Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to our new Retail Razor show, Blade to Greatness,
our new standalone Retail Razor show, where we hear from a retail industry
leader who shares their sharp insights and cuts of wisdom on how to excel in
this dynamic and competitive field.
In this series, we learn about the essential must have skills and qualities
that every retail executive needs to lead their teams and their business to success.
Casey Golden: Whether we're talking about HQ or stores, we'll uncover valuable
tips and advice that every retail leader can apply to their own retail career
path, raising your Blade to Greatness.
Ricardo Belmar: I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.
Casey Golden: And I'm your co host Casey Golden.
We'll speak with Jeffrey p McNulty, founder and CEO of the Retail Ethos,
creator of the Ultimate Retail Course, and author of the Ultimate Retail Manual.
We'll learn from his 30 years of hands-on industry experience as the executive
leader for the Home Depot, Lowe's, Barnes and Noble, PetSmart, Shopco,
Toys R us, Publix and Festival Foods, plus 18 years of experience as a retail
research analyst having conducted over a thousand consultations with clients
on Wall Street, hedge fund managers, equity investment partners, retailers,
and entrepreneurs in the retail sector.
Jeffrey has a myriad of experience and knowledge, wisdom when it
comes to retail leadership.
Ricardo Belmar: And today he's here to talk with us about one of the
most important skills every retail leader needs to master, how to foster
an environment of intrapreneurship.
Let's listen to what he has to share with us.
Casey Golden: Welcome, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey McNulty: Thank you for having me on the show.
It's an honor to be on the Retail Razor Show and I'm,
I'm really honored to be here.
So yeah, foster an intrapreneurship.
I'm very passionate about that as anybody that follows me on LinkedIn knows I talk
about this probably about once a month.
There's a quiet trend going on around called quiet, quitting, and
there's a pun intended in there.
This is when an employee or leader consciously decides to start
putting in the bare minimum work effort or silently checks out from
putting forth their best results.
This trend is accelerating throughout all industries because
many employees and leaders are feeling burned out and stressed out.
World-class organizations create an inclusive environment where
intrapreneurship, creativity, and autonomy can thrive and flourish.
Intrapreneurs are exactly like entrepreneurs without any of the risk.
Intrapreneurs can safely work within an organizational structure
while creating innovative ideas and solutions that elevate the brand.
Imagine having an army of intrapreneurs within your organization
that are excited and motivated to become seminal trailblazers.
I created an acronym called GAP, which stands for Growth, Autonomy,
and Purpose, to provide a blueprint to my retail and business clients
on how to ramp up their efforts to actively embrace intrapreneurship.
Here are a few of the basic principles for executing my GAP strategy.
Under the growth we have succession planning.
This is where it all starts.
This, this is the meat and potatoes of the entire strategy.
Are you strategically mapping out each employee and leader's
future within your organization?
You gotta have a plan for each employee and leaders future
within your organization.
And you don't have to do that just at times when it's the performance
appraisal, cuz some performance appraisals are only yearly.
So you have to do next is daily check-ins with your employees and leaders.
A lot of times leaders will check in with their employees,
but not with their leaders.
In some organizations the leader is, is kind of like off to the side.
They're an afterthought because we're paying you.
You have more responsibility.
You get bonuses, stock options, et cetera.
But you gotta remember, employees and leaders both need check-ins.
And here's the question.
Are your leaders consistently performing this behavior, which helps
build and strengthen employee bonds?
There's nothing more important that you can do as a leader than
to strengthen employee bonds by doing those daily check-ins.
Next, you have providing challenge in work.
Are you challenging each employee to engage in meaningful and fulfilling work?
Do your employees feel connected to your organization?
Next is competitive wages and benefits.
This, this is huge right now because I'm, I'm happy to see a lot of
retailers and businesses raising up their minimum wages and starting to
be more competitive to reward the employees that are gonna work for them.
Are you respecting and rewarding each employee's value and
efforts to your company?
And here's the key.
Are you leading from the front or you are leading from the back of the bus?
You're either a leader or you're following.
There, there's no in between.
