nickshanagher

Luke Johnson, the entrepreneur behind Pizza Express and former head of Channel 4, is a compulsive reader and he warmly recommended Made in America by Sam Walton. For years I resisted the chance to read the story of the man who made Walmart and boy was I wrong. Quite simply this is a brilliant manual on what you need to do to be a successful independent retailer. In one chapter on thinking small, Walton says: “I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not the biggest.” In 1960 in a newspaper article called Success Story of the Year it described how he and his family and managers had built up a nine strong chain of variety stores. He told the paper that nine was as big as it could get as it was as many as he could supervise. Most readers don’t need to worry how he moved beyond nine to become the biggest retailer in history (he did this by hiring and inspiring great people). What they need to recognise is that Walton remained a great independent retailer till...

A friend bought a copy of the One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson in the 1990s and kept it by his desk. I have often been told about the book and judged its relevance by the problems my friend had hitting his targets and motivating his team. When he moved on, he left the book to me and for a year it has sat in my in-tray. As a raving fan of Gung Ho!, I believed that I should read One Minute Manager and I read the first half without great enthusiasm. The business fable of a young executive setting out to find how to manage and the people that he met seems a bit forced. The concept of one minute goals, one minute praisings and one minute reprimands seems like a cheat. I was ready to sneer... I had two issues with the book. Firstly, managers need to have domain knowledge before their reports will give them the credibility to be one minute managers. Secondly, the idea of managers having lots of spare time seemed like a cheat. This book will mess lots of people ...

We are launching the 2009 Independent Achievers Academy tomorrow in London with a group of retailers and suppliers. The marketing team have come up with a great practical exercise to help us relive the Academy experience. At its heart, the IAA has a simple concept: set a goal, plan to hit it and celebrate the outcome. I hope to learn lots from participants and will pass this learning on to you.