Building a Career Through Trust and Culture with Will Lankston, Managing Director of Timpson Direct

You get to your 30s and with hindsight, you look back and think, I could have taken more risks in my 20s. You don't realize in your 20s, you think everything. You've got all of these important decisions to make and responsibility. The reality is, in most cases, you don't. On today's episode of Careers Unwrapped, I'm excited to have Will Langston, who's the managing director of Timpson, direct from within the overall Timson Group. We'll talk a bit about that. And Will's played a pivotal role, I know, in expanding and innovating Timpson Group's whole diverse service offering, from things like vending operations to international franchising. So there's a lot going on there. He actually joined the group as a management trainee, fresh out of education, so has shown how you can build responsibility and build a career within one great company. His work, I know, has spanned many different leadership roles. He's been instrumental in driving growth, embracing change around the company's operations, and today, hopefully, he's going to share some insights into the dynamic world of retail service management and also discuss the evolution of the Timson Group and hopefully offer some valuable advice for those looking to carve out their own successful career. So, Will, welcome to the show. Hi, Mark, thank you very much for having me. Valuable advice. I'll do my very best. Well, let's just start with the Timson Group overall. What is it about the group that's kept you there for 14, nearly 15 years? The culture. I mean, look, I haven't worked in any other businesses at all. I've spent pretty much my whole career at the Timson Group, but I have spent a lot of time around other businesses, spending time in other businesses. And whilst I might be very biased, I have to say, yeah, I think we've got a really, really special culture and one that, in my experience, is pretty unique. Now, culture is one of those words. It can be sweepingly general. A lot of people talk about culture in workplaces, culture in sporting teams, whatever it might be. But could you sort of bottle up and describe what the culture is at tibson? Yes. I think that there are two things, really, that make it special. The first of those would be the values with which we sort of operate and run the business. And those are we sort of do everything in the business based on the values of trust and kindness. So we trust people and we're kind to our people and our customers. And then the second thing would be empowerment. So we run the business sort of on the Principle of something called upside down management. And that is the people who are in our shops, our colleagues who serve our customers and put money in the till, are the most important people in our business and everybody else in the business is here to support them. We don't have a lot of rules, so our two rules are put the money in the till and act the part. And so I've never really done very well with rules. And so I think that's probably the thing, you know, the empowerment that I've been given by the senior people in the business is probably the thing that's really led me to want to stay for as long as I have. We are really encouraged to kind of try new things, break stuff, and if something works great, let's do more of it. And if something doesn't work well, let's move on swiftly. The famous example that I always give is that's resulted in our Max Spielman shop on the high street in Faversham being painted pink, because that's what the colleague who runs that shop wanted to do. Now, whether or not, by the way, that's good for business, I've got no idea. But it makes our colleague happy and so it remains pink to this day. There's a whole load of potential commercial studies there on color of shortfronts related to revenue and that cultures can be a pretty fragile thing. It obviously has to be lived and constantly lived by the leaders of the business. But how is it nurtured at Timson? And also where have you perhaps seen in your 14 years moments where culture might have been under threat or at risk? So I don't think I have ever seen our culture sort of at scale being under threat or at risk. But certainly, particularly when we've acquired businesses over the years, implementing our culture takes time. So we always see that as a five year project, really kind of year one. It's always met with the new colleagues that have come into the business. To be honest with you, it's met with disbelief. They're sort of looking around going like, yeah, I just can't believe that this is real or it's going to be true. Where's the catch? And then slowly over time, as we build trust with those new colleagues and they sort of get to know us as an organization, they really start to buy into the culture. And we've actually found that some of our acquisitions over the years, a good example being Max Spielman, one of our photo businesses, when we acquired that business back in 2007, 2008, it took a while to implement the culture. But now the culture in that business is almost stronger than it is in any other part of the group. It's almost like they get Timpson more than Timson gets Timpson, if that makes sense. So walk us through the journey, because you started as a management trainee and now you're a managing director of one of the core business areas. And in this day and age, we do see people bouncing around in their careers and that's how they sort of progress, get the pay rise, get the promotions, actually, by moving. So how did you manage to go through those steps relatively swiftly? Yeah, so I started working in one of our Timberson shops in Aylesbury Market Square. It was actually back in 2008 and then I did that in my sort of summer holidays. Really enjoyed it. And I, to be honest, I was just good at selling stuff. I was terrible at repairing shoes. And I remember all the colleagues I used to work with probably hated working with me because I'd offered customers. Yeah, anything they brought in. Yeah, we'll do it whilst you wait. We'll do it whilst you wait. So we'd have sort of customers sitting on stools waiting for their shoes to be repaired whilst my poor colleagues did the