Next we have the A stands for autonomy, flexible scheduling options.
Are you providing scheduling options that are flexible with your employees?
Are you implementing a mild hybrid remote working option?
Think about when leaders are writing performance appraisals
employees, are committing or completing e-learning modules.
Employees and leaders are preparing for an event or a presentation.
Conference calls, Zoom meetings, et cetera.
One of the hardest things I found as a leader working in retail for all those
years was having quiet time to actually prepare for succession planning for my
employees, my leaders, writing appraisals.
Because as a leader, you're gonna get an interrupted 5,
6, 7 times in an hour easily.
And let's just say you're writing a performance appraisal and you,
you're, you, you got a train of thought that's going and next thing
you know, they say, "Hey Jeff, we got an employ a customer issue up here.
We need you up here."
There goes your train of thought.
You gotta come back and start all over again.
It's not fair to the employees, it's not fair to the leaders.
Next, you have empowerment.
This is where you can build an army of intrapreneurs throughout your company.
Do your employees and leaders feel that they can attempt new things?
And can they wade into unchartered waters to elevate your brand?
This is paramount.
Do employees actually feel that they can attempt new things?
You talk to a lot of retail leaders and you talk to a lot of business leaders and
they say, yeah, we're, we're all for that.
We're pushing for the intrapreneurship.
But you talk to the employees and they're like, I, I was, I was starting
out on something that was very creative.
I made one minor mistake and I, and, and, and I was, I felt really like I was being
insulted and put down, and I didn't feel like that I wanted to do this anymore.
So you ruin the employee's confidence right after that.
There's gonna be some mistakes and some growing pains.
Now you can't make the same mistake five times, obviously.
Next you have trust and respect.
Do you trust your employees to make the right decisions or do
you punish them for their errors?
We just talked about that employees need to feel that they can make decisions.
Autonomous decisions, of course, within the structure and organization
and protocols of the company.
And then if they do make those errors, you're not gonna drop
a load of bricks on them.
And then finally, in this segment, you have inclusion and support.
Do all of your employees feel included and supported to maximize
their innate talents and gifts?
Do your store leaders actively embrace each individual and place
them in positions to succeed?
That's really the key when you're getting to know your employees.
You find out their passions, you find out what they like to do, and then
you place them in positions where they're gonna have maximum success
because it's something they innately want to do and they're good at.
And then under the p for purpose, we have foster intrapreneurship,
which we've already talked about.
And the key here is are your employees allowed to express their creativity?
Do you seek their input or ideas on how to improve the brand?
That's that's key.
You can always tell a, I could always tell if a leader was really involved in this.
When they were having meetings, they would seek opinions and ideas on things.
And even, even if ideas came up that weren't congruent with what they
were thinking, they remained and had an open mind and were approachable
for those ideas and, expressions.
Tap into employee leader and intrinsic motivation.
We talked about that.
That's important.
We could have an entire show on just that one segment.
Next you have in community involvement.
This one's a little, this is a slippery slope for a lot of organizations.
Are you actively engaging and supporting your local communities?
This is key here.
Many employees become detached from a brand if leaders are being
disingenuous about their commitment to serving their local communities.
And finally, you have volunteering.
Do you support employees volunteering efforts or is it merely lip service?
So one of my favorite silver linings from the pandemic was a a resurgence
of appreciation for frontline workers.
We must remember, I always, I always preach this from the rooftops that.
All four segments are important customers, employees, leaders, and vendors.
A lot of businesses and brands, they, think about the customer
and the employees, but they leave out the leaders and the vendors and
all four segments have a symbiotic relationship and will determine the
failure or success of each organization.
The great resignation is the, the big brother of quiet, quitting, and far too
many retailers and businesses took their frontline employee workers for granted
and overworked their salaried leaders.
Our society is in the middle of the pendulum effect where energy has to be
rebalanced now, and the pendulum slash energy will eventually fall back into
perfect balance, which I call homeostasis.
I recently, I recently posted about how I implemented a four day work week
with full-time employees at Home Depot in 2001, and that was 22 years ago.
And the question I would have is, why hasn't this inclusive and
rewarding trend caught on yet?
