NEWS EXTRA: NMBS CONFERENCE CONFERENCE TAKEAWAYS...
SOPHIE DEVONSHIRE: Speeding up business
GEORGE BRICKWOOD: Digitised future
GILES BRADFORD: Sustainable building
NEWS EXTRA
l You as individuals have incredible opportunities to make a difference. l Great leaders are great storytellers. They understand you don’t tell people what to do anymore, and just scream at them to go faster. l When you give people a very clear framework, and a set period of time, deadlines to deliver, it’s amazing what amount of communication or what amount of work you can get done in that time. l Companies like Uber and Amazon have changed the pace for everybody. We’re operating in a world where there is a huge amount of impatience. l We need to be pace setters but it has to be the right pace. You’ve got to be able to move fast to make things right, and you have to be set up as an organisation to be agile and responsive. But at the same time, you have to be responsive and responsible. l Think about not just your speed, but your velocity. Velocity is speed in a given direction. Have you got that high velocity leadership? Do you know your audience? Do you know who you’re selling to? l Empathy is powerful. Knowing your audience, knowing your team. The smartest people I’ve met are the ones who take time to understand themselves. l Don’t be afraid to adopt strategic laziness. Bill Gates says if you want something done, give it to a lazy person. They will find the quickest, smartest, easiest way to get there. l People can be divided into four categories: clever and hardworking; clever and lazy; stupid and lazy and stupid and hardworking. All have their place in an organisation. Anyone who is both clever and lazy, is qualified for the highest leadership duties because they possess the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. l You can do anything, but you cannot do everything. Ask how you can get people to help you, how you can get lazy but achieve more. Be strategically lazy about what goes into your diary and make sure you leave some space for the unexpected. Put things on your to do list. Look at what you need to do now, next and never. BMJ
l It took 65 years for 50 million people to use airlines, and about five for Facebook to get to 50 million users. l Blockbuster Video didn’t move quickly enough to change to a more dynamic way of thinking and therefore they started to lose market share. Netflix offered $50 million to buy them out and they declined. Within a few years, Blockbuster was bust. Netflix continues to grow, despite their own challenges needing to change their model to catch up the likes of Disney+. l Just over half of B2B buyers make decisions via online research prior to engaging with the salesforce. l In my Wolseley days, we would take a mil- lion phone calls a year into the branches asking two questions: Do you have it and how much is it? We spent a lot of money investing in the phone system to improve the customer experi- ence, but not, at the time, in technology to give customers access to that data without picking up the phone. Simple things like getting their own prices, stock feeds and stock locations. It sounds obvious today. Outside of work your B2B buyers are buying for themselves and want the same experiences they get with Ocado or Amazon. l Without the right data, Google cannot bring your product to the top of the list. l People want things to be simple, they want ease of use and speed of use. If you can’t buy the product easily, people won’t buy it. And if you’re difficult to do business with, then people will go elsewhere. l The digital age is already here. It’s not com- ing down the road. If we don’t embrace it, we risk not being around too much longer l 75% of the workforce will be digital natives in the next three years, who have grown up with technology. They’re your customers, your workers. They want things to be simple, to be easy. High quality consistent data is absolutely key. You get the data wrong, the processes can’t work. l Digitally enabled businesses grow quicker, but they’re also more resilient to the future. And to the future demands of our customers as well. BMJ
July 2022
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
l In the UK, 40% of the carbon emissions are down to the construction industry. l 30% of builders merchants’ embodied carbon comes from the manufacturers’ world, with all materials manufacture and processing, and the energy required to do that. l When a merchant sells a product, 60% of the embodied carbon associated with that is due to how the product is put into the building, and how it’s used throughout its life. l What are you doing to enable the flow of products and information to help customers build more sustainably? Manufacturers and suppliers need to help merchants; they are the experts at the stuff that merchants sell. l Merchants need to upskill their businesses to help sell sustainability. What are we doing to ease the flow of products and data to enable our customers to build more sustainably? l Manufacturers are identifying what’s going on in our environment and using their expertise to try and solve their problems. Marshalls, for example, have their permeable paving and solutions to try and solve the issue of excess rainwater, similarly Polypipe are looking to find solutions with their green urbanisation systems. They’re also looking at the problem of heat islands, and the fact that our cities are getting hotter. Then there’s the new kids on the block Pallett Loop, who are not supplying the products, but who are trying to totally revolutionise how we use and re-use pallets in the industry. l None of our customers are going to know about this unless we tell them. We have a responsibility to influence that end user. l Manufacturers and suppliers you need to challenge us to be receptive. Don’t wait for us. l Our people are the most valuable tool we have to drive this change. We must give our teams the tools and the competence and confidence to talk about projects with our customers. Make sure they know how to build an energy efficient house, have the confidence to help customers and know at the same time that they’re making a little bit of difference. l Let’s collaborate. Let’s talk together. Let’s not compete, and let’s make this journey happen faster, by working together.
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