Retailers and brands are swinging attention back to brick-and-mortar and investing in employee training, development, and perks to stay competitive. Despite these efforts, many organizations still don’t have the bandwidth to fully optimize worker productivity and performance. Others have attempted to cost-cut their way to profitability, leaving retail workers on the lurch.
Brian Librach is a passionate advocate for empowering future retail leaders to seize control of their careers and reach their full potential. His upcoming book, “The Retail Leader’s Roadmap,” slated for release next month, is brimming with tips and tools designed to help the next generation of retail stars honestly assess opportunities and take decisive action when it counts. Brian shares insights garnered from his retail career ascent, culminating in executive roles at Urban Outfitters and Pacific Sunwear, and more recently, overseeing international stores in Canada for Old Navy.
In this latest episode in Carol Spieckerman’s People Powered Retail series, Brian and Carol delve into the crucial role that individual initiative and ownership will play in propelling retail forward.
Episode highlights:
· Discover three pillars that pave the way to retail career progression.
· Explore how people-powered systems can exponentially accelerate upskilling efforts.
· Learn why lateral moves and demotions don’t have to be a one-way ticket to a career slump.
· Understand how fostering a culture of employee satisfaction can alleviate consumer caution.
Information and resources:
The Retail Leader’s Roadmap website
Brian Librach on LinkedIn
Want to be a guest on Spieckerman Speaks Retail?
Contact team@spieckermanretail.com
Check out more of Carol's retail insights and updates
Follow Carol on LinkedIn
Follow Carol on Twitter
Retailers and brands are swinging attention back to brick-and-mortar and investing in employee training, development, and perks to stay competitive. Despite these efforts, many organizations still don’t have the bandwidth to fully optimize worker productivity and performance. Others have attempted to cost-cut their way to profitability, leaving retail workers on the lurch.
Brian Librach is a passionate advocate for empowering future retail leaders to seize control of their careers and reach their full potential. His upcoming book, “The Retail Leader’s Roadmap,” slated for release next month, is brimming with tips and tools designed to help the next generation of retail stars honestly assess opportunities and take decisive action when it counts. Brian shares insights garnered from his retail career ascent, culminating in executive roles at Urban Outfitters and Pacific Sunwear, and more recently, overseeing international stores in Canada for Old Navy.
In this latest episode in Carol Spieckerman’s People Powered Retail series, Brian and Carol delve into the crucial role that individual initiative and ownership will play in propelling retail forward.
Episode highlights:
· Discover three pillars that pave the way to retail career progression.
· Explore how people-powered systems can exponentially accelerate upskilling efforts.
· Learn why lateral moves and demotions don’t have to be a one-way ticket to a career slump.
· Understand how fostering a culture of employee satisfaction can alleviate consumer caution.
Information and resources:
The Retail Leader’s Roadmap website
Brian Librach on LinkedIn
Want to be a guest on Spieckerman Speaks Retail?
Contact team@spieckermanretail.com
Check out more of Carol's retail insights and updates
Follow Carol on LinkedIn
Follow Carol on Twitter
CAROL SPIECKERMAN
So, hi Brian. It's great to have you here. Welcome to the show.
BRIAN LIBRACH
Thanks, Carol. It's great to be here.
CAROL
You bet. And congratulations on the book launch. If I have it right. I think the book launch is now on March 12th.
BRIAN
That's correct. We moved it up about a month, so we're, we're looking, we're looking good.
CAROL
That's great. Our mutual friend Ron Thurston connected us and I interviewed Ron right after his book came out. I think it's really great that people like you and Ron are trying to pave the way for future retail leaders and that you're so passionate about keeping people interested in retail and excited about working in retail, but you're attacking it from different angles. I'm really excited about exploring that with you. I think it's interesting that you're calling your book a diagnostic tool. So can you tell me more about that and why you took that approach?