So I applaud Lowe's for recently offering the scheduling option, but it's something
that you do and retailers can do this.
When I first thought about doing a remote working option for employees
in retail, I thought, it doesn't sound like that's gonna work.
You need employees on the floor.
They need to pack out the freight, they need to ring the registers.
But then I thought, I thought you could do a mild hybrid version of it for
writing reviews and doing stuff like that.
There is a way to, I, I discuss this more in the book and
then in the online courses.
And then as an added bonus for, for all the listeners of the Retail Razor Show,
I'm offering a $100 off discount to all listeners for the Ultimate Retail Course.
All you have to do is enter RETAILROCKSTAR100OFF at checkout.
Go to the ultimateretailcourse.com and for any of my consulting
services at New Retail Ethos, you can go to newretailethos.com.
Ricardo Belmar: Oh, that's fantastic.
Thank you for that, Jeffrey.
That's amazing.
So one of the things that strikes me from what you described is, I, I think
a key component to this is that your employees have to feel that not only
do they are, are, is their creativity welcomed, but I I think there has
to be a a lack of fear of failure.
And I, I would imagine that maybe that is perhaps the, the toughest part
for the retail leaders you work with to accept that they, they may not be
used to the idea that it's okay if, if you, you let your employees be
creative, you let them take something on, but maybe it doesn't work.
But to your point, it, there's a difference between, okay, you try
and it didn't work out, then you try something else versus I keep trying
it 5, 6, 7 times and keep failing.
Jeffrey McNulty: Yeah, that's, that's a great point you bring up, Ricardo.
One of the things that I wanted to do as a leader first and foremost, I,
I generally love people as you know.
I, I love to engage with people on LinkedIn and I love to get to
know people and learn about them.
That came from my working in retail for all those decades.
But I fostered an environment where I allowed people to, to not view it as
a mistake, to view it as a lesson.
It's only a mistake.
I, I used to preach this.
In fact, I had some buttons made up one time that said, it's only a
mistake if you don't learn the lesson.
And that was to send a message to every employee and every leader in
the stores and district that, you know what, we're all gonna make mistakes.
But the key is, it's only a mistake if you don't learn the lesson.
And that's really the key to make sure that people feel that, that support
and that comfortability with you, that as a leader, you know, the, the
one of the hardest things for me to understand and realize is as when I
was a store leader of 400 employees in a store doing like $70 million a year,
is that you cast a very large shadow and everything you do is being watched
by employees and leaders, and you almost feel like a, like a celebrity.
Not for me the celebrity part being the fame and all that, but
everybody's watching everything you do.
They're watching your interactions.
They're watching how you handle, a customer issue or an employee issue.
They listen to how you talk about other employees.
Are you gossiping?
Are you sharing information that's sensitive?
They watch what you do and they find out, do you have character?
Do you have integrity?
If I keep, if I divulge a secret to you, are you gonna keep that secret or
are you gonna share it with your circle.
You're clicque, that type of stuff.
So I would foster the environment where it's okay to not be able
to complete something where you learned a lesson along the way.
Now, the key is, is you gotta have consistent improvement though.
If you want to tackle something that's very creative, make
sure that it's something that they're very passionate about.
Number one, we've talked about that.
And number two, make sure that they understand that
just continual growth is good.
You're gonna, you're gonna have some dips.
Ok, you're gonna fall in the ditch a few times, get back up.
And I used to always ask, whenever they say, I'm so sorry I made a mistake.
I'm like, no, no, we're not there yet.
What did you learn?
Tell me what you learned from what, what didn't work out?
Right?
And as long as they learned something from that, I'm like,
it's not, not a mistake anymore.
Now it's a lesson.
Now we can't make this same lesson over and over again.
You gotta learn the lesson the first or second time.
But the key is, is that the employees need to feel comfortable that they can
do this and express their creativity.
Because I'll tell you something, when you have 400 people in your
store, and you're only one person.
You're not gonna have better ideas than all 400 people.
It's not gonna happen.
No matter how smart you think you are, no matter how much knowledge you have,
no matter how many years of experience.