hard work on the machines behind me. So I really, really enjoyed it. I worked in other shops, you know, in our Max Thielman shops and other parts of the business. And then I went away to university and really, that was just because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I come from a privileged background. I went to a boarding school. All of my friends were going into financial services or they wanted to go and be lawyers or work in property. I just didn't have a clue. And so the reason I went off to university is to kind of get a break from that because I didn't know what I wanted to do. And whilst I was at university, I sort of. I bummed around a little bit. I had a nice break from education. And it was then, really that I thought, well, you know, the one thing that I have really, really enjoyed, because, as I said earlier, I didn't really like rules, was working in the Timson business. And so I decided that I would go back full time. I was at university in Leeds and I was living in Leeds. So I started working in our Max Film and shops actually up and around Leeds. And I really, really enjoyed it. So I carried on and I think we sort of gave me the title of management training. I don't know where it came from. I think it was Just because all of the different jobs that I was being given were too weird to be given any other title. And I was sort of moved around the country. I ended up spending some time in each of our support functions in Manchester. So understanding how our finance teams work and our colleague support teams and our tech teams and customer support. And then basically because I was willing, I was a bit of a yes man. Whenever a job came up that no one else wanted to do, I was asked to do it and I normally said yes. So, yeah, I remember once being called into our chief executive's office on a Friday and he said, I've got some good news and some bad news. I said, well, what's the bad news? So I said, well, I need you to move to Edinburgh on Monday and I'm not quite sure how long it's going to take, but there's a job I need you to do up there. I said, okay, what's the good news? He said, well, I've got you a flat in Edinburgh, so I didn't think you'd survive in Glasgow, so. Which I was grateful that I did spend some time in Glasgow and really, really enjoyed it. And so by being a yes man, being willing to sort of take on new challenges and boat my feet, I suppose that's probably the single thing that's allowed me to get on quite quickly. And I suppose I do fit with the culture. So I think I do trust my colleagues and treat them with kindness, which is sort of a precursor to be able to progress in our business. And in it's still in the area of culture. Obviously we've had over the last five years, obviously the COVID pandemic and then the personal and business impacts of that. And obviously you have a mix of sort of colleagues in your business. You have those who are present actually in the retail outlets, in the shops, you've got people who work in head offices. You're increasingly setting up parts of the business which are remote or online. So how did that particular event affect the culture of the business? And also in practical sense, what has Timson done for none shop based colleagues about things like working from home versus working in the office? Or does the trust just mean work wherever you want, do whatever you want? Yeah. So interestingly, I've been reading some articles about Jamie Dimon's stance on this in the last few days. So he's obviously got quite an aggressive stance on getting people back in the office. But when the COVID pandemic hit and we sort of had to shut all the doors on all of our shops for a time. Clearly it was really scary. We engaged with all of our area teams and all of our sort of the managers and leaders within the business to make sure that they were supporting all of the colleagues that they looked after. And so we had area teams setting up WhatsApp groups and doing videos and kind of setting up exercise groups and also just trying to keep that colleague engagement. Now, we were lucky in that significant portion of our business was sort of assessed to be a key service. And so we were able to reopen a number of our shops a lot earlier than a lot of other retailers. So that was great. And our colleagues were actually really, really happy to be able to get back into work and have something sort of a purpose on a daily basis again. But it was really tough. And we're still seeing sort of some of the hangover of that today. Not just in our business, but I think in society as a whole, we as a business, when it comes to sort of the work from home, you can see probably today, I'm not in an office today, but sort of my role is kind of remote. But we like to get people back in the office. And the reason for that is we've got four and a half thousand colleagues in our group. Most of those colleagues are working in shops or out servicing our vending machines, or our locksmiths are out in vans every day serving our customers in their homes or in offices. So all of those colleagues require support. And so if they ring a phone, we want to make sure that somebody's on the other end of that phone to pick it up and give them the support that they need. And so the vast majority of our colleagues work from the office. It helps that we've built what I think is a really special environment at Simpson House and in our other support offices around the country. It makes it a pretty pleasant place to work. So people tend to want to come in to be in that environment. But sort of as a rule of thumb, we ask people to come into the office. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule. Yeah, I think it's interesting, I'm finding, and we're seeing through work we do with a huge variety of different businesses that. Where the trust is very strong and people can choose to a great extent where they work. What still is coming through now is bits of culture being slightly chipped away at, whether it's a creative meeting and then mix, and some people are online and some in person and there's just a slightly different feel to it, whether it's A team that used to spend a lot of time together, spending a bit less time together. I think that's something that a lot of businesses are struggling with now. They genuinely trust their people, but they're seeing something that's done remotely as a group is just that couple of percent not quite as good as something that's done together as a group. And people aren't learning for each other. So I don't think it's a discussion that's going to go away in the near future. Certainly just on that point. I think it's interesting. I actually a really good example of this came to me the other day. One of our sort of senior colleagues in our finance team came to me and said, I think I'm going to have to move X from where he's currently working back to sort of a desk nearer him. Yeah. I said, oh yeah, why is that? He said it feels as though things are moving more slowly since we moved into another part of the office. Not because I think anything that he is doing just because we can't shout across the room to each other and bounce ideas around and he's not necessarily seeing how quickly other work is being done and the atmosphere and the buzz that that creates. And he very rightly said you can't measure that. I just know it's not good not having him here than it was having him here. Yeah, I understand that very much. I'm interested what you said about risk taking, breaking rules, trying new things. So within your area of the business, you are obviously introducing new products, new revenue schemes, whether that's types of vending machines, expanding locksmith services, franchising piece like that. How do you go through the decision making process within Timson to say yes, we're going to go ahead with this idea or no we're not? Because even in a risk taking environment, you have to have a certain amount of at least business evaluation beforehand. What's your approach and process fitting within the culture of Tinson about assessing new business development projects? Yeah, so look, it really depends on kind of what that new business might be. So an example, we launched a repairs and alterations service with John Lewis last year. So we launched that. We launched it in five shops. How did we go about sort of assessing whether or not that was something we wanted to do? We assessed how much it was going to cost us as an organization and decided that it was worth a pun. You know, we want. That was something we wanted to try. And now that was live in five stores. We're now going to be rolling that service out into all 30 of the John Lewis stores. So our approach would always be to trial something wherever possible and to trial it whilst expending the lowest amount of capital possible. Now, that at times can be challenging, particularly if you're looking at new vended services. So some of the services that we're vending, like our automated key machines, they're really complicated bits of kit and they're really expensive to build and they would take a long time to go about doing that. Now, we didn't build those ourselves. That was another business that was founded by some very clever people that got to a size where they would do some really interesting things and we made the decision that we would acquire them. So I suppose there isn't a sort of a one size fits all solution or methodology for how we launch new services, but we in general are really, really commercial about our decision making, so we're not emotional with the way that we do things. We don't tend to do make big decisions based on gut feelings. We always like to test something, then we'll model it at scale and if the numbers stack up, we'll go full steam ahead. And what's gone wrong in that process, what are the things you've tried that haven't panned out, haven't worked, big or small? We've had some real howlers over the years. Our chief executive always talks about Citi Cobbler, which was a business that he launched when he sort of first taken over as CEO, which involved people riding at pace around the city of London on motorbikes, delivering people's shoes after one of the riders had an accident. He's fine, but he had an accident. It was sort of. We shuttered that one pretty quickly. But look, we made loads of mistakes over the years and I'm sure if you give me a couple of minutes as we're talking, I'll be able to think of some of the bigger ones. But in fact, I tell you, one of the biggest business flops we had was a business we set up called Time, and that was effectively luxury watch repairs. We basically brought in like the top team from a luxury watchmaker, and it was a total disaster. It cost us £30,000amonth for longer than I'd care to admit. And the reason for that, in hindsight, is that we brought external people in who then tried to tell us and our colleagues in the shops how to do things. So when I look back and I look at the way that that part of the business operated, there were all sorts of rules. You were allowed to talk to people on the telephone, you had to respond to them via a messaging system. And there was all sorts of new fandangled things that they tried to implement that were just alien to our business. And to be honest with you, the reason it probably died of death is because once the colleagues in our shops decide they don't like something, it's a dead duck. So would you say that a major reason for the failure of that particular effort was cultural then rather than market or product or something like that? Yeah, 100%, because we've now got a luxury watch repairs business that's really successful. But we grew through another route. It was 100% culture. And actually it wasn't the fault of the people that we brought in at all. I think if they would sort of parachuted into another business with a different culture that was more sort of top down, it probably would have worked and been very successful. But in our business, as I say, the colleagues in the shops are all the roofs. They are the kings and queens of our business. And I think they probably felt that they were being told what to do and they didn't like it. And so time was resigned to the dust heap. So you mentioned earlier about your relatively privileged background, went to boarding school. I'm interested about how the cultural fit first started for you when the boy from the boarding school dropped in to the shop with the cobblers and