GCSE Business: Dame Sharon White - Creative problem solving

Jerry:

I'm Jerry. I'm 15 years old and I'm from London.

Daniella:

I'm Daniella. I'm 14 years old and I'm also from London.

We've come to one of the most popular department stores in the UK, which is super Christmasy this time of year.

Sharon:

I'm Sharon White and I'm chairman of a major department store partnership.

You might already know what sort of job you want to do when you get older.

And I'm going to talk today about the fun of finding creative solutions to some tricky problems.

Jerry:

What should I look for in a job?

Sharon:

Lots of people choose jobs because they think it's the right thing to do or it's going to look good on your CV.

Huge mistake. Whenever I've taken a job because I think it's the right thing to do, I've always regretted it.

So the things that really matter are: are you going to love the people you work with?

Because you spend a lot of time with your colleagues at work and is it going to be fun?

Is the job going to have a really important impact on society or on customers?

Are they going to feel good, are they going to feel positive because of what you do?

Jerry:

What kind of complex problems are you working on at the moment?

Sharon:

I think the big puzzle, as with all retailers at the moment, is how do we make sure that we sell amazing products to our customers when we know our customers are feeling the pinch a bit more?

And so we are looking at different things.

So we've introduced a new brand, still very stylish at a very high quality, but it's a little bit cheaper than some of the other thingsthat we sell.

Daniella:

How do you find creative solutions?

Sharon:

We spend a lot of time asking our customers and what they like about us and what are some of the things they don't like about us.

Don't be afraid to hear their criticism as well as some of the things they love about us.

And so we take all of those ideas and we kind of put them in a big bucket and then we have to think about as a business, what are the things that we're really good at and try to be in that beautiful, sweet spot of doing what, you know, our customers really want.

But also some of the areas that we've been really strong in past.

This is the Christmas Shop welcome.

There are 2000 baubles in the Christmas Shop, which is a lot of baubles.

Daniella:

How do you set up something like the Christmas Shop?

Sharon:

You tell me, what do you think goes into the Christmas Shop?

Daniella:

A lot of love and ideas.

Sharon:

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Jerry:

I’m kind of wondering how much time do you have to put together something so grand as this?

Sharon:

The Christmas Shop is one of the biggest things we do.

Two thirds of our profits we make in the last eight weeks of the year.

So we start to plan Christmas a year in advance.

So just as everybody is tucking into their turkey and enjoying their Christmas trees and Christmas baubles, we've got lots and lots of very creative, very fantastic partners who are thinking about Christmas for the year ahead.

So what decorations you'd like, what kind of trees you would like, what sort of toys children would like.

So it's it's a huge, huge operation and almost a bit like putting a sort of theatre production on the road.

And and it's also very fun. Lots of hard work, but very fun.

Jerry:

Sharon taught us her way of helping with creative solutions and unexpected problems.

Daniella:

I've learnt today that speaking with customers helps with problem solving in more complex situations.