Ron Thurston: You need to change what you're gonna do differently today.
There's no time to waste.
There's done every day of business counts.
Every customer is valuable today, every customer is valuable.
If you lose them, you won't get them back with your strategy for next year.
You've gotta move, you've gotta act, you've gotta be clear, and you've gotta
communicate to a really big audience.
Ricardo Belmar: Confusion breeds chaos.
But clarity.
Clarity builds confidence.
more information does not automatically equal more clarity.
Sometimes it's just the opposite, right?
More information just clouds what's happening.
Ron Thurston: The person standing in front of the customer is the number
one most important employee in your company because they are the driver
of the decision about conversion, about retention, about loyalty,
about return visits, about returns.
That person holds the key
Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to Blade to Greatness, the podcast where
retail leaders sharpen their edge one essential skill at a time, as
we uncover the essential traits every retail leader needs to thrive.
I'm Ricardo Belmar.
Casey Golden: And I am Casey Golden.
Each episode we're joined by a guest who brings one leadership skill into
sharp focus, and today is one that's often overlooked, but absolutely vital.
Clarity.
Ricardo Belmar: In today's retail world, your team isn't
just looking for instructions.
They're looking for purpose, expectations, and values.
Confusion breeds chaos.
But clarity.
Clarity builds confidence.
Casey Golden: Our guest today is Ron Thurston, bestselling author of Retail
Pride and Human Pride, host of the podcasts, Frontline Fridays and Retail
Intelligence in Action, senior Retail Executives at many leading retail brands.
And one of the most thoughtful voices in our industry.
Ron breaks down the difference between information and clarity and why most
retail environments are drowning in the former, but starving for the latter.
Ricardo Belmar: You will hear how clear communication drives accountability.
Engagement and execution and how a simple daily practice like a
startup shift clarity check-in can transform team performance.
Casey Golden: This episode is a must listen for anyone who
wants to lead with intention and empower their team to thrive.
Ricardo Belmar: Now before we jump in, just one quick ask
of our listeners and viewers.
If you like our show, please consider giving us a five star rating and drop
a quick review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Goodpods.
We really appreciate your support.
Casey Golden: Check out the other shows in our Retail Razor Podcast
Network, The Retail Razor Show, Retail Transformers and Data Blades.
If you're on Apple podcasts, just search for the retail razor channel to find them.
Or visit YouTube and see them all.
Ricardo Belmar: So with that said, let's get into it.
Here's our conversation with Ron Thurston.
Casey Golden: Ron, welcome back to The Blade to Greatness.
Always a pleasure to have you on the show.
Ron Thurston: Thank you.
Thank you Casey and Ricardo.
I'm really happy to be back again.
Ricardo Belmar: yeah, Ron.
I think I've lost track of how many episodes across our shows you've
been on, but I think we have to at least be up to 11, maybe more.
Ron Thurston: That's amazing and I'm so grateful.
Thank you.
You've, you've been on a journey with me the last five years, and
you've always been there to support messaging on books and speaking,
and podcasts and all of the work,
Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.
Yep.
It's been a fantastic journey.
So, so today you're gonna talk about a really important topic I think every
retail leader should be thinking about, and that's how to deliver clarity.
There's just so much confusion out there.
Explain to us why it's so crucial for successful retail leaders, to really focus
on delivering clarity to their teams.
Ron Thurston: Yeah.
Thanks Ricardo.
And, and you're right.
This is a really important moment, I believe for so many different reasons.
One is, the clarity in our in business, which, you know, happy to.
To speak more about, but there's also just chaos overall happening in the world.
And so there's, there is just, there is a constant stream of news and
noise happening in every employee that works in your organization and
everyone is feeling something about how it impacts them and it, and it's not
that you would want to ask questions that may spark political conversation
or about conflict in the world.
You would never want to intentionally do that but it's important from
an empathy standpoint to recognize that people are feeling a great
amount of chaos on the sides.