BRIAN
Yeah, absolutely. So it, I would say it started when I was probably 21, 22 years old and I read Jack Welch, one of his early books. And although there's a lot of Jack Welch I don't necessarily adopt, there's a lot that I did and kind of made my own. But he referred to the four E's of leadership and they were competencies that he evaluated other people on. And I used those for a really long time but felt like they became a bit outdated and essentially came up with what my own were based on where I noticed I was either winning or succeeding, or more importantly, I noticed when I was stuck. I noticed when I was what I referred to as misfiring. And whenever I was misfiring, I wanted to recognize what was happening or what wasn't happening.
The book was written with that in mind. So if you think of a health diagnostic or car diagnostic, some one little thing might be what's keeping your car from running effectively or from your health being what it's supposed to be. And you need to be able to recognize what it is. Eight out of 10 leaders are a little bit too busy doing their jobs to pay attention to what you need. I hate to say it so this book is hopefully an opportunity where you can take control of your career pathing and your own development, and recognize when you're misfiring. It gives you some advice on what to do with that information.
CAROL
So it sounds like you're encouraging people at least initially to take more of a self-directed approach and own your own destiny and maybe even have the tools to be able to evaluate where you are before you make the next move.
BRIAN
Yeah, the book really is entirely about owning it and doing it yourself and taking control of your own destiny. the whole premise is broken into three parts.
You've got your build your character section, your build your connections section, and your build your plan section. Those are the three pillars. And the build your character section is the fundamentals or the hard skills. Networking, being the example, being accountable, being disciplined, the core competencies of what you need to do.
And you could be hugely successful if that's all you do. You're not going to lead people, but you can be hugely successful at whatever it is that you do individually.
Build your connections is when you shift to incorporating other people into your career success, your development, your ability to communicate and your ability to influence. And then the build your plan part is the pen to paper. I spell out the things you have to do to win and here's the things that you have to do to be able to continually learn every single time you take on a new role and responsibility. And hopefully, folks will read it cover to cover and then have it close to them and they'll pick it up when they see themselves misfiring and how, or pick it up when they see somebody that they care about misfiring and offer them a particular chapter that will help them get unstuck.
CAROL
When you talk about taking on a new role, recently I noticed online, in LinkedIn and other platforms, that you've been sharing some personal stories about your career trajectory and how it wasn't exactly a linear leap to the top. I mean, some, in some cases I think you took lateral moves and others that you might even call a demotion to move ahead with your career. So, especially when you're talking about assessment tools, how would you advise people who want to build a career in retail to assess those individual opportunities as they arise?
BRIAN
Yeah. And, it was a demotion in a way. I moved 3000 miles away and took quite a bit less money.
CAROL
I hope it was at least in a beautiful area!
BRIAN
Well, I left Venice Beach, California, which was really hard on the soul, but we went to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so we stayed in the sun.
But to me, accountability is the linchpin of the whole thing, and it's the fourth practice in the book. Specifically acknowledging and embracing your reality. I like to think about acknowledging your reality as you get it in the head, you understand it and embracing your reality is when your heart understands it. You need both. And so, for example, when I was interviewing and looking at different opportunities, I had to accept the reality that was in front of me and the opportunities that were in front of me. And the one that was the right one was the one that was 3000 miles away. Because I knew who I was going to work for, and that was the right decision for me to make at the time and for my wife and I to make at the time. So I recommend folks just stare at in the face. What is the reality? And use that information to make the best decision for yourself, whether that's a linear move, whether that's a demotion, whether that's changing organizations.
CAROL
it's much-needed advice because we live in this hustle culture where you can feel like you're always missing out and the clock is ticking and other people are clawing their way up. And I think probably having the determination to just move forward from there, holds a lot of weight and I hopefully puts people at ease.
BRIAN
Yeah, and you have to have confidence in yourself. Once you decide to make whatever the decision is, assume it's the right decision and put the doubt away because you have to deliver on whatever the decision was. I knew I had 12 months to get back to being a regional, so that was my goal and expectation.
CAROL
Did you hit it?
BRIAN
I did! I did it in nine months. So, I exceeded the expectation a little bit, but I knew what I had to do, and I had to have the confidence that I could get it done if I were to make that decision.
