Quit horsing around ??

In the early days of WW2, as France fell, the British coastal defences were in desperate need of strengthening.?

With new guns being in short supply, the British rolled in artillery not just from WW1 but stretching back to the Boer War (1899-1902, in case you didn’t know).

What was great about this artillery was that you could hitch it to the back of a truck and place it wherever you wanted along the coastline. Pretty useful when you are expecting a German invasion coming across the channel.?

The only problem is that these guns were slow. So the Brits decided to take a leaf out of the German’s books and asked, “how can we make them more efficient?”

They hired a time-motion expert to picture and study the procedure of firing the gun in slow motion.

This expert quickly noticed something odd. Just before firing, the soldiers were coming to attention and standing still for three seconds, slowing down the next round being loaded.

So he asked the Colonel what on earth they were doing.

“Ah, yes. They are holding their horses so they don’t bolt.”

Except there were no horses to hold. This artillery was moved around by truck.

Okay, I don’t know if this story is true, but it tells us that habits can be hard to shake.

In this case, the Brits managed to break this particular habit (and then went on to win the war…thanks for the assist, America ??)

Firstly they had a reason to change. The Germans were coming.

This is the same in the fuel industry where reducing volumes are coming, market volatility continues and costs are rising. If that isn’t enough reason to change something, you can bow out here.

Second of all, they studied their routines. They had the intention to act. They identified how these routines are impacting their efficiency.

Think about your habits daily…which ones are helping your business and which ones are harming it?

Penultimately, they used data. Okay, it was slow-motion photography and not numbers that we might consider to be data today. But it’s vital to go and grab that information that shows you where inefficiencies may lie.?

And finally, you can’t always fight back against industry challenges by spending money. The Brits couldn’t just go and get new equipment. They had to find a way to make what they had more efficient.

Just as an idea you could start by promoting your store daily on social media to spread word of mouth about your promotions. ??

This is wartime. Make sure you are not holding on to any imaginary horses.

Want to learn how we've seen fuel retailers use data to improve their business? Read our post here ????????