Archie Norman, the UK supermarket guru who engineered the turnaround of the Asda supermarket chain says a winning culture is critical to success. That makes sense. When you read the article, Culture is key weapon in asile wars by Simon Evans in Friday’s AFR (pg 58) the comment about a winning culture makes even more sense.
Norman’s comment about culture has been on my mind this weekend as I have been thinking about some newsagencies I know of which are struggling. You can find an interesting insight into his approach to the job of supermarket boss here.
we have an extraordinary network across the country yet we do little to truly leverage this for our commercial advantage. While some of us may have strong success focused cultures in our individual businesses, the big challenge we face is developing such a culture nationally and consistently.
Given how our stationery, magazines and even greeting card business has performed in recent years compared to our competitors, we need a turnaround expert like Archie Norman telling us how it is and what we must do if we are to succeed.
Is your trade association like the NFRN, stuck in the victim mode?
I view the opportunity for trade bodies to act positively, championing the future, not the past as crucial to our future.
They just have to get commercial!
Steve
Steve,
For me it is a definite YES to your first question – others may disagree.
Having said that I am not a believer in industry associations becmming the source of new ideas, change or forward thinking. This is the place of marketing groups/franchises.
But you couldn’t be more right – “they just have to get commercial!”
The independant supermarket industry was in a similar situation that the newsagency industry is in now. It had lost massive amounts of market share and had little direction for the future – it played the victim.
Then came along some proactive and forward thinking marketing groups – namely IGA, Foodworks and SPAR. Since then the industry has flourished. Year on year growth well above the majors and a positive new attitude that continues to drive the industry forward – all with little input from industry bodies (they tend to focus mainly on legal and political issues).