nickshanagher

One person cannot be the sole catalyst for change. Great ideas can come from anywhere. You have to trust your team.   These thoughts on leading change from Richard Gerver, formerly a star head teacher and now a travelling speaker, form a cornerstone of Change, his exciting new book published by Penguin. Gerver is a maverick and most independent retailers will warm to him immediately from the pacey prologue. Change is a short book. It is beautifully presented and filled with ideas that will encourage you to live your dreams and to connect to other people. “We have all got to stop assuming we live in unique little silos that nobody else could possibly understand,” says Gerver. He recommends that you take time out from your shop to explore the world and learn half-a-day at a time from other people’s experiences. His book is not about self-help nor is it a management book. What Change does do is give readers ideas on how their ideas about developing their businesses ...

The most memorable idea in John Stanley’s keynote presentation at the Local Shop Summit was that the world of retailing will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 100.   As a result, local shopkeepers were going to have to change their thinking, embracing things like using social media to establish themselves as “day makers” for their local communities. The usual suspects heard his message and their positive feedback energised the team who put together the event. But what of the other retailers there: what were they thinking? I don’t know but I will have a stab at it. One of the first retailers I met more than 20 years ago when I started to cover this industry ran a small local shop and was passionate about his customers and what he sold. In the town where he operated, his shop had a reputation as the place to go for hobby magazines and collectables. His passion for news and for stocking the latest stuff translated into a successful business. H...