Henry Armour:
The world has radically changed, right? There are three things that jump to mind for me. One is this employer-employee influence balance. Fifty years ago, if your employer told you something that that was gospel, you didn’t question it at all. Today, there is a much more balanced relationship between employers and employees. So I think that’s a major change. And by the way, these changes I’m talking about, they certainly are taking place in our industry, but they’re taking a place in all industries and around the world.
The second thing I think has changed a lot is the competitive set is much broader than it was 50 years ago. You don’t know who your competitor’s going to be next year. You may not even know who your competitor’s going to be next month or next week. Let me give you a couple examples of that. Ten years, five years ago, did we think Amazon would really enter bricks and mortar retail with its Just Walk Out technology? Nobody had a clue that was going to happen. I’m not sure where we would be imagining electric cars 50 years ago, but would we imagine that fueling the sale of electricity for EVs? Would that be taking place at Starbucks? I don’t think so. And then the third thing, without question, change is much faster today than It used to be, I mean, I’m reminded of a quote that change has never been faster than it is today and it will never be slower again. So those are the three big things that jump to mind of what’s really changed over 50 years.

Jeff Lenard:
Of those three big things. Let’s spend a little bit more time on the first one, this employee-employer imbalance.

Henry Armour:
I think people are much more physically mobile today then 50 years ago and digitally mobile than they were before. So I think part of that balance is people have a broader set, the competitive set has changed. The competitive set for an employer with respect to where they find labor has really changed, it’s really broadened a great deal. So I think that’s at the root of it. I think as relative in real wage rates and income has increased, I think that has enabled people, particularly physically, to be more mobile. They can move around. I think that that’s probably the cause of it.
How do you respond to it to an expanded competitive set, right? And you have to ask yourself what is in this balance. And if the employee is able to look around, what’s gonna appeal to them? I think internal culture has probably been never more important that it is today. If you were living in a company town, that’s probably in the 1920s and 30s, but 50 years ago if lived in Cleveland, there were only so many options to go to work . Today there’s a ton of options around the region around the country, around the world. And so one of the things I think employees are looking for is an internal culture that excites them about going to work and they want to be treated more equitably.
They want their increased influence in this relationship to really be recognized. And I think a big piece of that is all about communications from a from a CEO’s point of view. So what are the things that are so much more important today than 50 years ago? One is communicating with with your employees, with your teams. There’s both downward communication and what I call upward listening, because employees really want to be listened to. Also, employees, want to know what’s going on in the company. They want to know what the new initiatives are, and they especially want to know the why. They want to be listened to and I think they appreciate the fact that their ideas, their thoughts, their desires, the way they would do it isn’t necessarily the right thing, but they want their employers, their bosses, their supervisors to listen to them. I think that’s a real key, it’s internal culture and a central piece of that is downward communications and upward listening.

Jeff Lenard:
As you travel, do you see the importance of culture globally? Or do you see it as something that is a little bit more institutionalized in North America?

Henry Armour:
All organizations have cultures. Most of them are unintentional. And really good culture is intentional culture. It doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it. Culture, I think people use that word a lot. And what does that mean? And what does it look like? Culture is really behaviors. It’s expected and actual interpersonal behaviors within an organization and how you set norms, how you set expectations that drive. At NACS, as you guys know very much, we focus on how do we develop a culture of constructive behaviors. We relish different perspectives. We relish debate. This isn’t about being nice and doing kumbaya all the time. We want different points of view because with different points of view, it allows us to make better decisions.
But how do we harvest those? And how do we put them together in its constructive engagement? So, around the world, in some companies there’s an intentional focus on that, like in Chile, in Australia, in Switzerland. But I also see members leading members of ours that don’t so much talk about their culture, but they model their culture. When you go to meetings, you see how the behaviors are constructive, collaborative behaviors. And by the way, these aren’t necessarily the biggest glitziest companies. You see that in stores. I used to own a chain of convenience stores in the Pacific Northwest and each little team, each little organism of people, you can have a corporate culture. But how that plays out in small teams differ, and you’ll have a store that is just rocking and rolling and people are having fun and they’re helping their teammates all the time. And then you can have stores that aren’t so great in interpersonal behaviors.

