Greetings! While Tamir does an outstanding job keeping the RSD Blog fresh and interesting and relevant, the fact is he has quite a lot on his plate. This week, for example, he’s in Geneva, working with the marketing team there on some new deliverables, and sharing some of what we all learned last week at LegalTech. In addition, he is also preparing for next week’s webinar (you’re dialing in, right?). Busy times for Tamir, and, frankly a fascinating time for all of us at RSD.

By way of introduction, I am a Business Solutions Consultant for RSD, working out of our Chicago office. I’m a relatively new RSD employee. Previously, I spent 14 years in the Knowledge Management, SOA and Data Governance spaces. Mine is a hands-on pre-sales role, working with customers and potential customers to help build an Information Governance foundation. For this reason, much of what I will post here at the RSD Blog will be observations and experiences from real-world projects. It is easy, when discussing a topic as esoteric and overloaded as Information Governance, to think of it in very abstract terms. This is useful, but not sufficient in helping customers develop a strategy for managing their information. It’s my hope that I can generate discussion at a tangible level, passing along practical benefits and challenges my customers experience in their Information Governance maturation. I would very much like to hear from you as I do this. To get started, I will be posting a three-part series describing Information Governance in retail terms. I’ll introduce the idea today, and build it out over the next couple of weeks.

As you know, I am fairly new to RSD… naturally, this is not my first experience as The New Guy. No, that was my junior year in high school, when I was hired by the local Eckerd’s Drug store as a Pharmacy Technician. What a cool first job! While my friends were toiling away down the street at Del Taco and Baskin-Robbins, I got to take prescription slips, call for refill approvals, and even type some of the prescription information into that fancy new computin’ system. And at $3.85 an hour, I was making significantly more money than those aforementioned friends.

About 6 weeks into my employment, we had to stay late one night and give the store a thorough cleaning and restocking. It was explained to me that we were going to be visited the next day by "Ted Anderson"*, a Regional Vice President. Ted’s name was spoken in hushed tones, not unlike Voldemort’s in the Harry Potter books. He was the highest-ranking Eckerd’s executive we would ever see. What’s more, he had a reputation as a bit of a tyrant. My pharmacist told me that he would probably be gone by the time I came in for my shift the next day, but if not, all I should say to him was “Yes, Mr. Anderson.”

* - I have changed Mr. Anderson’s name just slightly because, for all I know, he Googles himself**, or perhaps even reads our blog, and might be a potential customer. I’d rather he NOT remember me for the story I am about to share.

** - Don't we all?

My pharmacist was wrong. Mr. Anderson was still in the store when I arrived the following afternoon. He was walking around the store, making pronouncements, assigning to-do lists. Three of my colleagues were following him, furiously scribbling notes. I stayed out of his way best I could, but he eventually made his way back to the pharmacy. And here I was, The New Guy, stocking shelves, laying low as instructed. I was hoping his time in my domain would be short. It wasn’t.

“Who do we have here?” I looked up from the crate I was unpacking, and it was Ted Anderson.

“Hi, sir. Jim Amsler, new pharmacy tech.” I had already said more than I was allowed. He looked at my name badge. We made polite conversation for a minute or so while my pharmacist watched nervously from behind her counter. Then came this:

“What do you think of the new layout?”

Apparently, shortly before I was hired, Eckerd's had rolled out a new store template. We were one of a half-dozen or so stores piloting the new design. And Ted Anderson was the chief architect behind the change. This was His Thing. Even though I didn’t know this at the time, I still should have punted the question, and made vague approving statements. Silly me. I didn’t.

“You know, I have actually been wondering about this. I don’t understand some parts of it. Like this End Cap here… it’s all Halloween Candy. It’s at the end of an aisle of dental products. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

My three colleagues all looked down at their shoelaces.

“Really, Mr. Amsler? What would you put here instead?”

Good question. I hadn’t thought about it. I made up something off the top of my head… I’m sure it was gibberish. It didn’t matter. There was no correct answer to this question. Ted Anderson patiently waited for me to finish whatever it was I was saying, maintaining unflinching eye contact. He then shredded me, preaching for 10 minutes on the fundamentals and process of store design. To this day, I remember his exact words when he was done: “Would you rather our customers walked into our store only to find a street bazaar?”

I remember this because I wasn't sure what a street bazaar was.

To be fair, this retail model has worked for thousands of years... Photo courtesy of Ed Yourdon via Flickr.

Not to get all The Wonder Years on you, but… I learned a lot that day. Among other things, I learned:

• Store Design is a science.
• The process starts at the top levels of a retail organization.
• Significant time and sums of money are spent on determining optimal store layout(s).
• Once a model is approved at corporate, it then gets deployed to local stores.
• This process is meticulously documented.
• Customers expect each store to look like every other. Exceptions must be perfectly obvious and understandable.
• Store Management can participate in this process through formal communication channels.
• New Pharmacy Techs should keep their mouths closed when talking to an RVP.

As to the Information Governance space, first think about...

Ah, but I get ahead of myself.