ReThink Productivity Podcast
In this exciting podcast, Simon Hedaux from ReThink Productivity shares his insights and strategies for improving productivity and efficiency in the retail and hospitality industries. With the help of clients, partners, and the ReThink team, Simon covers everything from measuring and tracking productivity to developing and implementing effective strategies.
Whether you're a business owner, manager, or employee, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone who wants to learn how to get more done and improve their bottom line.
Here's what you can expect to learn:
- How to measure and track productivity
- Proven strategies for improving efficiency and reducing waste
- How to create a culture of productivity and innovation
- Tips for motivating and engaging your team
- Real-world examples of how other businesses have used ReThink Productivity to achieve success
Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from the experts and get ahead of the curve with your own business.
ReThink Productivity Podcast
ReThink Forum 2024 Review
Join Simon, James and Sue as they review the ReThink Forum 2024. They talk through the themes of the day and hot topics of conversation
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Register for the 2025 Productivity Forum
Connect to Simon on LinkedIn
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Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. I'm joined by my co-hosts from the Rethink Forum last week, James Boll and Sue Hi both.
Speaker 2:Hello, hi Simon.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't feel like a week ago at the time of recording, but if you listen to it on the day it's launched. This time last week we were probably yeah, we were underway, we were on the stage, we were just probably about to welcome Diane on. So I'll take you through, kind of the first session and then we'll hear from James and Sue around some of the bits that they presented and then some reflections and thoughts on the day. So I think, james, it's fair to say biggest event yet over 100 people from various different retailers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was great to see so many people there again yeah and I haven't um, your first one been for a few years.
Speaker 2:So, um, it was my first one as a full-time rethink employee and the thing that really struck me was how pleased everyone was to see each other. I mean, it seemed just like a great event for people to um, to meet, network, talk to like-minded people, which they didn't seem to get otherwise. I was really impressed by that. I've been involved in conferences in the past where you have to force people to be there and it really, really didn't feel like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was good to see so many familiar faces and new ones and we kicked off the day with a bit of an intro set the scene. Intro set the scene. We talked to attendees who'd registered prior to the event and they told us that matching resource and demand, flexible working, changing behaviors, so the whole change management piece, looking at management of field structures and identifying efficiencies, with it the top of their agenda, outside stuff that maybe is not in our sphere, so um, kind of shrink, et cetera. So we kicked that off and then welcomed Dan Will to the stage. So Dan's been with us now for probably the last six events Rendell, insights and Intelligence. So Dan really does a great job of setting the scene around the state of the nation.
Speaker 1:From a footfall, a shopping behaviors point of view, I think the general sentiments were it was tough. There's some optimism as we move into what is the golden quarter for lots of the people in the room. You've got Black Friday, you've got the whole Christmas thing and sale coming, some interesting trends within, certainly retail and hospitality. That fashion sector remains really, really tough. Health and beauty has been strong but it's plateauing and, as ever, kind of grocery, uh remains in in the top one or two and that disposable income on um, hospitality, cinemas etc. Is the one that gets squeezed as interest rates move up and down and and there's this kind of cloud around the number of people I think it it's October and then February 2025, there's another couple of million people that drop off a fixed price mortgage onto the more variable rates. So, depending where interest rates are at the time, that could potentially squeeze that household income Again.
Speaker 1:That took us through to break after a Q&A. We then worked around role study. So interesting panel with some guests on role study. James, do you want to talk about the session because you hosted?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a great session to host and one that I think the audience was really engaged in, from the number of questions we got live on our Slido application as the session was progressing and we talked about role study as a methodology that we use at Rethink, where, rather than timing activities or doing a lap of the store or warehouse or whatever and seeing what everyone's doing, we actually follow one particular role for an extended period of time and measure everything they're doing.
Speaker 2:And it's really well suited to leadership roles in organizations field roles because you can really get under the skin of what your leadership roles do day to day, something that lots of organizations don't know about. And it was highlighted as a real opportunity for organizations to get to know their teams a bit better and some opportunities they've got to improve. So, for example, we talked about how much time leaders we've tracked in the past actually spend leading and coaching their teams. We've looked at how many hours leaders spend doing jobs that someone else could do and how much crossover there is between roles, and it generated lots of great discussion from our panellists who've run these studies before and lots of questions from you. Know, how do you actually run one of these studies and set one up all the way through to? Well, actually, how big a geographic span should an area manager have? So we had, you know, I thought, a really fascinating discussion around what remains an opportunity for many businesses to improve the efficiency of their leadership structure.