Jeff Lenard:
And a lot of that I imagine starts with how management sets expectations for the store level leaders. But is there anything that should be done at the store level that separates a great store from an okay store or a poor performing store? What does a manager do in one of those stores that’s exceptional?

Henry Armour:
People look at leadership as making great decisions. You’re a great leader because you make great decisions. I don’t think that’s really at the core of being a leader. I think at the core of being an effective leader is creating an environment in which talented people can achieve far more together than they can in individually. So what a great store manager does is create that environment. It’s a lot of role modeling. It’s listening, it’s being responsive, it’s making hard decisions. People think of construct behaviors as a easy street. Sometimes it’s not an easy street. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions, but it is about listening, being transparent and being honest. And that’s what a good store manager does. Many people have told all of us don’t expect somebody to do something for you that you wouldn’t do yourself. There are things like that. But at the core of it, it’s about creating the environment, whether you are there or not, it’s what environment you create within a unit.

Jeff Lenard:
When we went on a recent Ideas 2 Go shoot, this place said that they start watching you before you even come into the job interview and they even put some things there to test you before you even get there to because they want to know what type of person you are before you even start your question and answer period. We both paused and it’s like, can you just please repeat that again? It was so cool to hear how people think about how to find people. One of the phrases with culture is, how you behave when you think no one’s looking

Henry Armour:
Right

Chrissy Blasinsky:
To that company’s point, you can’t teach someone how to be a good person. In terms of hiring for skill set, sure, you can teach someone the skills, but you can’t teach them how to be a decent human being. If they’re not holding the door or picking up the money that was on the floor and turning it in or picking up the trash that they see when they’re throwing those tests out there for the future employees.

Henry Armour:
Exactly. I agree with you. What’s the name of that company?

Chrissy Blasinsky:
It’s in Wisconsin.

Henry Armour:
Come to the NACS Show in Las Vegas this October to find out!

Chrissy Blasinsky:
I can’t give away everything.

Jeff Lenard:
Yes. We talked about what’s going on with employees. Let’s talk a little bit about competition. It used to be that competition is whatever somebody wants whenever they want it. And that’s really what we’ve heard as the mantra in our industry: anytime, anywhere. That is a huge shift from not decades ago, but a few years ago. What are some of the things that you’ve seen that have really impressed you related to looking at new competitive threats, challenges and opportunities?

Henry Armour:
Let me take a step back from examples that you’re asking for. When I say there’s broader competitive sets, if we’re in our own industry, you have to deliver better than your competitor. Your direct competitor is delivering a value proposition to the consumer, right? To me, that’s all about benchmarking. That’s all about looking around at who’s the leading convenience store, who’s the leading fuel retailer. What are they doing that is super relevant to my customers? And I have to emulate that in many ways. I have to copy that, right? That’s benchmarking in your core competitive set. I think what’s interesting today is that this connection of new innovation from outside the industry that introduces new opportunities to surpass your traditional core competitor. And to do that, you have to have much better peripheral vision, not only what’s going on in retail, but what’s going on in new technologies. You have to think what’s the relevance of some of this stuff, right? At NACS, Jeff and Chrissy, you guys have been on the staff a while, we looked at Amazon 10 years ago and while everybody else wasn’t really considering them a retailer., we did. We said these guys are retailing, but in a different way, they’re doing it digitally. And then what happened during COVID was how do you use that technology in marrying it with this idea.
Jeff, you used any product anytime, anywhere, which is the ultimate of convenience. How do we use the digital technology that, for instance, Amazon has in their traditional digital platform to allow us to reinvent convenience. And we can deliver stuff, and we can take orders online. And then we saw, again, a retailer that’s not in our core competitive set. Starbucks transformed themselves from being the least convenient place to buy a cup of coffee to becoming perhaps the most convenient place with mobile order and pay, skip the line, order your product, pay for it, and just come by and pick it up. You eliminate all that friction. So this peripheral vision in you don’t have to be first to market, I mean, when you’re first to market you can leave a lot of blood on the floor, right. I’ve lost a lot of blood being a very progressive retailer sometimes, but you have to be aware and be fast to be second to market in a lot of these things. That’s where I think peripheral vision the meaningful response to this broader and broader competitive set.

Jeff Lenard:
It’s basically retail tinkering, instead of going to a workshop and trying to build something, you look at the, what the competition is doing. What’s my angle around it. When I first started, one of the biggest threats was Priceline. It didn’t happen because of a lot of reasons, but there are things you have to sort out. What is real as a long-term threat, what is a temporary, and what can I do in that whole scheme and that’s hard to do.

