Let's get into this day seven of the seven hurdles of time management.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter. The home of sticky learning idea of these sessions to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now, from wherever you are at home or at work or if you're returning back to work. Help you to raise that thinking up, uh, and give you some, uh, skills and, and uncommon ideas that are gonna get you to uncommon results, right?

Nathan Simmonds:

And really push that level of experience for you. Today's session number seven, hurdle action. Let's dive straight into this. I'm not gonna put the flow up there. Hopefully enough of you have seen that flow chart. So we know that there's capturing and there's um, uh, emptying and deleting and listing and scheduling and storing and, and all that sort. But the last part we're getting to is all about action.

Nathan Simmonds:

Hurdle number seven is all about action. And you've heard me say it before and I'm gonna say it again because it's, you know, it's something valuable and worth keeping hold of action creates traction, okay? The universe responds to you doing things not to you thinking about maybe you should be doing them. Does that make sense? I'm hope everyone's with me on this. In the nicest possible way, you cannot meditate your way out of a tiger attack.

Nathan Simmonds:

Uh, you cannot meditate your way to a million dollar check coming through the post. It requires a certain amount of you putting some energy in that moves you towards where you want to get to at the other end. Now, if you've got items that are dropping into your email, into your capturing points and you're not emptying, that's the first action you need to enter your capture points in order to get 'em to un get to understand where they need to go. Where do they need to be? Do they need to be delegated? Do they need to be put into the right list? Do I need to schedule them? This is the first action. 'cause if we're not doing these things and causing ourselves triggers

Nathan Simmonds:

Those sparks and those moments, at whatever point we are in the time management system, nothing's going to happen. Does this make sense with everyone? Yes or no? It's a double cuff. It's always a double cuff day, always a double cuff day. So as I said on day one, as I said on day two and three, the time management system hinges on whether or not you trust that system. And in truth, you are the linchpin that holds the whole system together.

Nathan Simmonds:

Because if you're not not acting, if you're not concentrating, you're not pulling those, you know, the relevant levers at the right time, it's not going to work. And then at the end of the day, and as I said before and question before, when something doesn't happen, when something falls off the radar, when you miss something and all those frustrations come up and you get angry at other people, all you're doing is getting angry at yourself because you are the one that dropped the ball.

Nathan Simmonds:

Who here's felt like this? Yes or no? Everyone say I if they,