Lazy, trite cliché ahead:

"Change is the only constant in life.”

This creaky old aphorism is usually attributed to Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, who is reputed to have said it sometime c.535 BC – 475 BC.  His doctrines were predicated upon change being central to the Universe at large and he was clearly a prescient chappy.  Two and half thousand-odd years later, nothing, of course, has changed other than everything and the pace at which such change takes place.  Fast-forward to 2020 and the Retail & Hospitality world is reeling from events precipitated by the pandemic which have further accelerated the critical need for fundamental, core changes to operating practices in a very different world.

Just last week I wrote about John Lewis & Partners' new Group Chair, Dame Sharon White, and her task ahead to alter the direction of one of the UK's most established and respected Retailers.  Announcing vastly reduced operating profits she also stated that COVID-19 had brought forward changes in consumer shopping habits "which might have taken five years into five months".  From a personal, professional perspective such a comment is frustrating and disappointing in equal measure, due to the fact that, along with many other industry analysts and Retail Data specialists, the need for sector Digital Transformation to counter such exponential change is what I have been talking about for literally years.  The pity of it all is that it has taken the pandemic for many Retailers to see (and experience...) it before they are now forced to act.

So how does a business go about instilling a culture of change?  Digital Transformation may be perceived as a technical-only 'revolution' in the way an organisation operates but there are many underlying human and cultural aspects which are part and parcel of embarking upon such a programme of change.  As I have said too many times, the critical goal of Digital Transformation must be to ensure that the customer is at the heart of everything and technology alone cannot and will not address this.  The changes necessary affect every facet of an organisation, which leads us to another truism about the need for a wholehearted organisation-wide cultural buy-in to the reasons why the DT programme will never have a start and end date, but will instead be a tenet of continuous improvement.

Dating from just after the end of the second World War, the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen translates as 'a mindset and practice of continuous improvement through innovation and evolution.'  'Kai-' means 'change' and '-zen' means 'good' or 'better'.  It was originally a philosophy embedded into car manufacturer Toyota's production process as part of quality control but has, over the decades, been co-opted into business process re-alignment and also project/programme management practices across the world.  Today, software development principles leverage Kaizen as an intrinsic element of rapid delivery, rapid return deployment characteristics such as those utilised in a DevOps model.  But why are they important to the world of Retail & Hospitality?

Dame Sharon White's observation that the pace of change has become seriously exponential means that businesses have to react with agility and speed not just to compete effectively but to simply survive.  As a result, continuous improvement DevOps-type models offer the opportunity to measure the efficacy of proposed changes much faster and, critically, the opportunity to fail faster.  Yes, Digital Transformation by its very nature has technology-based moving parts but in an age when the greatest resource at the heart of customer service is still human resource, it is imperative that Retail & Hospitality builds itself the vehicles by which the giant sandbox allows rapid trial and error.  Don't be afraid to experiment - don't be afraid to fail (perhaps multiple times) - don't be afraid to make such a pattern the new modus operandi of the business.  It is how organisations achieve continuous improvement, and today is is more vital than ever.

Our old pal Heraclitus would have been a fan of continuous improvement, I'm sure.  Sitting in the waiting area of the down-town Ephesus wax-tablet upgrade centre, eagerly anticipating the wax writing surface installation of v2.1.3 (codename: 'HoneyHive' - "enjoy a smoother stylus-surface interface!" - "enhanced character recognition!"), he would have understood that the constancy of change can lead to dynamic improvement if/when harnessed correctly.  His philosophies and thinking may be millennia old but the principles themselves are, irony of irony, the things which have not changed.  Embrace continuous improvement as part of Digital Transformation, Retail; be prepared to fail fast and often but also be ready to reap the benefits of continually striving to build a culture of fearless change.  Change can be your greatest Chance...