CAROL
Yeah, awesome. Well, one of my top retail trajectories that just won't go away, and in fact it's stronger than ever, is that the store is still the core. retailers and brands are unapologetically reinvesting in their stores after obsessing over the digital space for many years. And as part of that, a lot of them are doubling down on training. Whether they're providing it internally and trying to build their training programs or whether they're outsourcing it to third parties. What advice do you have when it comes to training store teams, managers and field leaders? That work that you've done throughout your career. You've talked about the self-evaluation piece of it, how would you advise those who are in a position to influence others and train others?
BRIAN
Yeah, it's interesting because so the first comment that you made, I, I agree. It's back on stores. Everybody's talking about brick and mortar and I love it because I'm a stores person. I see the attention being back on stores with some companies, but I still see a huge gap in training and development. I see a huge gap in caring for people first. Financial woes, budget cuts, looking at a line item... So scope is getting bigger for people and as the scope gets bigger, there's less time to focus in and observe what needs to be done with people. You have too many people at your disposal to be able to lead. Human resources has become more about risk management and compensation and less about people. And when I first came up, when HR was a new thing in retail, I learned a ton from my HR team. But the teams have become more about risk and compensation. So the generalists, the people in the stores, they're left with bigger scopes in a lot of cases than what they should have and not a lot of resources to lean onto.
So that's why the book was written because I want to fill the gap and I don't want to do it for one organization anymore. I truly want to be able to do it for the masses in whatever country you happen to be in because you have to take ownership. To me, that's the biggest thing. We have to teach people how to own what it is that they want. When I talk about building your connections and the need for other people to start to become a part of your success equation, that's when it gets really hard because how do you control how other people perceive your communication or how other people perceive your influence? You can't, but you can influence and communicate in such a way that you have better control. So for me, the biggest thing is if we all invested more in our own development. We'd be much better off for it.
CAROL
So we're going back to self-determination rather than relying on these big entities to make it happen for you.
BRIAN
Yeah, when I grew up in retail, we didn't have Google. Now, there are so many resources, right? But people have to be eager to do it on their own and not look for it in others. I do believe that most leaders are just too involved or have too much scope to give the time and attention that some people might need from a leader. So how do we make sure those people are still taken care of? And I think the sooner organizations can recognize the productivity that can come from people and figure out how to monetize it, the better. That’s the hard part. When you're looking at a P&L, you can easily rationalize cuts, but you could drive 4, 8, 10 x productivity if you have a best-in-class workforce. But you can't monetize it, you can't put it on paper, or at least most companies can't. And, and I think that's what gets in our way.
CAROL
What's your view on upskilling and is this yet another area where folks who want to work in retail and become retail leaders have to just rely on their own determination, or are there ways, do you think, to institutionalize that?
BRIAN
You know, I'm a fan of the unannounced visit all the way up to the CEO. I'm a fan of small non-entourage visits where you can get intimate with the individuals and have great dialogue. And so my recommendation to organizations is if you really want to know what's needed, stop traveling in packs, lose the entourage, get comfortable doing unannounced visits, and pop into stores throughout the country, not just in your backyard. Then understand what's consistent and what's not. And I find that if something's wrong in the majority of stores, you’ve got to look in the mirror. There's something wrong with the organization, the communication, or the leader. If something's wrong in a small subset of stores, it's the individuals leading those stores that need some skillset development specific to them. But I think organizations can do a better job of recognizing if say, 70% of their stores are misfiring in something. But the only way they're going to recognize that 70% of the fleet has a problem is to get out there, get to see a really good subset of stores, and do it in a way where what they see is real. And then be comfortable with looking themselves in the mirror to determine what needs to happen next, hopefully with a group of people so they're not deciding on their own.
CAROL
So good old-fashioned management by walking around.
BRIAN
If you talk about brick-and-mortar stores being the most important thing, you can't do it from the office. I'm sure there's a lot of work that has to get done from behind the scenes, but when you really want to know what's needed to make the customer experience better, you have to find a way to see it. And the field leaders are primarily the ones that are going to do that. So you’ve got to bring them into the fold often.
