Saturday 19 June 2010
The future performance of shopping centres will depend so much on centre managers. Owners wishing to protect and grow the value of their assets will need to think differently as the fight for share of wallet intensifies in the age of austerity. Making centre managers more accountable – by making them more responsible – will empower and incentivise the most important people in the shopping centre hierarchy. This is a post about leadership.
At I-AM, we have a very simple model to run a shopping centre. It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and that then drives results.
So the style of the centre manager is critical. Leadership is a people-person skill, one that should be encouraged by owners and rewarded properly. Here’s our view on how to effectively manage a shopping centres performance.
• Invest in culture – people skills are hugely undervalued, but humans are a resource, and the happier they are, the more productive they are
• Make listening an enterprisewide skill – taking the pulse has never been more important
• Innovate product and process – turn innovation into a continuous process
• Provide a clear and compelling purpose – the fundamentals of quality, price and customer service are your starting point but you need to add meaning to the mix nowadays because that’s the value add
• Extend and enhance the digital fabric – a multi-channel customer facing front end combined with a business information back end will be an investment worth making
• Practice good social citizenship – to effectively differentiate, shopping centres should align their interests with those of the community, and say so
In summary, if you want results pick a leader and let them lead.
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
Sunday 6 June 2010
Isn’t it time that asset managers of shopping centres started to examine their financial performance? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all been operating the wrong way for a long time, and from a personal experience at my old company Modus, I’m certainly not immune from the effects of the macro-economy, but at least I’ve had a chance to look myself in the mirror and examine why that business failed.
It failed for three reasons. Firstly we didn’t give customers the experience they were after because our focus was on the numbers, not the customer. We gave them shops and services, when really what they wanted was a lifestyle experience. Big mistake.
Secondly, we didn’t use our supply chain in the way we should have – we didn’t encourage them to innovate and so what we offered wasn’t different enough nor did we freshen things up often enough. In short we didn’t deliver the right goods at the right price at the right time.
1And thirdly, our operational model was rubbish. We didn’t give the right people the right information to make the right business decisions at the right time. Information simply wasn’t valued adequately, and woolly business plans that weren’t properly monitored or measured simply meant that negative trends weren’t picked up and sorted. All in all #fail…
But the exercise was a great learning experience. Something else I learned was the need to connect. Retailers for example could benefit from being connected because the information they could share on the buying habits and behaviours of the customer will create value for them by making their lives more convenient.
I learned that getting people and organisations in sync is the project of our times. And making sure that every partner involved in delivering the shopping centre experience is better organised and more aligned, are the foundations we’re building I-AM on.
Feel free to comment,
Mike.