7 Things Working Retail Taught Me About Being a Project Manager
One of my first jobs was working retail for a clothing store in a shopping mall. With every season and every trend, I would dress the store front to lure the window shopper to make a purchase. Bright lights, decorations, and the latest must-have item would sit patiently on the shelf before it was scooped up. Working in retail had taught me a lot about building up my people skills, sales, and negotiation. Among many other lessons I learned in my youth, here were some key things I often reflect on that continue to help me with excelling at my job as a project manager.
1. Resilience
I’ve worked double shifts many days in a row. Long hours, weekend work, special store hours for those midnight sales were a part of that retail life. It helped manage the mental discipline of learning the supply chain of operating a retail store. As you gained more responsibility and were promoted to being a key holder, you had accounting duties like reviewing the previous night’s sales and determining the daily projections of sales that had been set. Counting the till and making sure the float was the right amount at the start of the day was crucial. If the closers the night before were off by a couple dollars, you had to investigate and perform some forensics work to figure out how you were short and make adjustments and notes. While most may discount that working part time at a mall job was easy. It taught me a lot of the basics of how a business operates day-to-day from opening, closing, and auditing inventory. Taking on more responsibility is rarely listed as the primary job of a project manager but often it comes with the territory. You gain skills as you roll up your sleeves when you possible. Our store wasn’t big or staff and just like a project we were resource constrained. There were not always processes covered during training that you had to improvise and solve to keep the daily operations moving. Happy or angry customers alike would flow through the shop and you’d strike a balance it with the water cooler talk between staff or friends that may drop by to make a social call when they went on break from their store. It was an entire ecosystem and how well you performed was based on your sales and business acumen of scoring well on mystery shoppers that would rate your level of service and knowledge of products. Some days were the same and others were deeply challenging whether it was the monotony of hearing the shopping mall music replay the same four songs for hours. The hustle and bustle of working a store entailed juggling, completing a sale for a customer with expedience and whilst trying to keep pace with keeping things flowing by, not keeping other customers waiting too long. In my current role, I am relieved that spontaneous incidents good or had been no longer the norm. What they taught me was that I can leverage those same types of skills to negotiate a tricky customer or think quickly on my feet while trying to maintain a high level of service to my clients.
2. Unexpected Tasks
There were unexpected tasks that weren’t part of the usual routine. They could be welcomed surprises like reviewing and picking the latest items or colors we’d order for our store. Coming up with fun ways to decorate the store for the season. Some retail shops would have a marketing instructions or other times they’d simply say “wing it”. What I loved was the innovative ways they trained us on new products. We had just gotten a new phone. We were given “missions” to complete as a world class spy and save the world while being timed on the fastest way to showcase some of the coolest features of the phone. All the interesting ways we learn products I’d later take with me to other jobs for training and user engagement. Unexpected tasks were par for the course with managing projects. There are times you may identify work that was not initially planned or scope that perhaps a customer decided was important enough to execute a change order. I relished in the excitement of bring an additional feature to life in a project or delivering something mission critical that delighted my clients. I know sometimes we dread those unexpected moments where it wasn’t ideal to have the task included, or maybe it slowed down another project. Sometimes solving those unexpected tasks would be a team building exercise. Often I encounter other project managers that love or hate unexpected tasks. How you handle them and rebound is where you’ll make yourself shine. You shouldn’t imperil your project to do so. Setting boundaries or realistic expectations on delivery is to achieve results.
3. Customer Relationships
I have to give credit where it is due. Working in retail helped me hone my customer service skills. It taught me how to win over a customer, convinced I’d swindle them for every dollar in their pocket to building trust that I’d delight in seeing them return to the store and share stories about how their purchase made an impact to them. Building customer relationship’s take time. I loved investing the time in learning about them or what brought them joy. Other times you could tell something was bothering them while they shopped, a heartbreak, a lost job, some aspect of their life that they didn’t share but you could tell something was wrong. While I couldn’t help them in those parts of their life, the blips of kindness and mutual respect of giving them a welcomed experience eased the moment we both existed in that time and place. Empathy was part of that building block of fostering relationships. While I am introverted and it is hard to relate to people, it was more that I had to overcome or borrow from my introverted bank. Sometimes it was me that had a moment of being human and they offered me consolation or sage advice. This makes the job completely enthralling and enjoyable for me. I love winning over clients and customers alike. Most of all, I want them to know I’m here and engaged in supporting their efforts to be successful.
