Have you got the right people in the right places?

My first role in management was with Laura Ashley in the UK, where I was the Assistant Garment Manager at the Regent Street store in London, a flagship store on 3 levels. It was an exciting time for me at the tender young age of 24 as the store was constantly in the spotlight from both Head Office and the media. It was my chance to shine. It wasn’t long then that I found myself the captain of my own Laura Ashley ship at Brent Cross, a massive shopping mall complex in north London, and one with a poor reputation for success.

I was up for the challenge, I wanted to make my name here and above all, I was filled with enthusiasm that the team and I were going to not only turn the store around, we were going to put it on the proverbial map!

On arrival, the team was down beat, uninspired to change and enthusiasm was non-existent after being left on their own without a permanent manager or direction for some time.

I needed a game plan, so I took each team member individually away from the store to find out what they needed, what inspired them, and their career plans if any. If I had a team that wanted to be doing something else rather than sell beautiful ladies clothes, it was never going to work, and these discussions allowed me to see that I had in fact some real talent around me; it just wasn’t being used in the right place.

My Assistant Manager was worn out and desperate for a change but she had a real eye for furnishings. As our store didn’t stock any, I decided to move her out to where she would flourish, so 8 weeks later, she moved to the very store that I had come from, energized, focused, and ready to take on what she really wanted to do. I could have simply managed her out of the business for poor performance, but I saw that she was simply in the wrong job. Sometimes, asking is all that you need to do to find out what someone wants and needs, then provide it, it’s a common sense solution.

With the Assistant Manager vacancy now available, I could fill it with another team member that was ready and chomping at the bit to get into her first management role and was considering leaving in order to find it, which would have been a big loss of talent to the company. She accepted the role, did a wonderful job, and went on to further promotion within the company a year or so after that.

Our little store was the smallest the company had, at just less than 1000 square feet, but we had the largest $$ turnover per square foot in the company. We turned over a great deal of money for a few staff to manage, but the team was happy and loved the limelight we were creating for ourselves, getting noticed by Head Office. I had the right people in the right places where they could do a great job with enthusiasm, something that rubbed off onto our customers and kept them coming back for more.

It was a great time of my life, a time I remember back to with great fondness of the team and what we achieved in the years we worked together. I often wonder where they are all now and how their lives have panned out. From a tiny, deflated, poor performing store, to one of the most vibrant flowers the company had, and it was all because of the right people, working in the right places.

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Linda Coles is the author of “Learn marketing with social media in 7 days” (Wiley) and is an author, speaker and trainer on building relationships. She lives in New Zealand on a fig orchard. You can get a free sample of a chapter of her book by registering for her newsletter.