Cover Story
8. Take simplicity to the front lines
Smart Business Chicago | November 2009
Having a senior management team behind an idea doesn’t ensure it will become reality. Rather, it takes a commitment from champions that you create throughout the ranks.
“That front line of the business, without them, we can’t execute anything,” says Lyn Kirby, president and CEO of Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc., a 320-store beauty store chain.
When Kirby set out to convince team members in Ulta’s then-70 stores that it was time to transform Ulta from a discount beauty store into a retail experience superstore, she knew she had to get front-line employees behind her vision or it would die.
To accomplish this, Kirby made her message simple and took it to the front lines. She also boiled down the key trait that all employees would need to embody to one word: approachability.
Kirby then hit the road with this simplified explanation — Ulta would provide women with entertainment, education, escape and aesthetics — and she repeated it at every store in the chain.
By making Kirby’s vision just one phrase, employees could easily digest Kirby’s vision and what the expectations for each of them would be.
“It was a game-changing approach because they’re simple words, but I could give you six other strategies behind each,” she says. “It was really important for them to be able to remember the framework, because the execution can manifest itself in different ways.”