CAROL
I know that your experience has been steeped in apparel and fashion and what they call discretionary categories. And these are the very categories that drive a lot of profitability for retailers. So what have you learned in terms of the role that store associates play in driving these critical categories and perhaps overcoming what seem to be insurmountable odds to get people to part with their cash?
BRIAN
People matter and people work for people. When you have a happy workforce in a store, your customers will fork over some more cash. But when you have unhappy, frustrated frontline employees, you'll be lucky to get the money - you're going to get a smaller share of their pocketbook. They might see you first and the experience may not be great. They might walk down the mall or the strip center or walk somewhere else and somebody else treats them more appropriately. They end up spending all the money that they had and they never make it back to you.
When I lived in Venice Beach, I used to go to a particular Starbucks in Santa Monica.
The experience was fantastic, but every other Starbucks nearby was terrible and so I knew the district manager was not doing a good job because they obviously had that entire subset of stores, most likely. But this one general manager was fantastic and so I kept going back to that one store even though I passed two of them to get to it. That's what customers will do, so whether it's a store leader or all the way up to the CEO, everybody needs to ensure that they're creating an environment where people are appreciated and productive. And if they do that, the customer's going to choose you.
CAROL
I think I actually know the Starbucks you're talking about. You'd never know it from the accent, but I lived in LA for several years and my favorite Starbucks was in Santa Monica.
BRIAN
It could have been the same. We could have both gone to the same one!
In the very last portion of the book, I talk about is retail university. I believe anybody in retail, regardless of role, can be an expert at what they do or best in class in three to five years. And if, if everybody took that approach, to understand, “I have to start out as a freshman, I have to take the fundamental classe I have to upskill. Take my communication classes, my influence classes, I have to be able to do those things before I can graduate, then I'm going to be in a good place.”
I hope that folks will start to take more control of their own career outcomes. And if everybody does that, obviously organizations will be more productive as well.
CAROL
Yeah. So true. And it certainly has been true in my, my retail career as well. So how do you see the interplay between technology and people power taking shape? Brian?
BRIAN
Yeah, it's an interesting question because if I'm shopping in a store, if most people are shopping in a store, I think they want to have a really good experience with the product and with the people. I think that's where the initial investment should be, to be able to make sure that the stores are what they need to be. I think we’ll see smaller companies invest more in technology in the store itself because they only have a small footprint of stores to fund. When you have thousand store chains or 500 store chains, it's difficult to invest in these things/so they start with little pilots and then see what is happening from there. The smaller companies with smaller footprints are going to pave the way for some of the newer technology. I would recommend that folks spend on distribution centers and speed and just really making sure that when I'm an employee in a store, what I'm dealing with is as seamless as possible so that customers can enjoy the human interaction, which is why they came to us. They would've just bought it online if they didn't care for human interaction.
CAROL
So stay with the fundamentals and remove obstacles before you start chasing the shiny objects.
BRIAN
Yeah, the shiny penny. You know, I've been called a shiny penny before too, by bosses. But yeah, a company's going to be financially in a place to invest in the shiny penny if they've done the fundamentals really well.
CAROL
Great point. What do you see as the most effective ways for retailers to win the talent wars, whether that's in recruiting or retention?
BRIAN
I go kind of go back to that accepting and embracing reality comment earlier. I think companies have to accept, acknowledge, and embrace the importance that people have. It is a big win for companies because it's a differentiation. We know people don't just work for paychecks. Pay is not the reason why people leave. People leave because of people, so to me, organizations have to do everything they can to have a best-in-class workforce. Who you promote, and who you hire are super important and you have to put the work into it.
I don't think it's just the perks. I think it's teaching people how to interview, how to assess, how to make sure that they're hiring the right people, and selecting the right people for promotion. Because if you want to promote somebody who's a leader, I don't care what they're doing, I care what their people are doing. You have to skip a level. You have to know how the customer is being taken care of. I think we can offer great pay, and great benefits, but if people aren't feeling fulfilled at the end of the day, somebody else will offer them the same thing or maybe even slightly less and they’ll capture that talent.