Henry Armour:
It is hard to do, and there are stages of doing that. The most immediate is look around to who else is in the food business. But there’s also more abstract ways of thinking and technology. Bill Gates doesn’t read a lot about making chips or better keyboards. He reads human biology. It’s having a curiosity to explore what’s going on around you in a very broad sense to pick out an interesting idea. How does that play with my customers or the customers I want, and what can I do about that? What opportunities are there in other channels that I can actually be an entrant someplace else? Also, where can you leverage your competencies and skills?

Jeff Lenard:
Let’s end with talking about where’s the best place a convenience retailer could possibly explore what’s going on. Anything on the calendar coming up? Oh, there’s a NACS Show coming up in Las Vegas, October 1-4. A subtle, not subtle plug. Chrissy and I have each been to the Show at least 17, 20 times. You’ve been more than that, Henry. What are your thoughts on somebody who’s going for the first time?

Henry Armour:
First of all, I thought you were gonna throw me this big softball to hit of where should people go to see the greatest things in our industry?

Jeff Lenard:
We’ll fix it in post.

Henry Armour:
Thhe first NACS Show I went to was in 1986, and I think I’ve missed one Show between then and now. So my count it’s around 36 NACS Shows, more than half of them as a retailer. And I’m catching up on the other half as the CEO of NACS, but to get the most value you have to be disciplined, there’s three things you ought to do.
At West Star, my old company, ywe had a plan. If you just go to the Show and go, oh, what am I gonna do, you’re just going to be overwhelmed then you’re not gonna have the ROI. So you have to have a plan, and that consists of three things. One is what educational sessions are you going to go to, and which ones are your teammates going to? It doesn’t make a lot of sense for everybody to go to the same sessions. You gotta assign what’s important, what topics you have to divide and conquer.
The second thing you need to do is discover which vendors you need to talk to. Now, you have some existing vendors you need to touch bases with, but you ought to have in mind a new category or some new stuff that is gaining momentum and you don’t have a relationship with that company. You need to put them on your list if possible. And then fix your expert plan logistically efficiently. Don’t be bouncing back and forth between hall A and hall C.
And then finally, I think you need to plan on visiting the Cool New Products Preview Room. I spend 70% of my time on the road in convenience stores and I’m amazed at the innovation, the new products that are coming to market for us and the Preview Room puts a spotlight on those. I think it was one of the great innovations that NACS did because when I first came to the NACS Show, exhibitors had new products in their booths, but the focus wasn’t on what what’s really new and different. When you go there, make some notes on which ones you’re excited about and then go visit that vendor during the Show.
So number one, have a plan. Number two, put on your walking and shoes and hit the expo floor hard on the first day. And the second day of the expo, hit it hard because that’s where the value is. And then number three, go back in, visit the vendors you’re interested in or didn’t spend enough time with or no time with, because they have a little more time on day three to have substantive conversations. And then the rest of the day explore the parts of the Show that wasn’t part of your plan. So those are the three things I would do: Have a plan before you go, make sure you hit it hard on the first two days at the expo and use day three because it’s super valuable.

Chrissy Blasinsky:
And the New Exhibitor Area as well. You can get into the area an hour before the official expo hours start. There’s lots of dedicated time to check it out.

Henry Armour:
I think that’s a great point, Chrissy.

Chrissy Blasinsky:
We’re looking forward to the NACS Show. Even though every time I look at our website, it shows a countdown and it gives me tiny heart palpitations about how much time we don’t have left before we head to Vegas, but we’re very excited. We’re super excited and it’s going to be a great live Show.

Henry Armour:
The planning leading up to it as you guys know, we’ve the whole team here. We spend more than a year by the way for each Show, so we have colleagues who are working on the Atlanta NACS Show right now. We’ve done a ton of planning for Las Vegas. I’m with you, Chrissy. I’ve got a long to do list before the NACS Show opens.

Chrissy Blasinsky:
It always gets done. Henry, thank you for joining us. We’ll have you on again because it’s always a pleasure to talk to you and to share your wealth of knowledge with the folks who are listening. Thanks everyone for listening to Convenience Matters.

Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by next and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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