Digital Doll

For a while now my good friend John Vary, has been encouraging me to write a blog about my 18 month experience of setting up a digital accelerator unit for the John Lewis Partnership. My opening line in any talk or presentation, I give, is ‘they didn’t choose me for my digital skills’. On reflection I think I say that as some sort of shield or defence mechanism in case somebody gets there first! Why did they choose you? Where’s your digital experience or track record? What digital leadership can you bring?

Having spent nearly 30 years in retail, with (I say immodestly) a pretty strong track record of delivery and people leadership, I have been quite thrown by how difficult and isolating I have found the whole experience of this change in role. This was not just in the early days, quite common in a new role, but quite a significant way into the first 18 months. I was reading somewhere recently that ‘one can feel lonely in a room surrounded by people’. Having people around you is one thing, but having people who can offer the right support is critical. I’ve always fallen in love with the next job I’ve taken on and yet this love affair lacked a certain something.

Having made the decision 23 years ago to be a full time working Mum (something then that wasn’t very common and certainly not brilliantly supported in the workplace or society) I committed that whatever I did I would like, even love. It had to make me a happy person and more importantly a happy and a good mummy! 23 years on and 3 kids, a brilliant husband and numerous animals later, there are no regrets in that department and we are a pretty good and strong unit. Of course only my kids and husband can and will legislate for whether it has been the right choice. So back to the matter in hand and the fact that this role for pretty much the first time in my career was challenging this equilibrium.

Leadership over the years for me has been multifaceted both in my style and approach but also in the ‘what it is I am doing’. I have frequently led teams and functions of which I am not the expert and therefore surrounded myself with experts who I could learn from. A pretty straightforward and not unusual approach I hear you say — you don’t have to be the expert and leaders that realise this generally succeed. When I took over the leadership of the Waitrose convenience business unit I was drowning in debates about store performance, property appraisals NPV, IRR blah blah blah completely out of my depth. So I got my finance manager and a colleague to run ‘extra maths’ for myself and the team on a Friday morning. It was fun, informative and most importantly built our confidence. This team went on to achieve great things as we learnt together, built confidence, believed in the possibilities and performed way ahead of expectations.

So why was it then, that as I set about establishing Ventures, some of this well trodden path was not working for me? Over the last few months I have reflected on a number of areas that are critical to success and consequently happiness:

• Be yourself!
• The basic need for humanity, companionship and support (no matter how senior you are!)
• The importance of sponsorship from the top
• A clear purpose and mandate
• Team dynamic and culture
• Believing that collaboration will always trump competitiveness
• The inevitable organ rejection by an established business to new ways, methods and approaches (the not invented here syndrome)
• This list is not exhaustive there are of course many more………………….

So I guess where I am going with all of this is a reflection of, if I had known then what I know now, what would I do differently? Or perhaps more importantly what has this experience and learning surfaced in me as an individual and what will I change as a result of it?

First off never forget who you are and what your purpose is — my purpose is all about ‘believing that anything is possible’ for me, my family, my customers and my people or team. I think in the chaotic early months of taking on a new role that had never existed before, setting up a new business unit that had never existed before, and in a new location (oh yes I knew how to pile on the stress exchanging a 10 minute commute for a 90 minute London commute) I forgot my purpose.

As a consequence the possibilities became impossibilities and my confidence was knocked. I struggled to find a role for my natural skill set of building networks, driving commercial success and leading people with both conviction and humanity and perhaps more importantly I had no-one around me to remind me I could do this! I focused instead on trying to grapple with the array of new capabilities, skills, technologies, agile working and building a team who, whilst incredibly talented and driven, were competitive, demanding and expecting of me. Therefore I didn’t harness enough of what I could give instead I worried about what I needed to get. The truth was I needed to stick to my ‘personal charter’ the things I was good at and lead with them whilst embracing enough of the new to provide direction, air cover and clear the way for my team to deliver.

Ultimately I guess what I had missed was that in ‘new age (or agile) speak’ I was and am a T shaped person. My strengths were clear but what I wasn’t exploiting was my ability to collaborate and apply these strengths to a bunch of other disciplines that I wasn’t the expert in. I actually wasn’t in bad shape for this I just couldn’t see it!

What I am now of course coming to realise is that successful business in the future will require and seek more of this ‘inter-discipline’ in their people so we need to both discover and encourage it in ourselves and those we lead.

As a consequence of my journey I have renewed and huge empathy for startups who start from scratch with their dreams, hopes and fears and all the possibilities of how they can change the world or their part of it! Through the Partnership’s JLAB programme I have been excited and inspired by the people who we engage, mentor, support and learn from. Someone said to me recently that you can’t ‘recruit’ an entrepreneur but you can encourage them to work with you, alongside you and as a consequence have a terrific exchange of experiences and skills. Programmes like JLAB provide just this environment and I’m excited about working in this ecosystem in the year ahead.

18 months on I’m finally getting my mojo back and can reflect that the learning and experience has triumphed over the isolation and challenge. I spend time now trying to influence a new way of thinking across the leadership teams within my business. This takes time and we all know that human nature means that often the established business and style of leadership may be suspect and cynical about the new approach and can reject the ‘new kids on the block’ or in our case ‘ways of working’. The thinking is not so linear now and because the future is not linear either we need to think differently. We need to encourage our businesses to experiment in a new way leading and operating in a structure of corporate ecosystems where interdependence will foster greater innovation, pace and agility. It’s a new way of thinking and being but it is the future. By the way this is a global challenge not just at JLP!

But now my days are frequently full of little inspirational or breakthrough moments as my ambition and aspiration is all about helping my people and my business see the possibilities — I will never leave my purpose behind again!