Human Resources Issues for Senior Management
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/418509
22 executive Series digest hrreporter.com Faculty of Education Centre for Adult Education and Community Outreach NEw CHapTEr book-selling behemoth created stiff compe- tition in Canada and the U.S. alike. e change that occurred in book re- tailing was seismic and practically instan- taneous. "Overnight, the digitalization of read- ing changed the way that people experi- ence reading… and, all of a sudden, what it meant to be the most inspiring book re- tailer changed truly almost overnight," said Dunne. "So there's Indigo, and we're the best at something that is starting to feel increas- ingly irrelevant. So the mission of being the most inspiring bookstore suddenly doesn't have the kind of trajectory that we thought it was going to have." As the industry reached a tipping point, it became very difficult for retailers to re- orient themselves to the new economics of the business — and new customer expecta- tions. In the U.S., Borders didn't anticipate it quickly enough, she said. It shuttered many of its stores almost overnight. "And the most astonishing thing is, the next year, Barnes & Noble's revenue dropped. So imagine — you lose your big- gest competitor, who had $3 billion worth of sales, their stores are gone, and your rev- enue drops. And so where did it go? A huge amount of it went to Amazon," she said. "It's very tough to compete." And it's even tougher to compete when the social media boom begins to eat up a lot of time and resources. "Everybody had to find a way to respond instantly to customers and manage distem- per and seize opportunities," she said. "It was consuming an inordinate amount of capacity within the organization." evolving strategy Senior leadership at Indigo looked at all of these different factors, added them up and asked themselves, "Where do we go from here?" said Dunne. "We had a moment of epiphany where it really was: We have a purpose and not a mission. And our purpose is to enrich the lives of our customers. And we do that by igniting their passions and unleashing their creativity. at's the experience that we want customers to have when they connect with Indigo," she said. "We're not just enriching people's lives through a book experience and through a bricks-and-mortar retail experience… Now, (it's) not just about connecting that book- lover with their next great read — it's about inviting people into our environments, and inviting them to experience something — whether that is something joyful in home decor, something thought-provoking in reading, something imaginative and cre- ative to stimulate their kids, something wonderful and new to try in gourmet or en- tertaining. It is all about making them think of something that's possible for them, that maybe they hadn't thought about before." Indigo has to maintain this in retail and online, in addition to connecting with cus- tomers on multiple levels — social media, mobile apps and more. "But it's easier because we now have this as a guiding beacon. It's not just that 'We'll be the best, give us any measure, give us any target — we'll beat it.' It is, 'How can we be guided by what we're creating for our cus- tomers?'" said Dunne. "We experienced the need to reframe the strategic planning from 'What is the out- put?' to 'What is the purpose?' And it has now put us in a place where we feel much more confident and much more agile, going into what we know will be a continuously changing environment."