Speaker 1:And we had a good panel, didn't we? James, with some clients on there as well, and Sue sat on talking about their insights, what they've seen in their journeys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I threw Sue under the bus with some of the hardest questions because I didn't want to give it to the clients under the bus with some of the hardest questions because I didn't want to give it to the clients. But it was a real mix of experiences in terms of actual changes that organizations have made to leadership structures, to role definitions, and then I think the audience was keen to get some actual tips on how they could improve the efficiency of their leadership structure. I mean, sue, I was handling a lot of questions and summarising as we go so I might have missed some of the insights. What was your take out from the session?
Speaker 3:I think there was a real mix of people interested in field structure roles, because I think that's quite a hot topic at the moment, and then also roles within store as well, as kind of you've said it also works for specialist roles. So there were some questions about the practicalities of how does it work and how many people do you have to study and kind of what's the experience of being studied? Um, which we talked about, because it's the fact that actually people quickly get used to it and that most of our you know, in in business, most people are used to operating with people around them anyway. So having another person that's kind of slightly out of eyes line anyway doesn't really change that.
Speaker 2:So you have some really interesting conversations about kind of how it could work, from the big picture down to the practicalities yeah, and some really nice anecdotes, which we probably shouldn't repeat here, about some of the surprises our clients have had in terms of what their leaders actually do, in terms of, you know, for example, driving two hours to a to a pub or coffee shop and then sitting in the coffee shop on their laptops doing work they could have done at home yeah, yeah, there's always a surprise.
Speaker 1:We then. We then moved in to, I think, talk more about the end-to-end journey, didn't we, sue? So from when you've completed your measurement of roles activities, looked at efficiencies, how that then moves through to transitioning into a workload model so you can calculate hours, costs and FTEs by location, by week, to produce your budget.
Speaker 3:You had some help from Lincolnshire Co-op in that session, sue yeah, it's always interesting to hear people going from that journey, from usually when they're doing that whole journey. It's a relatively new start with our sort of work, so it's going through that whole piece where we're measuring lots of different things, multiple studies, so that we can surface as many opportunities for them as possible. But then we talked about how we go right to to workload models and the impact of introducing those. So it's really interesting because we were talking about retail and hospitality on the panel. So it was really interesting to see the different impact and we were fortunate to have guests that could talk about having gone through that journey and the changes they made as a result.
Speaker 1:And into another panel with some clients again for for real life stories and questions from the audience yes, yeah, and that's.
Speaker 3:We did also start to talk about change, which was kind of the the later topic, our keynote towards the end. So quite a few questions were about delivering change. So it's one thing spotting the opportunities, it's then putting the things in place that make a difference. Or, equally, when you're looking at workload models, you know you can that's a theoretical numbers model translating that into how actually people spend the time and being able to focus effort. You know, perhaps we talked in the in the session about one of the retailers identified that they needed to change the balance of resource between stores, so some had historically had a bit more than others and some were slightly underfunded and the practicalities of making those changes. So, yeah, a really useful session that again covered everything from the theory and the principles down to the nitty gritty of making it work and what happens as a result.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always fascinating to hear. So after some extended time for networking and a great lunch, I did a session with Poundland and we talked about matching resource to demand. So we heard about their journey, the kind of way they'd thought about systems, implemented systems. The kind of way they'd thought about systems, implemented systems, evolved those systems and then moved into a panel around how you match resource to demand, what flexibility means in organizations, what that split might look like and how it's certainly changed over time, and some of the again practicalities about where where the opportunity is. So which components of your workforce management solution are going to drive the most benefit, which may be a more of a marketing spin.
Speaker 1:Touched briefly on ai, but that was for a session later in the day. So again fascinated to hear about that hot topic, for for lots of people in the room around making the most out of the people they've got really driving, driving that customer interaction. Then we were on to a break and following the break we welcomed Graham Wilson, who runs a success factory, deals with changing lots of organizations across the world, to do a keynote on change management and I think, james, you were fascinated by some of the outputs from Graham.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I was lucky the night before to sit next to Graham at dinner as well, so I got an extended opportunity to listen to him. But I think on the day, you know, the headline of his session was that we are all working in a world we weren't educated for. There's so much happening all the time and so much change going on that we're really not prepared for, and he gave us seven tips for managing change, which I won't repeat here in detail. You can find him on LinkedIn and he shares a lot of this information there.
