Recruitment International: 56% say leadership teams not diverse enough to reflect customers, Green Park reveals

The DNA of Future Retail Leadership is Green Park's and the World Retail Congress' second large scale survey of senior leaders in the retail industry. The findings suggest that the retail sector is now suffering from a crisis in leadership and is compiled from interviews with businesses of all shapes and sizes - large and small, traditional and pure play, across several sectors and around the world. 

The findings reveal:

• Only 36% of respondents feel their company’s leadership team is moving fast enough to keep up with changing consumer behaviour
•  Just 27% believe their leadership team has the digital expertise necessary for success in the future
•  Just 26% feel their leadership team has the necessary expertise in data and analytics for success in future
•  56% believe their leadership team is not diverse enough to properly reflect their customers
•  75% believe that their leadership team is most comfortable managing their individual functional silos but struggles to manage end-to-end processes

Analysis for the report concludes there are three main areas where companies need to focus their strategies to create leadership teams with the skills, attributes and behaviours in order to survive, and thrive:  They are to create:

•  A hard-wired understanding of modern customer behaviour and mindset across all channels, with this insight linked directly to strategic decision making.
•  A leadership structure embracing blurred lines rather than silos, which runs all channels to market in an integrated manner to provide a seamless experience for customers.
•  A mindset in which all members of the leadership team regard digital as an integral part to each of their roles, using ongoing high quality data analysis to drive the company’s strategic vision.

Steve Baggi, Co-Founder of Green Park and Head of Retail, said, “This report should act as a wake-up call for much of the retail sector. As technological change increases in pace and consumers interact with brands in ever more innovative ways, it’s clear that in their own words, the leadership teams at many of our leading companies appear unable to adapt and as a result risk failure in the future.

This article was published by Recruitment International on the 14th of May, 2019.