For the past five years, the team at fashion retailer Boden have been driving a cultural and technological shift that’s enabled them to grow not just as a clothing brand, but as innovators. Meanwhile, World of Books have been on their own journey of digital transformation, fueled in part by expansion and acquisition.
Shopify sat down with leaders from each business to discuss their insights and advice for managing change in a rapidly transforming world of commerce. Here are three of their top tips from the session—check out the full video to discover many more.
1. Understand change drivers and prioritize
According to Ana Machado da Silva, Senior Head of Product Management and Experience at Boden, change can be broken down into three key areas: customers, market dynamics, and internal culture.
“Our customers are changing all the time,” says Ana. “We have to adapt to them. Then we have the market around us which is constantly changing—especially in fashion—and our employees; different generations with different expectations of the workplace. So, it’s those three things that we have to manage.”
David Magee, Product Director at World of Books, adds that one of the most important first steps when thinking about this change is ensuring clear prioritization. Having recently undertaken an acquisition of a competitor in the US, he says, “There are a thousand different exciting things to explore or go after. You become a bit like a magpie. So, prioritization—for us, getting clear on objectives and regularly communicating those to our teams—is important.”
When prioritising, however, David adds that it’s important to stay customer focused: “It’s interesting, we can spend a lot of time thinking about change from an internal perspective but how do we ensure the customer is front of mind? [...] That was one of our big challenges—to broaden our thinking and understand really why we are doing this in the first place. Ultimately, it’s to deliver really good engagement and a great experience for the customer,” he says.
2. Increase agility through testing and learning
Both Ana and David have been directly involved in driving technology transformation at their respective brands. Here, a focus on bolstering ROI through rapid testing has been critical.
As David says, Shopify provides an ecosystem that supports businesses in transformation projects, helping them move towards more agile and competitive cultures that embed change, experimentation, and iteration in daily work. It’s all about testing, tracking performance, and then implementing learnings across the business.
Today, his team is focused on “collating ideas, developing hypotheses around those and then testing and learning and being data-led in the decisions we make,” he says. Shopify’s platform is important here: “I think the fact that there are so many either low or no code applications on Shopify to test really helps us understand what we can do for our customers,” he says.
“It’s crucial to have a fast paced, iterative product development culture, where you test and learn and try to understand your customers”
– David Magee, Product Director, World of Books
For Ana and the team at Boden, Shopify likewise acts as an ecosystem where teams across different departments can gather insights, learn, and test new ideas rapidly.
This fast and informed decision making is crucial to effective change management and it’s already having a marked effect on Boden, with an A:B testing culture “ingrained” now across different teams. Ana points out that Shopify’s ecosystem has driven this shift and saved her a huge number of hours: “Many of those plugins or apps have free trials so you can try things without commitment,” she explains, which allows her to rapidly prove value. This is in stark contrast to the “number of hours I’ve spent trying to make a business case or a proof of concept” before using Shopify, she says.
3. Build a culture of psychological safety
Effective change management calls for leaders to empower teams through a culture of psychological safety. This enables them to discover new solutions and break with the status quo, without worrying about making mistakes.
As David explains, building an environment like this is essential if a brand wants to reap the rewards of testing and rapid iteration. “Building a culture of psychological safety has been one of the key changes that we’ve had to make at World of Books,” he says. “We had a principle originally which was ‘right first time.’ And that goes in exactly the opposite direction to one of testing and learning,” he adds.
It’s crucial that people aren’t afraid of failure and that leaders take ownership of mistakes, empowering everyone to view them as a chance to learn: “If your team know that you have their back and that a failure is a learning opportunity, that helps you develop a culture where people are proactive and they’re willing to invest in change, try new things, and innovate,” David concludes.
Ana adds that it’s also down to leaders to foster an environment where people freely share and discuss ideas. When bringing together technology, product, and business experts at Boden, she says, “We might be in a meeting and someone shares an idea, and another person builds on it. But then someone says it’s not going to work, and we move on to the next one. [...] After a while, it’s just normal to throw ideas around and no one cares if it’s not right because it’s just about the ideas.”
Ultimately, this approach enables Ana and the team at Boden to find great solutions while “no one feels bad” about an idea that isn’t quite right.
“Safety and trust is very important. We encourage different ideas and allow people to express different points of view. Where we think there’s opportunities, we then try small experiments to see what works.”
– Ana Machado da Silva, Senior Head of Product and Experience, Boden
You can’t drive innovation without embracing change
There’s no question that change can be challenging. But it’s also part of progress. Without ongoing transformation, businesses risk falling behind competitors, disappointing customers, and frustrating employees. At the same time, with the wrong strategy change can become complex and costly.
Businesses like World of Books and Boden recognize this and have taken steps to build processes and cultures that power innovation. As a result, both businesses are increasing agility, empowering employees to innovate, and creating incredible customer experiences in our ever-changing world.
