Last week we welcomed around 100 Salford Business School BSc Business Management students to our head office to learn about our business and the challenges we face.
During the visit, a key message that Arjen reinforced was “play your own game”.
What does Play your Own Game mean?
Well, when the university asked us to talk about challenges, we could have been there all day…
Inflation running at 10%, costs up month after month and the rollercoaster ride of the £ which collapsed one day only to partially recover the next, playing havoc with the prices of our imported goods.
How do we tackle this?
We could have diverted all our energy and resource into trying to deal with it. After all, not many of us have faced the challenge of working through a spike in inflation like we see today. Or maybe we should completely change our strategy? Or how about we pause some of our other plans because it’s not the perfect time to reinvest even more into the business when costs are high, and there is so much uncertainty?
No. We won’t fall into that trap.
That’s not to say that what’s happening around us doesn’t affect us or isn’t important. And you can bet that we’ll be doing whatever we can to manage and reduce the impacts of rising costs across the organisation.
But there are better ways to spend our time. For example, we’ll continue to invest most of our time in moving the business forward and working on critical projects that will benefit colleagues and customers. Our digital transformation continues at pace. We will continue to work with trusted, straightforward suppliers who care, and our plans to grow our brands will not be paused.
Now is no time to take our foot off the pedal. A quick check in the mirrors, and we’re off.
We play our own game – assertively and confidently.
