Empty Our Plate

I constantly hear that a store director's plate is full.  That we are responsible for so many things that it is hard to get everything done.  This may be true but I would like to give everyone - including myself - something to think about.

One of the hardest thing to do as a leader is to delegate.  It is hard because we became successful by doing many of things that we should now be delegating...and we probably think we do them better than anyone else anyway.  But we cannot be successful as a leader without being able to delegate and trust the people who trust us as a leader.  As a leader we have to do our jobs differently than we did as we worked our way up the ladder.  We have to learn a new way to be successful.  There is too much to do in a store to try to do it all by ourselves.  Let's look at some of the things that fill up our plates everyday and see if we can pull some things off of it.

Green Half Hours - a big part of our day and a big statistic that we must meet.  However there is a co-manager over the front end as well as the front end manager, the back-up, the floor supervisors, the self-checkout attendant and the cashiers who are all responsible for this.  With that many people looking at it we should be able to move this off of our plate.

Out of Stocks - there are co-managers over each departments as well as the department heads, the assistant department heads and the lead clerks.  They should all be responsible for this part of our business.  Move it off your plate.

Wage Management -  there are co-managers over each departments as well as the department heads, the assistant department heads and the lead clerks.  They should all be responsible for this part of our business.  Move it off your plate...or at least move it to the edge with some of it dangling off.

Merchandising -  there are co-managers over each departments as well as the department heads, the assistant department heads and the lead clerks.  They should all be responsible for this part of our business.  Move it off your plate.  See a pattern developing?

Sanitation and Food Safety -  Care to guess what follows?  You're right!  There are co-managers over each departments as well as the department heads, the assistant department heads and the lead clerks.  They should all be responsible for this part of our business.  Move it off your plate.

I could go on and on about many of the things on our plates and give the same answer.  What we have to do is make sure that all of these people - our co-managers, department managers, back-ups, leads, supervisors, etc have the training and the tools to properly do their jobs and then we hold them accountable for the results - and we should expect positive results if we give them what they need.  My point is that we have many people in our stores to help us get things done if only we let them.

We can then concentrate on the thing that we cannot delegate...creating the environment that allows for success.  As a leader this should be our focus.  Success for our associates and success for our customers.

What?  Success for our customers?

Yes

Success for our customers means that they are getting what they want, when they want it, how they want it...a Highly Successful Shopping Experience or as we say a Highly Satisfied Shopping Experience.

If we learn to delegate.  If we give our team the tools and the training.  If we create the environment that allows for success to happen our plates become much lighter - with much healthier stuff on it.  And the lighter our plates become the more time we can spend on creating the successful environment which lightens our plates, which gives us more time, which lightens...

Just something to think about...