Espresso: Henry Dimbleby - The Big Mistakes I Made Building LEON

0:01Let's go into sort of Leon with this then. So what were some of those things that were kind of that you, those small bets you were placing, those small trials, which then led to big serendipitous upsides that you weren't expecting that you could only kind of rationalize. retrospectively well so i mean there's there were some huge ones with with leon that were like um some of them might seem obvious i'll give you two examples when we started the the the question always with leon the leon brand was we were trying to do what we called internally mcdonald's in heaven fast food in heaven like so we wanted it to be fast food we wanted it to have a lot of the visual signatures of fast food but then we wanted to be completely different so you know if you put if you get a fast food system and put good stuff in the one end can you get good stuff coming out the other end and there were always debates about where that line was drawn and initially we had thought um that that photographs of food businesses with photographs food always served bad food so you didn't want to have photographs like fast food so we had word menu boards and um sorry sorry sorry word menu boards written written yeah i only rap chili rap yeah um we then decided to trial some photos to see how that because we got what we called was um we we had this kind of thing of we called it the carnaby stare because our first restaurant was in carnaby street and it was some poor customer looking at these words to kind of panic in their eyes as a leon regular behind them was kind of tapping their watch impatiently for them to make their mind up and we kind of thought well maybe that's not the best mind state for a customer to be in when they're at your restaurant and um so we tried photographs with an amazing photographer jason lowe who does all of did all mark's hicks's photos and like really amazing so you've got this kind of so we we got a really good food photographer to do fast food photos and immediately overnight it added huge amounts to our sales you know so it was something we could have tried earlier it might seem like an obvious trial but there were all sorts of other things that we tried well they all seem obvious retrospectively that's the point of it what other ones another one that was a disaster was uh trying taking we the the main box used to be uh rice and a stew and a topper and some slaw and we tried to take the slaw out at one point in a way and it was a disaster it made the portion even though it wasn't that really small and so like we'd stop that pretty quickly other things that were surprising was we didn't realize how we didn't realize when we started that people a significant number of people look at the back of the queue and decide whether or not to join it or go to Pret depending on how long it is so what does that mean it means that if you added a till which we did we managed to fit in we had uh four tills at Carnaby Street we managed to fit in a fifth till and immediate we thought we were you know we were managing the queues pretty quickly there when you know everyone was getting fed within a minute and a half we used to measure it we added a till and we increased sales by 25 overnight because there just were people who were looking at it one till because you already went from four to five tills sales up by 25 so So, you know, so those kind of things, you just don't, you can't ever know until you try.

3:59And you have hypotheses, but. It's, yeah. So what would you say from a leadership perspective? You know, the invisibility of nature. I love that as, again, linking nature to business. I think that's kind of a theme today. But like, I think there's stuff in business and I've worked for a brand and I've, you know, I've interviewed tons of founders. And there can be things that happen in an organization. you can't necessarily see it, but it's kind of potentially like cancerous. So, I mean, one example could be like a negative employee or something. You don't necessarily, it's not, you can't see it happening, but it is nefarious.

4:35And I think a role as your leader is, as you say, is to try and find kind of order within chaos. What would you say is the invisibility of nature parallel in business, do you think? That's a good question. Well, I mean, I guess what the invisibility of nature is, is that you are using a resource that you are assuming is free. And at some point, you're going to exhaust that resource and there will be system collapse. So I guess the thing that we, a kind of parallel in business for that is the faith and trust of your team probably. Sure. So you can run a team incredibly hard, but when we started doing pulse surveys, so literally measuring, would you recommend?

5:39every week every week okay amazing yeah yeah would you recommend your job to a friend how are you doing like just measuring that like the goodwill the extent to which you were drawing down on the goodwill of your team that that led to some really fundamental changes of how we did things we noticed that there was basically a you know it was a leading indicator So it went team members a bit unhappy, manager leaves, team members leave, sales go down. And then once you've got a restaurant down that stage, it takes a hell of a lot of effort to get it back up to where it was. So, and this was, remember, this was back in 2000, we started in 2004.

6:25So it was like the digital stuff. Now, I think almost everyone does it. Pulse surveys. in those days I don't think they did and that was just recognizing like you know if you think about a system the other definition of a system by the way is you measure it in terms of stocks and flows so you so you have a you have a stock of you can't talk about anything you can have a stock of cash you can have a stock of lamb in your fridge but you can also have a stock of trust that your customer has in you you can have a stock of uh you can have a stock of um goodwill that your staff will have in you and anything you do within the system the feedback loops will change the way stocks and flows happen so for example if i sell lots of lamb there's my i get a flow of lamb from me to the customer there's a flow of money back from the customer to me and my stock of lamb goes down and my stock of money goes up but that can also exist for intangibles so for example if i um uh over the christmas period are taking a lot of money uh as well as my stock of lamb going down and needing to be replenished unnoticed my stock of goodwill in my team the cost of some of that money coming in will be my stock of goodwill in the team going down And if you don't spot that there's that cost being more of that money, then you build long-term problems yourself.

7:56And that probably is, that is the invisibility of nature. Globally, we are eroding the stock of nature, which at some point will come back to bite us. Because, again, as Parthidas Gupta and as Economics of Diversity argued, the whole economic system is inside nature, not outside it. is supported nature offers no nature offers business the energy the air the water the pollination all the things that business needs to survive it can't get without nature yeah it's mad it's the the i loved that that is just a beautiful phrase like you've got a stock of trust and i think it is that is the that's the intangible that's the invisible thing and it's like that can that can erode like that you know one thing and that and it goes peak to hunger like you're up shit creek without a paddle quite literally and i think it's um although generally to be honest it's it's not that it can go like that it's that you haven't been aware that you've been gradually eroding it and then some trigger event so if you have a very high stock of goodwill or trust yeah the trigger event that ends eroding it is uh needs to be much more powerful than than if the stock is low so yeah if you're known to be a scumbag and uh everyone thinks you're a bit of a scumbag and then it comes in the news that you've done something bad then you can find yourself quite quickly cancelled whereas if everyone who's intervened who's interacted with you over time thinks you've been really great and something comes out in the media that's bad people give you the benefit of the doubt so i think the erode you know it's gradually then suddenly isn't it is Is that Hemingway?

9:41Is that Hemingway? That is Hemingway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Hemingway. Gradually, then suddenly. Yeah, you get bankrupt. You become bankrupt. Yeah, bankrupt, gradually, then suddenly. And probably, you know, for me, like, how do you get fat? And it'll be like after Christmas, gradually, then suddenly. Before I know it, I've had quite a few booze ups. And it's like, back to cutting it all back. Two months free. Yeah, that's what Espresso sponsors Unleashed are offering. They are supply chain gurus and offer inventory management that talks to your e-com and accounting software. It's helped Ireland's cut admin time in half, get granular clarity on your margins, know where your stock is, don't miss availability.

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