I left this for the very last, almost the last chapter of the book because I knew some people wouldn’t like this part. If your boss and their boss don't support you and don't champion you, you're stuck. So you have choices to make. And this is where I think the challenge comes in, in terms of other organizations. You have to make sure that you're in alignment with them, for them to champion you, to help you get where you want to get to. If you're not, then you're stuck. And when you're stuck, you're not delivering a performance, you're unhappy, you're not fulfilled. And so if the majority of people working for people aren't being championed by their bosses, they're going to be giving you 70% of what they have.
That's one of the reasons why we're in the predicament that we are in today, which is where people are budget-cutting people out of jobs left and right and downsizing because they're not getting the productivity of the people. And it's not for a lack of work and effort. They're working and they're sweating, but they're not as committed emotionally to the work. They're rationally committed to the work and the paycheck. So, we have to do a better job of emotionally connecting with folks to be able to get the levels of productivity that we need so that companies can start to flourish again.
CAROL
I like that point too. Again, looking at reality. I know I've had to do that in my career and I couldn't agree with you more. You know, going back to that self-determination and that self-diagnosis, if you're in a stuck situation, it is up to you to get unstuck. No one's going to do it for you and pry you out of there.
BRIAN
I'll give you an example, and I talk about this in the book too. There was a period where I was miserable and that’s just not me, I'm a very happy person. I wake up in the morning, I'm cheerful, and I was just unhappy. I was coming home from work, miserable. I was leaving for work, miserable. And that's not me. And my wife looked at me one day, and by the way, my wife is an executive coach and she owns two fitness studios. So I'm being coached every day. She said to me, “Look, you're going to have to meet your boss 51% of the way minimum because they're not going to meet you. They're just not. It's not gonna happen. So you're going to have to let your ego or your guard down first, or you have to leave.
CAROL
What did you decide?
BRIAN
I let my guard down. I met him 75% of the way. I went an extra 25%. And next thing you know, they were meeting me 75% of the way and we ended up in a great relationship and we helped each other out for a few years and I think benefited each other in our careers and definitely drove the business. But I had to do it first.
CAROL
Well, let me ask you, what did that look like? What were holding back?
BRIAN
When I said meet them where they are, I had to give them what they needed and what they wanted. I had to provide them the service that they were looking for. So, if it was something that I didn't agree with, I would bring it up and maybe have a dialogue about it. Stephen Covey, right? The Seven Habits. I read the book 30 some odd years ago. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. And so that's what I did every single time he needed me to do something or wanted something or made something important that maybe I didn't understand. I said, let me let me try to understand this first before I disagree or before I combat it.
Let me try to understand it. And then if it isn't something I can understand or something that I would disagree with, I would then have some facts to be able to bring up. But I had to be willing to provide a service. And some people would refer to it as, you know, um, kissing up or all these other types of things.
It’s not. Your bosses want people who are going to help them accomplish what they need to accomplish, and oh, by the way, their boss will as well. Because their boss wants to see you as somebody that they can have work for them. So you have two people that, if you want to get unstuck, you're going to have to make sure you align to.
And I recommend folks do the good work to figure out how to, and if they can't, they need to go find somebody else because if they don't, somebody's going to decide for them. And that's what I think has been happening. Even with budget cuts. I think people use the budget cuts to make sure that they're left with those that they want on the team that they know will align with the work that they're trying to accomplish, whether it's the right work or not.
CAROL
that was some great coaching there and I think that was very candid of you to admit that. And I can think of times in my career too, when I've had to do that the same thing. And it is, it is amazing what can happen when you give in a little bit and try to see another perspective and then make that a habit.
BRIAN
Yeah, absolutely.
CAROL
This is the People Powered Retail series. So I'll ask you, what does people-powered retail mean to you, Brian?
BRIAN
Um, what I'm gonna tell you also ties into a particular portion of the book that I wanted to talk about. People prioritized with processes to support equals performance.