the key cutters who were professionals at what they did. What opened your eyes then? And also how did they react to you arriving in their scene? I was lucky. I worked with some amazing people and the people who I first worked with, I like to think that we got along really well. I think probably the reason for that was I just did as I was told. You know, I didn't think I was special when I was told to go and make a cup of tea. Albeit I'm reminded to this day by some of our colleagues at Timson House, who were quite particular about their tea, that I make a crap cup of tea. But yeah, I made the cups of tea. I enjoyed it as well because lots of the colleagues in our shops at those times, they smoked. So I would go and have a sneaky cigarette, which I thought was naughty and exciting, but. And I'm not, by the way, condoning smoking for a second. But at the time, as a kid, it was an exciting thing to go and do. So, yeah, again, it comes back to that point of I was willing, I said yes. So if I was asked to go and do something, one funny example of that Being when the colleague running our Aylesbury Market Square shop asked me to go across to the independent cobbler on the other side of the square and ask him for the longest wait he had, which I did. Willing I ran across, I said, oh, yeah, no problem, as he was rattling about a machine saying that the long wait was broken. And off I went to the independent cobbler and asked him for the longest wait he had. I said, yeah, sure, take a seat. I sat there for 15, 20 minutes and he said, you've had it, and sent me back off. To the glee of our colleagues working in the shop. They say, got you on that one. It's responsibility changing with rolls Nays. I remember very clearly after university I went to the army for a while and I did about five years in the army. I left as a captain. I'd been involved in interesting work in the Middle east and intelligence work, so I thought I had carried a fair bit of responsibility. By that point, I was a grown up who'd done proper jobs. And then when I left the army, I joined this small company called World Challenge, which ran expeditions all around the world. And on my first, they were doing some training for some of the young people, some of the kids taking part, and I had to go and help set the training up. My very first job was just to count out the food for each team and I was given a list and it said, right, this team needs four tins of baked beans, two packets of rice, couple of pieces of bacon. So I just counted that out and thought, fine, but this is certainly a change in my job. And then someone came around to check that I had counted out the right numbers of each items of food. And it was such an eye opener for me in my first sort of job out of the army that somebody would feel the need to check that I could count up to three or count up to four. And although I loved, loved working at World Challenge, it was almost the opposite of what you're talking about, of a values of trust and empowerment, as I, I felt sort of the lowest of the low at that point. Now, in moving forward, you've obviously spent a lot of time with one business, but what do you think of the trends coming up in your area of retail, in your area of service management? And so if there's a young professional starting out, what sort of challenges should they be prepared to face? What are you excited about over the next three or four years? Well, look, I am probably in equal measures in excited and nervous about the opportunities that AI will bring in retail for another. Yeah, I think there are some really interesting things that can happen with customer support and enhancing and augmenting the sort of customer experiences, because there are so many different touch points that it can be used for. So that's certainly something that, if I was sort of finishing education and looking at retail as a potential career, that's certainly something that I would be looking at. Look, retail is ever changing. The high street is changing all the time. One of the things that I, I guess we're really excited about is how we can continue to leverage our sort of omnichannel presence. So leveraging the web, our sort of our photo kiosks, our vending machines and our physical store, estate or estate of shops. Our chief, our previous chief exec would hate hearing me say store. He really hates that word. It says it sounds too imperson. So you like to call them shops or branches. So I think leveraging that omnichannel presence, how we can improve the customer experience in our shops by using our Internet presence, our kiosks and the colleagues in our shops all working in unison, that's a really interesting opportunity for me. And in that context, when you're looking to hire people yourself, what sort of skills, what sort of attitudes are you looking to people to demonstrate to fit with you, to fit with the business? I think when I was working kind of on area teams and we were recruiting colleagues for our shops, it was a really simple process because we recruit based on personality alone. You know, what we want is a 9 or a 10 out of 10 personality, the sort of person you would really like to go and spend an hour with in a pub for whatever reason. They're interesting, they're quirky, they're kind, they're outgoing, they're all of those qualities that makes it nice to be around people. That's what we're sort of looking for in the colleagues in our shops. Now, look, when I'm recruiting, now, it happens that I'm often recruiting for more specialist roles that do require specialist skills. But it's also the case that the first thing that I'm looking for is the personality being a 9 or a 10 out of 10. And actually there's a great test that comes from a business that we're really fond of called Richer Sounds, and it's called the Coffee Mug test, which is, I think, quite a nice little sort of example of the things that we would look for, and that is that when they do an interview and they offer a cup of coffee to the candidate at the end of the interview, they're always really interested in what the candidate does with that coffee cup. Do they take it away with them, offer to put it in the dishwasher, offer to put it in the, offer to wash it up themselves, or do they just leave it on the table? Which, again, it's an interesting little test that they do. Talking about testing there, how do you deal with it if you get the personality test wrong? I mean, it's something that we look for very much. Is, is this somebody I want to work with? Not just somebody who has the skills to do the jobs, it's a person I want to spend time with. And we normally get it right, but occasionally you get it wrong. What do you do if you think I've brought someone in here because I thought they had the right personality and now I realize that they don't? Yeah. So the good news on that is we normally get it right as well, but as you say, we do get it wrong. I suppose when we get it wrong, it's normally obvious pretty quickly, which I think is both good for us and good for the person that we've brought in. And so we would act really quickly because we don't think it's fair on the people that they're working around to have to work with someone that is counterintuitive when it comes to our culture. And so we will help them find their happiness elsewhere as quickly as possible and help them become a customer of ours rather than a colleague. Help them find their happiness elsewhere. Indeed. In this 15 year journey, yourself, Will, I'm just interested in your own observations about how you have developed, how you have changed the most as a leader, as a business person. But if you can reflect on what you were like in your maybe second, third year in the business and what you're like now, what have you learned? What have you changed? Yeah, so it's a really good question that I think, because it's something I've been reflecting on a little bit recently. I think the biggest difference would be, and it's a good thing, I think, would be the pace at which I make decisions. So when I look back to year two and three, I was making lots of decisions very quickly, but those decisions were a lot smaller. Today I probably make a lot less decisions than I used to, but the decisions are a lot bigger and so they take a bit more time and thought that goes into them. So look, I think if you were to summarize that I'm more considered today than I was 14, 15 years ago when I was starting out part of that will be experience. Part of that will be just the nature of what I'm actually responsible for today versus what I was responsible for back then. And if you could speak to your younger self directly, what do you think you might say in terms of do more of this and do less of that? If you could speak to Will at university age, not quite sure of what he wanted to do or where he was going to go, what would you say? Okay, do more of this. Do less of this. Well, I mean, probably do more of going to lectures. Will would be a good start. But yeah, so I think do more Taking risks. Take loads of risks. It's always, you know, you get to your 30s and with hindsight, you look back and think, I could have taken more risks in my 20s. You don't realize in your 20s, you think everything. You've got all of these important decisions to make and responsibility. The reality is in most cases, you don't. You know, I think really it's before you have children, that's when you should take your risks. Once you've got kids, you've really got responsibility in your life. So you know other people that you need to look after. And so take lots of risks. Put your hand up and be the person volunteering to take on that new opportunity. Go and do that slightly scary role that you're not sure on. Because really, what is the worst that can happen in terms of do less of. I don't really think that in back then there was much I would have said do less of. Probably just do less, you know, having a good time outside of work and more concentrating at university. Yeah, I think that's the sort of advice that any of our parents might give us and we wouldn't take at that particular age as well. Well, I think we've covered so much in this conversation. It's been fascinating. But if I was listening to this and in the earlier stages of my careers, I think that a few things have really stood out for me. The importance of culture in an organization and how it's not just a critical sort of thing that helps you recruit people. It's far, far more than that. And the way that it's brought to life and has been brought to life for a long, long time. In Timson, it's actually a driver of commercial success. It's the principles by which people operate together. And I think that is really important. So look out for the culture that is right for you and ask questions about what the culture is like and some way you might be going for. I was also very interested about what you're saying about upside down management and placing the importance upon the people putting the money in the till, the people dealing with customers and products directly. And also at several times during the conversation you've spoken about trying new things, taking on new challenges, be the person who says yes and then at the end there about taking risks, just give something a go. And I think that all of those are really useful observations for anyone at any stage, but especially those in the early part of their career starting out. And also you're clearly a role model if you want, for finding the business that works you and then staying with it and just giving everything a go when you're in there. Because you probably wouldn't have thought you'd be having a managing director title when you were being told to go for the long wait in the competitors cobblers down the road as well. You can enjoy your work. You can have fun as well. Well, thank you so much for joining me today for unwrapping your career for us. A lot within there and I'm sure a lot still to come. It's been great having you on the show. Thanks Will. Thanks so much for having me. Mark this podcast is sponsored by We Are Futures. To find out more about We Are Futures and how we can introduce your brand, business or organization to the mass markets of tomorrow, visit www.wearefutures.com. make sure to search for careers unwrapped in app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Remember to click subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at We Are Futures, thanks for listening.