4. Audits
These are not my favorite task. They are a necessary evil. Audits allow you to keep either your inventory in check, quality of service at a high standard, and keeping the processes of how to do work consistent. Being through in how you conduct an audit in these facets in retail was often straightforward. They were end of the year counts of all the things. Every item was scanned and manually counted. Every process book reviewed and ensured were up to date. Any old processes beyond the relevant years were discarded. Auditing your work was a detail oriented and methodical process. And, in retail, you do it twice or thrice to ensure accuracy. From this aspect, an audit allows you to examine if I can improve any of the current or existing processes or related work. It’s not about just finding errors or flaws, in this way it was about how to continue elevating the work that I provided and getting better at what I did. Where I found I was lacking I’d make note and look at ways to correct or improve and develop. This activity for me was a chore at first. During a project, I’d often self evaluate regularly (every month or 2 months) to ensure I was satisfied with the quality of my work.
5. Breaks
In retail you live by your 15 or 30 minute lunch breaks. They were a crucial way to get a mental reprieve from the holiday shopping craze that would seem to add + 500 aggro to customers who were not pleased about the lack of parking, or the queues for the bathrooms, stores, or that popular item was sold out. Stepping away from work allowed me to recharge. I would use those moments to eat or read or wandering the shops and do some personal things I’d saved until break. Taking breaks allows you to have some level of self maintenance. Sometimes in my current work I have the unpleasant habit of working straight through lunch or at my desk. In the years of working I’ve taken less and fewer breaks I’ve enjoyed working through my lunch or supporting my team. Yet I want to point out that it is damaging long term to not give yourself a moment to pause and give yourself a reprieve. You end up backlogging things in your life. In a previous article, I talked about automating parts of your life to keep from burning out. It’s something I still work on because it’s where I don’t take care of myself. It also means I can’t always be my best self if I’m not accounting for areas that require attention.
6. Trade Shows
Retail trade shows often meant meeting fashion designers or wandering a hall of the newest gadgetry or store front designs. There are trade shows for every industry and they are a lot of fun to attend! You get to see what is out in the market and how the industry is adapting to the latest trend. In the project management world, this is often virtual webinars or sessions that share the best practices of working. Before the pandemic you got to travel to different parts of the world to attend the seminars. These professional education days were rolled up in fun, learning, and networking (I’ll talk about this a little later). When you are engaged in the community, it makes learning some of the administrative parts of business more enticing. It’s always a way of maintaining your certifications and skilling up on your knowledge. At first you may feel overwhelmed of obligated to do everything you learn. You’re excited and invigorated to apply the new ways of working in your current job. In this way, it’s important to balance the goals and prioritize achievable goals and try to strive for the stretch ones. Sometimes rolling out an initiative requires the full support of leadership. So part of bring back what you learn is sharing, educating, and coming up with a plan. An important thing to note, not all the conferences are cheap they can be a costly endeavor. You may negotiate and request support from your company to help with some of the cost. Try to prioritize the ones you’ll benefit most from career wise, interest, and or relevant subject related to the projects you’re working on.
7. Networking
When I worked retail I was enthralled with meeting people of all sorts. There are so many levels of networking. In retail, you have your core store/mall employees, friends you make that work in the same store or nearby shops. It’s a community often of people that support each other and challenges working at a mall brings. You may cover each other’s shifts or offer mall employee discounts. Networking is more than just knowing people, it’s about investing the time to learn and grow and if there is something you can offer back to the community. In my current career path, that means fostering mentor and mentee relationships. It’s a mutual relationship that you want to care for and give back. It may take time to grow skills or change career paths and sometimes you need networking to help you move in the direction you want. Sometimes contributing without the expectation of return is an investment, but it also has to be authentic. Ultimately, the engagement here is for you to own or lose. Similar to the customer relationship building, it’s about nurturing a relationship and making it meaningful. Sometimes networking and knowing the right people offers you support in the way of training, career opportunities or challenges that allow you to grow. Sometimes it’s the right timing and asking about an opportunity, whatever it may be. The key is to build upon your network and continue to curate and foster the relationships.
Final Thought
I am grateful for my past life experiences. They taught me how to leverage skill sets from my youth and build a wealth of expertise upon some basics of a job. These 7 steps allowed me to understand areas I enjoyed and really dive into how to refine them in my current role. When you look at your experiences, there is always something to learn. You may think they are unrelated, but when you look at the underlining themes, you’ll potentially be delighted to discover parallels that help you in your future endeavors.
