When Retail Teams Play, Experiences Come Alive
There's something you notice in retail environments that work. The experience feels alive. Responsive. Like the people behind it had permission to actually think.
In this episode, I've been sitting with a question about what separates those experiences from the ones that feel flat - ok, but mechanical. And I think it might be whether teams have been allowed to play.
Not play in a frivolous sense. Play in the sense of having room to experiment, to try things that might not work, to respond to what's actually in front of them rather than following the script.
I look at what's happening at Lego, Hamleys, and Selfridges (retailers who've made experience design part of their operating model) and explore Greg McKeown's argument that play isn't a cultural nice-to-have but a genuine strategic advantage. I also sit with the harder question: whether retail's relentless focus on optimisation is gradually removing the very conditions that produce experiences customers actually remember. And I try to be honest about the counterargument too, because this isn't straightforward.
I don't have a tidy answer. But I think it's worth paying attention to.
Did anything resonate with you from today's conversation? I'd love to know, particularly where you're seeing preventable service failures in your own organisation.
Get the full show notes with all frameworks and resources mentioned at https://wheresyourcustomer.com/15
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