I talk about in the book five different biases.
When you have you're doing performance appraisals.
And one of 'em, one of 'em is called tenured biases.
And these are when people have tenure with an organization or in a position
and they're not receiving any more information coming from anyone.
I know it all, I have confirmation bias is in full swing.
And I'm like, I don't understand, just cuz you had 10 years in this
position with this company, who's to say that you know everything?
Nobody knows everything.
And these people weren't approachable.
They, they weren't accepting new information and it destroyed the whole
vibe in the store or in their department.
So I'm really passionate about this, as you can tell.
We could go on and on, but I know, I know we have time limits, so.
Casey Golden: No, thank you for sharing, Jeffrey.
I mean, more retailers could really amplify intrapreneur,
shop, ship, ugh, opportunities.
It, it's definitely something that I'm not, I don't think I've ever
experienced in an organization so much as a defined initiative.
Jeffrey McNulty: Yeah, that's, that's something that's, and you worked, you
worked in retail for a while, Casey, and it's, it's prevalent through a lot of the
retailers, it's, it's, it's a win-win.
You can't lose with this.
If you, if you explain the structure, you explain the protocols the employees
have, the, the support and the inclusion, they're allowed to, to, to
make some errors every now and again.
Again, they're not mistakes.
They're only mistakes if they don't learn.
But I mean, think about it.
You have 400 people in your store.
You could have 400 intrapreneurs.
Now granted, there's some people that have some, some outlandish ideas
that just don't align with a brand or something, and you have to reel 'em
in a little bit from time to time.
I mean, but, but you gotta remember, it's because they have that passion.
And to me it was, I, I, my stores were on autopilot when it came to
this because people felt like they could really express their creativity.
I positioned them, and this is why I always, I didn't like leaving stores after
a while because I got the store running.
It's in tip top shape.
It's like a nascar, the engines running perfect.
Your, your, your, your times are keep getting better.
It was perfectly smooth and oiled and everybody got along, and then you go to
a new store and you start all over again.
But that's the challenge.
I was known as a cleanup guy, a fixer.
They wanted me to go into tough areas and tough stores and fix the morale,
and that's the first thing I worked on, is the morale of the store.
Pull all the leaders aside and say, listen guys, we, we need to make
sure we're working together as one symbiotic unit and we need to have
one message, and that's, we care about the employees and we gotta show it.
But you're right, Casey intrapreneurship, you gotta have leaders that
generally care about people.
And, they gotta put their ego aside because a lot of leaders I worked
with that, they felt that if the idea didn't come from directly from
them, that their employees or leaders below them were gonna upstage them.
And I would pull them aside and say, no, no, no, you gotta remember, they're a d
a direct reflection of your leadership.
So when they come up with great ideas, it's reflecting positively on you.
So they elevate and then you get elevated because you're elevating the employees and
allowing them to express their creativity.
It literally is a win-win.
But I've worked for some leaders that there was zero creativity allowed,
zero autonomy zero intrapreneurship.
And I said to myself, I can't, I can't wait to be a store manager or district
manager so I can finally implement the ideas that I know are successful.
Like Jeff said, they'd say, Jeff, what do you, what do
you love about being a leader?
The extra money and the stock options and the bonuses.
Don't get me wrong, that's great.
I'm not gonna lie to you who doesn't like that?
But to me it was I can finally make the right decisions now to help people.
And because I cared about people and I wanted them to succeed, I said, ego,
you're gonna sit on the shelf for a while.
You're not needed right now.
This is, this is the time for the employees to shine and other
leaders to show what they can do.
And it never, it never failed me every single time.
It was always a win-win.
Casey Golden: Great insights.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Jeffrey McNulty: My pleasure.
Casey Golden: if you've enjoyed our show, please consider giving
us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts and Goodpods.
Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player and tune
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I'm your cohost, Casey Golden.
Ricardo Belmar: Please share your feedback with us on Twitter at Casey
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I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.
Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.
Ricardo Belmar: Until next time, keep cutting through
the clutter and stay sharp.
This is the Retail Razor Blade to Greatness.