What Can Small Businesses Learn From John Lewis?

Are you eager to increase your sales and keep your business alive during these challenging economic times?

I ran a workshop recently with a group of senior managers to think about a new way of doing business.

The group wanted me to help them think about the characteristics of a high-performing team and the starting point for them was their values.

John Lewis came up as a good example of an organisation with strong values that drive the success of the business.


John Lewis’s values include treating staff as ‘Partners’ with co-ownership, ‘Sustainability’ in a changing market and maintaining and building ‘Long-term customer relationships’.


You may or may not be in a position to create co-ownership in your business but one way of introducing this idea is perhaps creating a bonus scheme for your staff.

Essentially, the John Lewis ethos is: ‘Looked after staff creates looked after customers and the profit takes care of itself’.

You can bring these values to your small business by introducing any of the following 6 ideas which are drawn from the John Lewis business approach:

1. Empower team members to seek and provide back to the team feedback on what the customer wants and improve your service in line with those ‘customer priorities’
2. Talk to team members regularly about being exceptional and noticing areas where services could and should improve to serve the customer better
3. Openly share your vision, objectives and expectations with all your team members
4. Train your team members in how to effectively deal with customer complaints with an emphasis on ‘the customer is always right’ ethos
5. Empower team members to make their own decisions
6. Ensure your team members ‘know their stuff’, the services you provide inside out and that they 'bend over backwards' for customers

If you find any of these ideas useful please leave a comment on this blog or to find out about more about business coaching contact us through our website at West of England Coaching and Counselling.