Jerry Maguire

Tonight I came close to writing my Jerry Maguire memo...

I was out with colleagues from a separate business division and we got talking about work and the underlying issues.

There was a big positive moment and also a big wake up call too.

The big positive moment was about uniting the team around one individual goal. A singular and focused initiative that was all encompassing and had customer and consumer appeal.  Namely gifting.  Encouraging the consideration of gifting by all consumers in this particular business was an audacious customer proposition.  Gaining the conversion of all those consumers who thought gifting was important into a specific category represented £37bn of incremental sales value.  If they bought a gift twice per trip it would double to £74bn.

Now we're not in a position to make this happen as in a number of occasion we can't even get the stock there in time and in full (and there's more than that problem with this business unit).   But uniting behind this one goal would make ALL the other things actually happen.  The team currently have 34 business priorities right now.  The thinking tonight was to say forget the 34 and focus on this one because we can actually deliver all the 34 through this one, and probably deliver more than that, because to deliver this one big goal means we have to deliver the simple stuff too...

But the bad thing about all of this was that fact that 8 of my colleagues could only talk about this and a number of other issues with the help of a glass of wine and not be upfront about the need for change and how to make the change happen for the benefit of the business and the benefit for the individuals.

I was left with a feeling of my colleagues use language and behaviours to manage their careers rather than using all the tools at their disposal to manage the business performance. 

Tonight I could feel a revolution in the air.  I could feel energy and determination to change.  But I know it won't last.  I know nobody will write their Jerry Maguire memo saying what is wrong with the current culture and how to change that culture to offer benefit both to our customers but also to the shareholders.

I need to write my own Jerry Maguire memo soon to help me paint the picture of what I want from taking on this challenge...