And when their safe place becomes their leader and their workplace,
it, I believe can certainly make the rest of the work seem more reasonable.
And that clarity that, that comes with great leadership.
And the way that I really describe this is this idea of mistaking
information for clarity more information similar maybe to news cycles is not
clarity on what the expectations are.
That's just more information that you're requiring people to digest and
then try to decipher what's important.
It's that, that clarity, it, you know, it can flood your inboxes
and continue to just deliver chaos.
And that leaders then sometimes think that that more information will,
will, they will say, well, but I sent you that email, or I sent you
that slack, or we had that call.
We had that Zoom and, and so you're expecting.
Your team to do the work for you to discover what's important.
And that clarity becomes the moment when you say, I understand there are
40 things going on, but here's how we're going to talk about the top
three, and here are the things that I, we're gonna talk about the top three.
And within those, these are the expectations of what success looks like.
And just being that clear.
sets this sense of calm, of like, I understand what I need to do.
I understand what's expected of me.
I understand what success is, and now I can go deliver on those three things.
And when senior leadership leads with that level of clarity, then you have
to again, live under the assumption in retail that have very large teams
and the more chaos you deliver in the form of thousands of emails and calls
and slacks or however you communicate.
The more you do that, the audience just gets the funnel to communication is wide
in retail because the teams are so large.
And so you know, on average most brands would say 80% of
their workforce is in stores.
It's not in the office, it's in stores.
So just like your business is being delivered in stores, so
are most of your headcount.
And so I think about this in terms of how clear do I need to be at the top, which
is the most clear you will ever need to be, so that by the time it gets six.
Layers down across every employee in every store.
They know exactly what I said.
And if, if that is your mindset in clarity, I believe that your
message actually will get down.
Not your top 10, either things or top 15, or just your stream of consciousness.
That doesn't help anyone in the field.
And I, I know this to be true because you know when you visit
stores, you take a tour across the country and you go visit teams, as
everyone listening should always do.
The first questions you can ask are, are you clear on what the company
goals are, do you know what's important from a culture standpoint?
Do you understand why we're doing certain things or why
we're not doing certain things?
And if, three stores into this tour, no one can answer those questions,
then it's very much a self-reflected exercise of what do I need to do
differently then, because it's not clear.
I want to sing like clarity is not information and there is such an a
misinterpretation of what that means.
And I love this idea of like, that clarity creates purpose and it
creates the drive to do it well.
And when teams are aligned on mission, purpose, whether you're talking about
military terms or retail or any other business, if they're clear on mission and
purpose, then you can go deliver that.
Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.
No, that's so true.
That's so true.
So I, I love the point about how, more information does not
automatically equal more clarity.
Sometimes it's just the opposite, right?
More information just clouds what's happening.
So do you have some good examples of what, what is that kind of
clarity look like in action.
Particularly, when trying to deliver that, those message and
that clarity to store teams.
Ron Thurston: Yeah, and I, so I love this idea of kind of clarity check-in,
similar to this kind of store visit that I described, but you could do
it in a corporate environment you know, sit down a, a listening session.
As a leader be very open to say, Hey, just wanna check in and see, are you really
clear on what we're doing right now?
Are you clear on what the company goals and culture and mission are today?
And if they're kind of fumbling around the answers, well, I heard this
and I heard we might be doing this.
And I'm not sure why we've made this decision as a company.
Immediately, the answer is you are not being clear.
It's, it's a self-reflective exercise as a leader of, I'm not being clear.
And it's very easy to say things like, well, why didn't you read your email?
Or Why didn't you?
This was always my thing.
It probably still happens.
Corporate team, corporate employees not understanding why store
teams don't read their email.
They don't have time.
I'm just telling you right now, they don't have time to read their email
or your Slack, and sometimes the only way you can get them is to text them.
And so I would like stop texting them.
They don't have time.
And so this clarity of message of how that looks and how that shows up.
In retail is even more important because they're not at your desk, they're on
the sales floor, they are at their desk maybe a couple of hours a week,
and they don't have time for this.
