Many of our readers will be familiar with an huge outcry earlier this week when local retailer Woolworths announced they were no longer going to stock and sell five Christian targeted magazines on their shelves. (Reported in News24 at: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Woolies-bans-Christian-mags-20101020 .The outcry in social media and on radio was vociferous and Woolworths quickly reversed their decision. The reported criteria for their decision in the first place is interesting but even more so is what were the criteria for reversing the decision. Todays Business Day has a good editorial on this issue. It can be found at http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=124594 It is not clear at what level in the organisation the initial decision was taken but for me the issue underlines the care needed by leaders and organizations when responding to sensitive areas.
Clearly the protest voices were not those of regular purchasers of the magazine from Woolworths or the original decision would not have arisen. Two issues of leadership become apparent in this saga. Firstly that business decisions should be made against clear, defensible and accepted metrics. From the news report on the topic CEO Simon Susman is quoted as using both religion (policy of not stocking religious publications) and low sales (popularity) as the reasons for withdrawing the magazines from their shelves. If Woolworths had used a defensible metric i.e. indicated that sales were missing their minimum target for stocking a magazine by X% and therefore it would no longer be stocked, it would remove much of the notion that this was an attack on Christianity. However that said, leaders must bear in mind that all metrics are set in a wider context i.e Woolworths’ customer and supplier interests. The messaging of the decision makes a bigger impact than just being weighed against the sales metric. It could have been announced along with a few other products in a similar situation to further re-inforce the neutrality of the decision. The messaging provided the opportunity for the mischievous media label of ‘banning’ Christian magazines, perhaps driven by their metric of selling more newspapers?
Secondly it further underscores the increasing need for companies and their leadership to stay close to the organizations reputation within the social media. Woolworths reversed their decision. Is the Business Day editorial a bit naive to suggest Woolies should have stuck to their decision in the interests of resisting pressure on Corporates? Clearly there is a case to be made for and against the reversal of the original decision but ponder the metrics and criteria that may have been used for reversing the decision and you may well find some irony there...
Do you feel that given a poor initial decision, reversing it temporarily whilst a more detailed review of sales levels (hopefully against clear metrics) as Woolies has indicated may well be a better route to relieve the emotional pressure, or should Woolies have stuck to it’s business decision? Let us know what you think.