It’s early even by my standards

Up bright (well more like dark) and early for the drive down to London. Getting up at this time is a pain but it means that I have a traffic free, three hour drive as opposed to a frustrating 4 hours plus if I have an extra hour in bed.
Today is a day full of scheduled meetings including the weekly trade meeting. The trade meetings which I have attended so far have been interesting as I have started to learn something about the merchandise retailing business. We have some very talented people on the team and it’s been interesting to see how they have transformed the business in recent years.
Even though it’s early days for me I am working away at a strategy and by including the whole food team I am fairly sure that I will be able to put together a compelling strategy which will hopefully excite people as well as giving the food business a direction which it badly needs.
At the moment the department is far too reactive so my early work will be around having the team working on key areas with each of them pulling together a 30, 60 and 90 day plan which I aim to follow up on a weekly basis.
I am confident that as a team we can start to make a difference but it’s going to take a lot of cover thinking and hard work.