Speaker 2:But you know, for example, the first tip was one that I think is maybe counterintuitive, but told a great personal story about motor racing and talked about how organizations will effectively speed up by slowing down and how doing less and focusing more and focusing on change management and getting people on board before you start your project management was a real eye-opener and the you know the session was great. It was full of hints and tips like that and great anecdotes that illustrated it, and I think it was you know, I'll talk about it in a second but actually one of the themes of the day. Steve from Poundland had said when one of the projects that he'd been running. He wished they'd started on change management rather than project management. You know, everything at the end of the day involves changing how people behave, and so you need to understand what motivates them and how to get them on board before you can make any effective changes yeah, always fascinating, fascinating and always good.
Speaker 1:I think when you've got that time to think and reflect, when you're in the room around some of the the points that graham was making now, you take those back to your business. Yeah, and then final session. We moved in to talk about ai, so predominantly, james, I did a little bit at the start but moved into ai. We had a kind of session with a couple of clients the day before and the wednesday afternoon to really talk about how, how they're thinking about using it, how it's being used, user cases, how that fits in with some of the stuff we're doing. And then, james, I think you described yourself as an ai novice, but certainly the feedback from the audience was great in terms of some of the insights you gave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's it's clear that AI can help make the way we operate in future better than the way we operated in the past, but there's a lot we need to get right in order to realize that, um, that reality. Not only working with the AI together, you know, not just trusting faceless experts to chuck a load of data in it and it working straight away. You need experts interrogating it and the real headline, which is something that you talked about on the day. The quality of the data is absolutely paramount. If you put garbage into your AI, you're going to get garbage out and you can't just trust it, and you know. I think there's going to be a lot of effort required over the next couple of years to ensure that the AI applications that are being developed for our clients are based on good data and good assumptions, because it's clear that some solutions aren't at the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it certainly opened my eyes in terms of the art of the possible and all the pre-work that needs to be done. In terms of training, the training, the data that was. That was quite new to me, yeah, and we were kind of there then, so full-on day. Um, again, great to see people looking forward to next year and we'll announce the dates as soon as we've got them and there'll be a few few new bits that we're going to introduce that we talked about with the audience on the day. So, keeping out for those reflections on the day, james, what were your thoughts? What kind of things did you take away?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, I mean, things are obviously tough at the moment and might get tougher, but there are. There are still opportunities to improve. Um, people want to get more from the same, and I think AI can help remove repetitive tasks, if done properly, so that people can spend more time with customers and drive average transaction value, which will be very important. There are obviously opportunities within management structures and leadership roles, which we talked about in the role study panel, and distributing resource fairly across the organization to maximize your opportunities still remains an opportunity for lots of organizations.
Speaker 2:But there were two themes that I don't think we'd planned to come out that came out to me, and one was a lot of people talked about being data rich but intelligence poor.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously you need data because it gives you great evidence and can throw up some surprises and tell you inconvenient truths, but it can be hard to get, and the key thing is not to just gather more data for the sake of it. It was something lots of people talked about through the day. You need to make sure you're gathering data with a purpose and using it. And then the other one I talked about a little bit you can't get anywhere if you're not bringing your people with you and, at the end of the day, all of these initiatives come down to change management, and so invest heavily in in changing people's minds and bringing people along the journey with you before you start kind of launching the, the projects or launching the results to them. Um, and they were, yeah, they were the themes that occurred to me as I, as I was lucky to sit and listen to the other speakers- and Sue, did you have any closing thoughts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my two favourite bits were the same. Two favourite bits I have every time. Actually, one is hearing what people have done with their studies and work after we've left them. So obviously we'll do sessions with people, hand over the results and sometimes we get to hear what people have done or some of it. But actually to to hear lots of people talking and sharing what they've done is always, uh, really fascinating for me.
Speaker 3:And the other thing is just the power of people chatting together. So I think, although the sessions are great, people get an equal amount of value out of talking to their peers, who may be in a similar industry or a totally different one. But actually the value of sharing different ways of looking at things, um, and having that time out of the office just to be able to concentrate, to think about it and have all that stimulation around you in terms of ideas and suggestions, I think is a super powerful for people and I love seeing the enjoyment on people's face as well yeah, I agree, I don't don't think I've got anything to add to those summaries.
Speaker 1:So thanks both for your time. You did both did a great job on the day and the feedback was brilliant. As I said, new date for 2025 will be available soon and we'll open registration. So look out on the website, linkedin et cetera, and there'll be a few new additions. We discuss with people in the room as well, so, again, look out for those announcements. We'll pause there. Thanks James, thanks Sue, we'll catch up soon.
Speaker 3:Bye.
Speaker 2:See you soon, thank you.
