Friction is a common theme among speakers at business conferences I have attended this year. It came uo several times at the Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas last week.
Each use of the term has been in the context of business but before I look at that, here is the dictionary definition of friction:
surface resistance to relative motion, as of a body sliding or rolling.
Those I have heard using the term are referring to points in a business that jar, slow processes down or act as some form of barrier to business success.
Given the use of the term friction I have heard from business leaders this year I wonder if it is the new in word. Like alignment was last year and unpacking the year before that.
While I am not one for business jargon, I am interested in statements and labels that help us understand our businesses and that help us work on impediments to success. I like the term friction in the business context. I like it because it is real and because every business experiences it.
Some of the areas of friction in newsagency businesses today include:
- Things that slow down the processing of sales at the counter.
- Poor business management processes that result is slower than reasonable handling of day to day tasks such as end of shift, store opening and store closing.
- Delays and or complications in ordering from a supplier.
- Poor business practices that act as a labour tax on our businesses – such as manual processing of magazine and newspaper returns.
- Poor problem resolution processes.
- Poor handling of technical outages.
- Conflicting pricing messages.
- Visual merchandising that is not relevant to shoppers today.
Friction in our newsagencies is anything that slows our pursuit of the goals for our businesses. The resolution is to either ease the friction or remove it. Our channel being what it is, sometimes we can ease it or remove it while other times we cannot – in those instances we may need to confront changing tracks altogether. This is why of don’t have Tatts in my business. I am better off financially and emotionally without the friction. There are other examples too.
I hope O have explained this well enough. Personally, thinking about friction is helping me see opportunities for improvement in the business.