Retail leaders are often staring down transformations in their organizations — some easy, some difficult. When presented with opportunities to transform their organizations, what leadership skills are required? During a panel discussion at the February Total Retail and Women in Retail Virtual Exchange, a group of retail leaders — led by Columbus Consulting Managing Partner Elizabeth Elliott — discussed the challenges they faced during transformations at their own companies, the results their efforts yielded, and the lessons they learned along the way.

Curacao

When Ariela Nerubay joined department chain Curacao as its chief marketing officer and executive vice president, she said there was so much to be done. The company is 40 years old, she considers it a legacy brand, with a team that had been there for decades.

“My challenge — amongst many from a marketing standpoint — was that I needed to refresh the brand,” she said. “I needed to instill an new sense of culture that would permeate throughout the entire organization.” She said in evaluating the culture, she found a lot resistance to change. She spent some time understanding where the resistance was coming from and working to explain why the transformation was necessary and how everyone would benefit from the changes.

She wanted to start by identifying a color that would define the company, which she said was hard to get buy-in for. Nerubay said refreshing the color that represented the company created some energy that enabled everyone to get excited.

Adore Me

Priya Sharma, vice president of strategic initiatives for the e-commerce lingerie company Adore Me, said a recent transformation for her was the acquisition of Adore Me by Victoria’s Secret.

“For me, a transformation mindset is really being open to new ideas and technologies; being able to adapt to change quickly; communicating enough and often; and moving as one team,” she said.

She said as part of Adore Me’s mission to bring the best possible shopping experience to its customers, the company launched a home try-on service in 2018. The customer would be able to try on items at home, keep what she liked, and send back what doesn’t work for her.

“This was, for Adore Me, one of the most incredible inventions that we launched, and it would not have been possible without a transformation mindset,” Sharma said. “To bring about a service like this, it sounds somewhat easy in logic, but it actually requires a lot of business teams and processes to adapt.”

To make this possible, Adore Me created a cross-functional team that tested and shared key learnings with stakeholders and got decisions made quickly. Five years later, the try-on service is still successful and is offered as a service to Victoria’s Secret customers as well.

“Move fast, keep people informed, learn from things that don’t work, and continue on,” Sharma summarized.

London Times

London Times President Sara Wingate Bako faced similar challenges to Nerubay when she started with the company two years ago — many people there were set in their ways.

Last year, she presented an idea to the company: A comprehensive goal-setting process. She called it a “massive cultural shift” for the organization. “The company had never had associates — or really the leadership team — go through a process like that,” she said.

She needed buy-in from her executive team, her leadership team, and the associates, and her idea was met with some resistance. “There were some leaders who had never done something like that, there were associates who hadn’t, and there was a lot of coaching and overcommunication to get us there,” she added.

Seven months in, it has become a mainstay of the company and opened more dialogue between the employees. Wingate Bako found that once goal setting was in place across the organization, it unearthed a lot about process, technology, culture, and people, and allowed the executive team to have a compelling road map for the future of the organization.

“When I think about a transformational mindset, I like to think about it less as big, radical changes within an organization, and think about it as smaller, incremental steps, because I think those small steps in so many ways can lead to a ripple effect across an organization,” she said.

The Retail Transformation Success Stories panel is available to view on-demand here.