Culture, Retail Disciplines and Lessons for Start-ups

Graham Lack
Jun 26, 2017
2 min read

In the last week we've all probably read about the co-founder and CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, stepping down from his leadership position and taking the blame for the "toxic culture" at the ride-sharing company.

While ride-sharing might be a long way from retail, it highlights a couple of things common to all companies and especially those transitioning from the early entrepreneur days to mature enterprises.

First and foremost, establishing the right culture is absolutely critical - and that starts at the top - the founder, the CEO, the senior management team. I consider myself extremely fortunate that, throughout my career, I've been lucky enough to work with some of the best practitioners and leaders in this regard. "Culture" is a highly plastic thing, that is, it can be shaped but it takes time and effort. I seriously doubt that Travis Kalanick is a bad person and deliberately set about to design a so-called "toxic culture" in Uber. More likely, the company valued certain behaviours over others, for example individual success over team success, which may lead to negative behaviours creeping in and becoming widespread in the organisation. It can happen at glacial speed and often people aren't even aware of it happening.

For founders of start-ups especially, who are flat out developing products and markets, it's easy to be distracted from the importance of culture but sooner or later it needs a health check just like any other part of the business. Whilst Uber's issues seem to be limited to cultural problems, it clearly has done an amazing job in its core business across many markets. However, unlike Uber, for many retailers and entrepreneurs, taking the idea that got them started to the next level isn't an easy step often because the distraction of developing products and markets can also take focus off the retail disciplines.

Some of the critical retail disciplines that come to mind are:

Developing and executing a strategic plan
Developing proper merchandise range plans
Running an OTB
Having markdown and clearance strategies
Having comprehensive budgets
Regularly reviewing product performance
The list goes on....

Oddly, the retail disciplines are often the first casualty when the going gets tough in the competitive retail environment in which we find ourselves, so maybe there are lessons for large enterprises and start-ups alike.