In the very, the beginning of the “building your plan” portion of the book, I talk about how you have to earn to learn. But there won’t be space for you to learn if you're not earning, right? If you think about when you go to university and go to college, you have to pay for it. Some of you might have been lucky enough to have your parents pay for it. Maybe you got a scholarship. But a lot of you are working at the same time as you are going to school. Retail careers aren’t any different. You have to deliver the day job to have space to learn. And so the first piece of advice is to focus on what I call “podium performances”. My father said very clearly, you always should be first, second, or third, and never, fourth or worse make it to the podium every single time. Then you'll likely reach gold more often than not. You don't have to be number one, but you have to get to the podium. My father told me that 40 years ago and it stuck with me ever since. And I came up with the “five P's of performance,” which is people and product prioritized. With processes to support, equals productivity, which delivers performance. People are first, product is a close second, but you have to prioritize your people and you have to prioritize your product. Not all people are created equal, and this really offends some people.
Someone is running a $15 million business and somebody else is running a hundred million dollars business. A hundred million dollars business leader requires and should require, a bit more attention. So folks have to learn how to prioritize. I believe in a 20 70 10 theory. 20% of your people are your best. 70% of your people are in the middle, and 10% of your people are at the bottom. I want to think that the 10% can still be very capable, they just happen to be 10th out of 10, right? And so, yes, maybe they're not capable and you have to performance manage, but hopefully more often than not, they're capable leaders. But you spend the majority of your time with your most important people. And I know that sounds bad because all people matter, but you make sure that they are influencing everybody else through their actions and their behaviors. Now you're influencing everybody by spending time with those that have the greatest output and greatest influence and that they start to grow and develop. They start helping you develop the rest of the fleet as well. And so I encourage people if they're going to spend a lot of time in stores or spend time more time in certain regions or certain districts, to bring people to you. You can still spend physical time with people, but what happens often is people spend time with their problems. And that means they're just going to continue to have problems because they're not strengthening the core of their team and they're not strengthening their best players. People also have to be prioritized, but you also still have to get to everybody, and that requires you to have a certain system routine or process that allows that to happen.
CAROL
I love the summation there. People-powered retail is in some ways leveraging the power of influence and unapologetically investing in your best performers to realize the impact that their influence can have on others. It becomes sort of a cascading, exponential effect.
BRIAN
It does. I use an example that 10 direct reports are normal in the retail world at whatever level you might be, some less, some maybe more. If my best two people are acting in such a way that inspires the seven and if they're helping me develop the one at the bottom, the system's working. I'm spending 51% of my time with two people, the other 49% with everybody else, I'm bringing them to me. But I'm getting out of the top two what I need, the seven and the one will get what they need as well. But you have to work the system. The routine is as important as anything else.
CAROL
I like it too because it's much more of a carrot versus a stick approach, keeping it aspirational rather than browbeating the so-called alleged “under performers”. So that's great.
I end every interview with one question that I'll pose to you right now to answer any way you like. What's next, Brian?
BRIAN
What's next? So as you mentioned at the beginning, March 12th, the Retail Leaders Roadmap will drop. My first book, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited. 11 months of work, 35 years of labor. I'll be in Las Vegas at Shop Talk March 17th through the 20th, for another podcast as well as a book signing and, and joining the tech group out there, hopefully I'll be spending some time at the University of Texas in Dallas as well, later in March for another book signing.
And my wife and I co-own a business called the Well Wisher Company and the Retail Well Wisher is what I'm doing and her well Wisher is the work that she does, and she's been doing that for 10 years and that's in support of all things her. It started as a mental and physical fitness business and it's evolving into more than that. So you'll start to see a lot more from the Well Wisher company as well.
CAROL
That's exciting and congratulations. I really look forward to following your ongoing trajectory. And this next chapter, pun intended, with your book and all that will follow from that. And also seeing you hopefully at some events this year.
BRIAN
Absolutely. Carol, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation.
CAROL
You bet. It was a pleasure.