So clarity versus information in retail, in the field.
You know, there are great tools.
You know, Yoobic being one of them, Zipline, like there are incredible
resources to help navigate this.
But at the same time, if you're bombarding even a great communication
tool with more than they need to know, you're gonna get lost.
To always have this sense of, well, if I'm being clear, it's easy to digest.
I can recognize what's happening.
I can hear it repeated in stores during store visits.
And there that lack of confusion about what they need to do is mitigated
understanding how they are working.
They are on the sales floor and they have 30 seconds, maybe up to
two minutes to digest what you as a leadership team need to say to them.
That's it.
And with so clarity, to answer your question, Ricardo, clarity means I've
communicated in a way that's digestible enough to people who don't sit at a
desk, and that is, that's a real skill.
Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.
Yeah.
Casey Golden: And it's a real reality that I think a lot of people, forget,
especially when you have so many corporate team members now that
have never worked on the floor, they don't have that personal experience.
Ron Thurston: Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and it's fine if you, if you don't, and I, I, I appreciate it.
But then as I've said, probably on this show, you know, and many
other times, it's then our role as leaders to learn how other people
work, not the other way around.
The person standing in front of the customer is the number one
most important employee in your company because they are the driver
of the decision about conversion, about retention, about loyalty,
about return visits, about returns.
That person holds the key to every KPI in your business, and it's your
job as a leader to learn what their work is not the other way around.
And if you understand their day-to-day work, you understand the pressure that
they're on, what they need to deliver their business, and you listen with
intention and you take joy and pride in the fact that that is the number
one most important employee in the company, then they know that and they
will deliver on that clear message.
Casey Golden: How can a leader course correct if clarity's been missing?
Ron Thurston: What I would say is, again, kind of self, self-reflect and say, why?
Why is this such a struggle?
So you said you go on 10, 10 store visits.
Nobody has heard anything that you've said.
I'm the CEO, I'm visiting stores, and I'll, and you're asking questions.
No one knows anything about what you've been talking about.
The answer is, I don't do a good job communicating.
I, what I want to say, is not being heard.
And so then it is, well then we need to work differently as a company.
We need to change the way we communicate.
And because it's not working, and I have seen often the opposite of like the, the
blame gets put on the recipient that's supposed to be reading these messages
from their desk and instead say, you know what, how we're communicating from
the office isn't working or how we're communicating to each other, or how
we're communicating across department or how we make decisions isn't working.
So let's spend an hour and figure out how to change that.
And maybe it is less meetings, maybe it's faster decision making.
Maybe it is assigning work to different people who have the ability
to make decisions and move faster.
And so it's, for me, it's this, this business moves so fast that you don't have
time on your 2027 goal worksheets to think about what we're gonna do differently.
You need to change what you're gonna do differently today.
There's no time to waste.
There's done every day of business counts.
Every customer is valuable today, every customer is valuable.
If you lose them, you won't get them back with your strategy for next year.
You've gotta move, you've gotta act, you've gotta be clear, and you've gotta
communicate to a really big audience.
And that's the, it's the best version of retail in my opinion.
Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely.
That's a great point.
Absolutely.
Well, Ron, this has been a, a fantastic discussion.
Well, thank you so much for highlighting this really important
skill around clarity that every retail leader absolutely needs to master.
Ron Thurston: Pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
Casey Golden: Yeah.
As always, Ron, you bring such amazing insights on how we
can make impact immediately.
These are things that we can start changing.
Tomorrow.
And I appreciate the, the urgency.
Ron Thurston: Great.
Thank you.
Thank you, Casey and Ricardo.
Casey Golden: Well, that's a wrap, Ricardo.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Goodpods.
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I'm Casey Golden.
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Blade to Greatness is part of the Retail Razor Podcast Network.
I'm Ricardo Belmar.
Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.
Ricardo Belmar: Until next time!
Stay Sharp.
Lead Boldly.
And Stay Human.
This is The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness!