45 | Why Internal communications is so critically important yet under-utilized

It's not a post-COVID world, it's a COVID world, and we need to be agile all the time. And the world is changing faster than ever, and it's accelerating that pace of change every single day, and it's not going to stop. Training people to be agile is almost the number one objective from any CEO. You want to have an agile organization who can confront whatever changes come.

Welcome to the Inspiring Change podcast, where we talk to leaders about all things internal communications, engagement, leadership, and change. Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. It's funny, I was having a poke about the internet the other day and I came across an interview. I can't even remember where I found it. It was on a channel, on a UK news channel called London Live, a chap called James Bidwell. And it was only when he started talking about innovation and what he did and where he'd come from, and he mentioned Springwise, and And I suddenly went, I remember that. I must have subscribed to Springwise about 20 years ago. And I used to get their newsletter. And I'm going to let James, who's my guest today— I should probably say that— I'm going to let him explain a little more about Springwise in a while. But basically, people out around the world looking for great ideas, new ideas, new innovations, and the ability to look at those new ideas and those new innovations to come up with newer and better innovations and ideas. And I thought it was just a really, really nice idea and a lovely example of social sharing. It struck me then, as I watched more of this with James— and I'm lucky enough to have him on the show today— that organizations now are talking much more about innovation. We have to innovate because things have changed because of COVID There's now opportunity, but to get that opportunity, to meet that opportunity, we have to innovate. We have to be agile. We have to create cultures of failure because that's a good thing. And I always think that CEOs and senior execs tend to throw around words like that without much thought to exactly what it is they want people to do to make a difference, to effect change. And that's why I'm really pleased to have James on the podcast today. James, good afternoon. You're very welcome.

Thank you for having me on your podcast. It's really good to be here.

Great. Tell you what we'll do, let's kick off by— why don't you tell me a little bit about what you do, about where you've come from, and a little bit about Reset and Springwise?

Well, let me start with Springwise since you— it's always great to meet people who know Springwise, and many people have known it for a long time because Springwise actually started in 2002. So it's— we're going to have to celebrate the 20th anniversary soon.

I look forward to that invitation.

Yeah, exactly. Well, it'll be virtual, of course.

Of course.

Well, maybe it won't be by then. We may be able to meet and have a drink. But I took over Springwise 4 or 5 years, 5 years ago when it was going, but it was unloved. It had been going for quite a long time and it hadn't quite found its way. And there's a really nice guy called Ranier Evers who owned it at the time, and he allowed me to buy it off him. And that became the catalyst for my sort of innovation journey. And so Springwise, as you quite rightly say, we crowdsource innovation ideas from all around the world. We have people in 190 countries who send us ideas every day. We get about 100 ideas every day, and we publish the top 3 at springwise.com and also on our app, which we launched about a year ago. And really what it's there to do is to inspire people to be creative, to come up with new ideas, to change the way they do things and change their culture in a very positive way. So we call it Innovations That Matter. So we really care about positive change, and we care about people getting— looking at what startups are doing, looking at what university academics are doing, and looking at the innovations that are emerging, and then thinking about them in the context of maybe they're slightly bigger businesses or they're government organizations or whatever they're doing. And then using that as a catalyst for change. And Springwise, since I've had it, has been— it's really growing its audience, it's global, it's free, we have great newsletters every day. So it's kind of— it's a bit of a labor of love, but it's an amazing space for anyone who, as I think your audience must be, is interested in innovation and change. So I spend a little bit of time doing that, and then I spend the rest of my time running a business called Reset, And Reset is a strategy consultancy for innovation, disruption, and sustainability. And we work with the boards and CEOs of pretty big businesses across multiple sectors, so retail, real estate, insurance, travel and tourism, uh, and others, in order to help them figure out the future in this uncertain world. Um, and of course, we're quite fortunate that we came up with the name Reset, um, a few years ago. We're 3 years old now, and we focus on disruption, and Springwise inspires and empowers our thinking. We have a really bright group of people, and we just focus on the strategic issues and solving those and helping organizations set up the right strategy for the future. And then, as you know, the change— organizational change and the cultural change that comes with strategic shift. And of course, COVID has accelerated everything, uh, really dramatically. And just to complete the introduction, prior to doing all of this stuff that I do now, I was a CEO and CMO, marketing director, in big companies. So I was, uh, marketing director of Selfridges. I was the CEO of Anthropologie, the fashion business in Europe. I was CEO of Visit London, the tourism organization for London, which was great fun because it was around the Olympics in 2012 and the lead-up to that. And all of my life, my working life, I've been at sort of inflection points and I've been an agent of change. There's always been something going on that's either a launch or Selfridges was the turnaround. You won't remember, your listeners won't be, won't remember how bad it was before we got there in the early 2000s. And of course it's now one of the most successful department stores in the world. So That's led to me being able to have a different perspective on life now, and luckily I've got people who seem to think that's useful to have around the board table. Scott?

Great. So it's really interesting because you touched off sustainability there, and I know that you have recently as an organization become a B Corp. Tell us a little bit about that. What does that mean?

So the B Corp movement is something that was invented in the States but is now gathering momentum in Europe, and It is really— its purpose is to encourage as many businesses as possible around the world to be a force for good. And a force for good means you have to consider purpose in equal terms as profit. You have to consider all stakeholders and properly consider them at board level, and so staff, consumers, the planet. You have to have a whole social purpose built into your DNA of the organization and indeed your articles. And if I tell you it took us over a year to certify, so it's a very, very tough certification process, but of course when you get it, it's an amazing thing to have because it means that our energy is renewable, the way we look at travel is, you know, we look at travel in a very eco-friendly way, the way we treat our teams and also our supply chain. So any money we spend anywhere, we have to look at it through a lens lens of purpose and a lens of business as a force for good. And so that's very powerful for us, for our clients, for our teams. It's a fantastic retention for our colleagues, but also of course for people coming to work in consultancy. And some people may think that consultancy has got a certain reputation, but when they find that we're a B-Corp, it's a real attribute that people love to you know, love to be part of. So I get a lot of people coming to me and say, oh, that's fantastic, didn't realize there were any B Corp consultancies, I really want to work with you because purpose and all of that stuff is really important. So we announced it yesterday.

Fabulous, okay, so it's hot off the press.

It is, it's almost, if you get this out today, it might be the first exposure of it.

Excellent, excellent, would be a world leader in the news. I just think it's really interesting that, as you say there, you know, people see they see that feather in your cap, and they see that B-Corp above the door, and it makes them more inclined to want to come to you potentially as an employer. So as well as doing the right thing for people and planet in pursuit of profit, of course, you're making yourself an employer of choice, which in itself is a fantastic thing. And for me, aligns very nicely with purpose. And as we see, we hear lots and lots of talk about millennials, some of it possibly fair, lots of it possibly not quite so fair. And I just wonder, when we think about people and millennials particularly looking for organizations and roles that are more aligned with their values, more aligned with what they stand for, and therefore organizations that have purposes that are more aligned with the idea that there's something bigger than just company, I think that that whole idea of B Corp is really powerful. The whole idea of purpose, and it brings me back to a quote that actually I heard you say on that program that I first saw you speak on, where you said, brands who don't have purpose will fail. Now, that is a massive statement, and I just wonder why. Why is it that brands will fail if they don't have a purpose?

Well, of course, it is a highly complicated— it's a complicated— it's a very simple statement, but it's a complicated world in which we live. But I stand by that statement, and there are a number of reasons for that. The first is that, as we know, We have trashed our planet and we are trashing our planet, and business is a massive factor in that. So is government, and so are other forces. But we do live in a world where catastrophic climate change is coming our way, and I could talk the whole podcast about that. I care very deeply about it. We also live in a world where, you know, generations are shifting, obviously, but they're shifting quite fast, and particularly in the digital world that we live in. As we know, information crosses the world in seconds, and the generational shift, which is now accelerated by the COVID situation, I think is building a realization amongst the consumers of today and more importantly tomorrow that we have to do something about that, and we just cannot continue to consume more than we need, chuck stuff away, you know, chuck plastic in the ocean, pollute our rivers through, you know, water authorities that don't care and farmers that don't give a damn. And I think that movement is now coming and it is beginning to be reflected on the high street and in brands that consumers have historically gone to and not thought about. Consumers now think about purpose and that is not only upmarket expensive brands but it is coming to more more mass brands, and I think that it represents a huge opportunity for brands that do care, and I do believe that those that don't will fail. And we're seeing there are great examples which we won't talk about specifically around some of the labor being used in well-known fashion brands, and that will kill them, you know, and it should do because it's a disgrace. And the B Corp, of course, certifies us and means that we, you know, we are certified against all that kind of stuff, but wouldn't it be great if some of these other businesses followed that lead.

Yeah, and I think, you know, for me, from a purpose perspective, having everybody aligned around the one purpose, whether it be your customers on the high street understanding what it is you stand for and why you exist, but also your employees having that same and consistent understanding of why it is you exist and having the belief in the organization and to want to live that purpose every single day of the week. So, you know, when I think about it from, particularly from the perspective of this podcast around internal communications, around leadership, around change, and the whole idea of communicating purpose internally and really bringing it to life, what have you seen through some of the organizations you've worked with, like, you know, Selfridges or VisitLondon, or some of the clients that you've worked with in Reset? What have you seen that's worked really well in how organizations have tried to align their people behind purpose?

So it really comes down to one really, really important factor, which is the leadership and leadership. So it's the leadership in that if you get a CEO who really believes in purpose and believes in that change and believes that it's the right thing for the business, that believes that it can be commercially viable, then that gets you a long way down the, down the track. And what we do is we, we really try to work only with the best CEOs who really think about, who really care about that, and and we try to avoid the CEOs who just are trying to do it as a tick box exercise. And when you get that leadership and that vision, you have an open door in terms of being able to open up the rest of the organization. But the other side of it is that when we start to talk about— particularly when we talk about the environmental damage and we talk about— we do a lot of work in sustainability and social and activism and all that. When we talk about what's happening in the world and we educate, you find that people go, really, is that really what's happening? I'm almost ashamed that I live in a world where that's happening. And if my business can help fix that problem and I've got kids sitting at home and I've got grandchildren or whatever I've got and brothers and sisters, I need to be part of that. So you find that once the— if you've got the leadership and you've got the story and you take the time to educate, And then you have a clear strategy of how to do it and to make it commercially viable. And I'd like to talk about investors in a second. Then you— and we find that our work, we're the catalyst of change, so we're not doing it, we're helping write the strategy, or we write the strategy, but we always co-create. And then we catalyze that purpose to happen. And we have all sorts of techniques in Reset, and we use a lot of the Springwise material to kind of help bring it to life. But the organization is what's changing, not us. And so we find that it moves so much faster with the right CEO and the right messaging and the right education. And then of course the comms around that and telling that story. And the other part of it, Scott, which I wanted to mention is— and I should have mentioned earlier— is what's encouraging is we're now seeing investors thinking that all of this is important. At the moment, I still think it is hard to find investors who care more about anything than money. But at the same time, I am seeing funds being set up which are more purpose-driven. And I'm a believer in profit, but I'm a believer in profit with purpose. So impact funds, I think, that's great, but you might as well give that to charity. And actually, I think the trick to changing the world in which we live is businesses that are profitable and purposeful, and they are then going to be successful. And I give you the example, of course, which we know well, of Patagonia, which is still in private ownership, has been going, which still has its founder there, and has that mission, that really, really clear mission, which is, you know, in business to protect our home planet. You can't be clearer than that. Makes amazing clothes and products, but also has that culture and that activist kind of approach to change that has made it a very successful business. And what's nice is people are taking that as a role model and they're saying, okay, we're gonna copy that slightly and we're gonna do things in other categories, we're gonna take that ethos. You know, Toms of Maine and people like that, they're businesses which have— sorry, Toms of Maine and also Tom's Shoes, they're both B Corps, I think, are beginning to shift the dial.

Yeah, and I couldn't agree more about the leadership piece. And I think for me, that's leadership all the way down through an organization. It's all the way from the top through all the leaders in the organization, because it's all well and good for the CEO to stand up and say, as an organization, we need to do more to support our planet, to run a more sustainable business, to be more environmentally friendly, to think more about sustainability of people. But it's down to the leadership down through the organization to translate that for their staff, for their people, for their teams, wherever they work in an organization or whichever sector they work in, and bring that to life for them in a way that really connects.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And you know, it's a very different thing that they— you know, someone who's working in a shop or working at a more junior position in an organization, you know, what does that really mean for me? And and presenting that. And I think there is a really strong argument for brands with purpose being much more resilient. So you're more likely to keep your job, particularly in the moment in which we're living. You're more likely to be in an organization that's going to be successful in the future, and that's critical for all of us.

Your feedback is important to us, and I'd really appreciate it if you could please take a couple of minutes to rate this episode episode of the Inspiring Change podcast and perhaps leave a few words of feedback. Thanks so much. You know, moving that story on then, when I think about an organization that wants to become more purposeful, perhaps an organization that in the long term wants to become a B-Corp or change how it does business, I saw a great quote the other day, and I can't remember who it was accredited to, that people don't mind changing they just don't like being changed. And I thought that was really, it was really powerful because in organizations, you know, historically we've tended to just change things. We know what to be a B Corp, we're now going to do this, get on the bus. Or we're now going to change our process to be more in line with sustainability best practice, get on the bus. And we don't go out and we see and we don't find out from people and we don't ask people in the organization, well, how do we do that best? What's bothering you, what's going to get in the way, where are the hurdles, how do we get over them? And we don't involve people in that journey. And I wonder, again, from the organizations that you've worked with, what have you seen that organizations are doing to really support their people through change? And what's worked? What does best practice look like?

Well, you're preaching to the converted. And interestingly, our B Corp experience was that actually the teams really, really wanted to— to become a B-Corp. So it became something that everyone was involved in, and we had a couple of people leading on it, but it wasn't me. I mean, I sort of introduced the idea at the beginning, but it certainly wasn't me who drove it through. And of course, you get the most important thing, and this is why we call ourselves as a catalyst at Reset. The most important thing is to give that ownership and give that dreadful word empowerment, but allow the organization to live. And I've got a great, a good friend, I'm sure he wouldn't mind me mentioning him, he runs The Body Shop and he's one of the, you know, one of the great CEOs. We haven't worked with him, so I'm not conflicted, but we'd like to. But he talks about leadership in a really modern way and he talks about The command and control is completely, completely gone. This is about him and a group of people who are peers making a business great again. Actually, they are doing a fantastic job. They have another fantastic ownership structure, of course, because they are owned by Natura, the Brazilian guys who are a long-term investor, and he is a fantastic CEO. You just talk to him about that, and you know that the leadership and the organization is catalyzing itself because of that, you know, being led in that certain way. And we spend a long time when we're rolling out cultural change with the teams throughout the organization, really bringing them up to speed and educating around some of the topics and getting them to sort of get to the same conclusion, rather than saying, you know, here's an instruction seminar on, you know, this is what you've got to do. I think in a world of much more flexibility where we have to— I think about retail, the customer is now driving retail, not the shops or the retailers. Actually, like John Timson, the guy who runs Timson's, he has a sign outside his little shoe stores and key cutting stores and it says, the person in this who's running this store has my complete authority to do whatever it takes to make your customer experience brilliant. And that is, you know, the agility and the pride that that brings is really important. So all of those little touches, and back to your communications point from earlier, the comms around that is really, really important, and telling the story.

Yeah, and I love that, and I know that Timpsons are always trotted out as a really good example of an organization that has very high employee engagement levels and a very, very very solid culture. I know they take on lots of ex-convicts out of prison and retrain them. There was some talk of a holiday house somewhere that you could go and use. So, you know, there's a lot there that helps to build that culture in that organization. And yes, Mr. Simpson is somebody that I would dearly love to get on this podcast. I did ask before, and he was too busy.

But he's got an interesting family business, so still alone. But so I think there is a— back to the investor point of view, You have to divorce this from being beaten up by investors all the time, and not doing the right thing for short-term gain. And that's one of the reasons I think that there is— the whole investment structure, I think, and the infrastructure will change quite radically going forward. And there will be winners who are thinking about this, I'm sure.

OK. Let's talk a little bit about innovation, which, of course, is at the very core of what you guys do at Reset and the very, very core of Springwise. I've sat through, as I'm sure you have, and you may even have said these things in your roles as CEO, about having a culture of failure, a culture it's okay to fail, because if we're not failing, we're not trying hard enough, we're not pushing the envelope, we're not trying enough new things if we don't fail. We're not going to make any progress. I hear that a lot, but I wonder from your experience, what have you seen that leaders in organizations are doing to show their teams that that failure is okay, that that failure is acceptable, that when we say it's okay to fail, it actually is, and they're not just empty words?

So it's a great point, and we, like you say, we talk a lot about that. We kind of sometimes we phrase it slightly differently and we pilot things or we do MVPs, minimum viable products, so we bring stuff to market and then we'll close it if it's not working. You know, we're running programs, but it's hard. It's hard in big corporations. It's really hard. It's really hard, particularly in organizations where people have been there for a long time. They're used to doing things the same way. And now that things are disrupted and, you know, even in the last 3 or 4 years, things have been disrupting. You know, there have been various business models that are just not fit for the future, and the good news about COVID is that has accelerated some of the demise of some of those, you know, not fit for purpose business models. But the failure, you know, you have to really— where we've seen it work, excuse me, is setting up safe spaces within the organization. So we've set up innovation units where they're encouraged to do this and to pilot several things and fail fast, all of those sorts of things. So that's quite a good way of doing it, but I'm not suggesting you have to invest in 25 businesses and put a million, like some of the early incubators did. They were spending a fortune, and as one of my friends says, it's like chucking jelly at the wall and not much of it sticks. But where I have seen it succeed is in younger startup businesses. So I'm on the board of a business, a Berlin-based influencer marketing business, and we have purposely gone into new categories to test them. And we'd go in and we go in for 3 to 6 months, and then if they're not working, we close them down. And we do that on an ongoing basis. And if when you're doing that and you're communicating it correctly to the rest of the organization, it's kind of, this is the way we do things. And you'll see a lot of the startup mentalities, and you will experience that as well. You know, that's how these guys work, and it's just part of the way they work. And so injecting a little bit of that and showing people in sort of more old-fashioned organizations that that stuff is happening in other places and it is okay. And actually, our business in Berlin is incredibly successful because the ones that do work, work very well. You know, you demonstrate it. So you have— so it's all about, rather than just sort of saying it, it's about demonstrating it. And of course, in a bigger organization, if someone does fail, inverted commas, then you pick them up and you say, okay, well, that was well done. And, you know, what have you learned? What have we learned? How do you turn that into an opportunity? And we're in the— we're in the business. I wrote a piece recently about we're living in a COVID world. It's not a post-COVID world, it's a COVID world. And we need to, to be agile all the time. And the world is changing faster than ever, and it's accelerating that pace of change every single day. And it's not going to stop. So it's the new norm, and we have to get used to it. And training people to be agile is almost the number one objective from any CEO. You want to have an agile organization who can confront whatever changes come.

Yeah, and I think to your point about business models failing because they just weren't fit for purpose anymore, but they were just managing to creep along just enough to keep going. Until this happened, and bang, suddenly everything shut down, everything stopped, and suddenly they're looking and going, well, perhaps we don't have a business anymore. And arguably you could say that a very large high street retailer of Irish descent that begins with a P that doesn't trade online is maybe a good example of that. So maybe we'll be seeing an e-com website coming from them soon. You've talked a lot there about agility. And I do agree that agility is one of those things that sets those new entrant organizations apart from the bigger, older dinosaurs, which, look, in themselves have been very successful for many, many years. But they just don't have the fleet of foot or the ability to change direction as much as— an example I really like is Monzo Bank, for example, the online startup bank, or N26, or Starling, or any of the new banks who are able to change direction on a sixpence, try new products, work out if they work very quickly, and if they don't work, bin them and try something else. So they've got the edge definitely over those bigger— the old oil tanker analogy that we use often— certainly got the edge over those guys. But it all, of course, boils back down to culture. Because the people that work in your organization in Berlin, the people that work in Monzo or Starling or N26, they haven't had to come from a culture which is 100 years old. They've come from a culture which is 2 years old that they've made and built alongside the systems that they have. To make those things run. So I wonder, when you think about that whole idea of culture, I wonder what you've seen are some of the practical things that organizations can do to try and instill the idea of agility, and innovation, and failure into their culture.

I mean, for me, it's more about leading by example and doing it, and walking the talk rather than saying it. But at the same time, what about— I mean, where have we seen big culture shift? I think when it works best is you have a— you create a North Star which— and you have a very strong North Star which is communicated around extremely well, and it's got good thinking behind it. And it's a lot of the work we do at Reset. And if it's right, then it allows not only the marketing people to get behind it, but it actually allows the whole the whole company to get behind it. So having a really strong sense of direction, a strong vision for an organization. So for, you know, our Reset vision is create a better future today. It's really simple and, you know, everyone understands what that's— what we're trying to do. And today means like we're in a hurry, as you know. So I think having that, and as much we're a small business, but when I've seen that Somewhere like L'Occitane is another brand which has got this kind of Provencal ethos through it and has had it kind of ingrained from its founder Olivier Besson for always. And they really just know what they're doing, even as they become a much bigger business. And so that's when you really understand all of that as a leadership team, and then you can disseminate it throughout the organization.. But things as simple as proper induction and properly telling that story and making sure that that communication is completely right, proper marketing materials for the internal— lots of companies do great ads and they spend a fortune with some ad agency and isn't that great, it's all over the telly for their customers who probably aren't watching anyway because they're doing something on TikTok. But actually, what about spending that amount of energy and effort on the internal side of things as well?. So I think internal communications is a much underutilized tool and technique, and it's so critically important. And it seems to be about— even when I was a marketing director, it wasn't really even on my list, and I was meant to be the marketing guy. I think it was in HR, you know, who at that time were more interested, you know, more— they knew how to hire people and do employment law. They didn't have a clue about marketing. So thinking about how you're talking to your teams and how you're communicating with them. And what I've learned over COVID is a lot of the CEOs who normally sit on a plane all the time, suddenly they're stuck at home and they're meeting their management teams every single day. And one of the— one very big global company said, you know, I have a board meeting every day, it's absolutely fantastic, we've moved the organization on so far in the COVID time because we're all together, we're connected, we're not wasting time hurtling around. And of course there's a great other benefit of that is it's not destroying the planet through carbon emissions from aeroplanes and other unnecessary stuff that people seem to think they— or seemed to think they should do.

Yeah, there's a couple of things there that spring to mind immediately. Number one, I have never been on TikTok. I should probably write that immediately. I'll get my 15-year-old.

I'm TikTok famous, but only because my 14-year-old daughter's managed to get me to do a dance.

I was just about to say, I need to go off and get a lesson from my 14-year-old daughter. So there we go. And the other thing, absolutely, and yeah, you know, internal communications is still in many corners seen as the poor cousin. You know, we've got these, maybe it's 10 employees, or maybe it's 10 or 100 or 300 or 500,000 employees, or in fact let's call them customers potentially, or in fact let's call them advocates potentially for your business. And how much easier is it to bring those people on a brand journey potentially than somebody who doesn't know you from Adam? So definitely, you know, I mean obviously I'm very passionate about internal communications and the power it has, because that's what we do in inspiring change. So, you know, yeah, Couldn't agree more. Let's talk very briefly about the turnaround of Selfridges, because it was actually really interesting that when I was— again, back to the top of the podcast— when I saw you talking on London Live, and the way you described Selfridges pre-that turnaround, and some of the things that you did, particularly the innovation space from a retail perspective that nobody else was doing, I had absolutely no idea that things at Selfridges had ever been that bad, because of course, I mean, I lived in London from the mid-'90s for about 10 years, and for me Selfridges was up there with Aquascutum and Fortnum Mason's and, you know, in an Irish context, the Brown Thomases of this world, or Harrods if you're back in London. I had no idea that it had come from somewhere that just wasn't that place. What role did communications play in that turnaround with your people?

Well, it was late '90s that we got there. I was hired by a guy called Vittorio Radice, who was the CEO and fabulous guy who's, you know, led the change, but I was on the operating board as marketing director. And really, it was really unloved and it's extraordinary. It had rows, it had departments still, so you'd go into a bit of the store, it would have, you know, rows of raincoats and rows of shirts and all of that kind of stuff. And it was like, oh my God, this is awful. The customer base was completely out of touch. So we, we, the first thing we did is we, we spent £90 million on Oxford Street, that building, and this is in the late '90s, so it's a lot of money. And it never had the escalator or any of that stuff, so we, we put the atrium in. And then we had a strategy that— what the first strategy was to create the house of brands, so to move away from the rows of raincoats and the rows of— and the shirt department, uh, the 'are you being served' kind of type stuff, and, and turn it into more of a a theater of brands. So we went out and we persuaded Louis Vuitton and their brands to come in and Ralph Lauren, etc., etc. And then we had, by that time, the 90 million, we worked with amazing architectures— architects to create that sense of place. And I think department stores had never really thought of themselves as places to go and to see and be seen. They were just like a transactional thing. So we created theater basically in department stores and If you've seen our store we built in Birmingham, that looks like a spaceship that's landed on the edge of the Bullring, which, which again was something we built when I was there. And behind all of that, what we were trying to do was to reinvent the department store, and we went back to Selfridges' history, which has now been well publicized through the Mr. Selfridge TV program that some of you might have seen. And we said, look, what did this guy do back 100 years ago, and what was his what was his take and why was Selfridges so successful then? And we found out that he invented the sale, first sale ever in a store. He invented window displays, he hung the blériot plane in the atrium. So he did all this kind of stuff. He was the showman of his time. Actually, he then went bust as was also documented in that, for other reasons, but he was the great showman. So we said, okay, well, this is in the DNA of this place. We've got this amazing building, we'll just bring that to life in the context of the 21st century, which is what we did. And we, so we did, and I was in charge of all these promotions, so I won't go on, but we did all these, we did amazing Bollywood events. So we'd get the, we get all the great actors from India and Indian cinema, and they come over and we create sort of parties and theater, invite Indian designers. So we just, it was sort of at the time that London was becoming really, really international, you know, it was, it was on a roll towards, you know, towards what we then found out was having the Olympics and all of that kind of stuff. And it was, we captured all of that. We created a lot of relationships with artists and the artistic community and blew out all our competitors, became much more successful than Harrods and Harvey Nichols across the road. And we ended up actually selling the business to the Weston family who also own Brown Thomas, as you know. And it was an amazing journey and I was a small part in it, but and I was, you know, it was a while ago, so I was a youngster, but it was just the ability to, in those days, have such a strong sense of vision. And to answer your question properly, that energy and that excitement of this transformation infused the whole culture of our organization, but it doesn't mean that some people couldn't go on that journey with us. And there were a lot of people who just couldn't cope with that and therefore stepped out of the journey. So I think mass cultural change on that scale is tough and it's hard sometimes, but it doesn't work for everyone. You've got to have the right open mind to be on a journey like that.

And it's got to be okay for it not to be okay to be on that journey.

Absolutely.

It's got to be okay to say, well, listen, where you're now going, Mr. Bidwell, I'm not very keen on that vision. I don't think that's an organization that I want to work in because I don't like Louis Vuitton. I would rather stand among rows of raincoats. So I'm going to go work somewhere else. That's got to be okay. It has to be.

Absolutely. And yep, you're completely right. And it was a big turnaround. And I think I learned about agility in that. Because we were shifting and moving all the time. And of course, retail is one of the brilliant businesses. Working in a shop, you know, you see your customers all the time, you know every day what's happened where, who's done what, all of that stuff. It's a very exciting place to learn about agility and learn about customers.

Let me ask you one final question, James, to wrap up. And it's kind of back to the core again of what you stand for now between the brands and the organizations that you work with and for. And it's back to innovation.. And I just wonder, very succinctly, 30 seconds, what's the one thing that you would say senior teams could do right now, right now, tomorrow, today, this afternoon, to make their cultures more innovative?

Become a B Corp. You know, become a B Corporation. I did it in less than 30 seconds. You know, for me, put the environment and society at the center of your business plan. Because it will drive incredible innovation when you know, you know, when you look at what you have to do in order to do that.

Brilliant, brilliant. That's a great way to finish. James, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate you being on this episode. It's been really nice chatting to you. I hope I didn't quite chat over you as much as the previous interviewer did when I saw you on TV, and we'll leave it there.

Scott, thank you so much, and congratulations on the podcast. It's really good, and, you know, we need you to bring all of this thinking to a broader audience. So if anyone wants to reach out, please do.

Brilliant stuff. Thank you, James. Take care. Thanks for listening. To hear the views of other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blog, or to find out more about inspiring change, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.