Insiders

Striving for imperfection drives growth by focusing on learning and progress, not flawless results. Perfection can lead to fear and stagnation, while imperfection encourages resilience, creativity, and the courage to evolve. Growth happens when we embrace mistakes, adapt, and keep moving forward.

It's a powerful truth that many of us need to hear when we're standing at the crossroads of aspiration and reality. We all have dreams, whether it’s building a successful career, starting a business, traveling the world, or making a positive impact on the community. But too often, we let our dreams sit idle, cherished in our hearts but never brought to life. Without action, even the most beautiful dreams will stay out of reach. It’s the steps you take today that turn your aspirations into tangible achievements. To turn your dreams into something real, you have to take the leap and start moving forward, no matter how small the first step may seem. The road from dream to reality is paved with consistent action and determination.

Curiosity drives growth, both in technical skills and as a leader. Being open to feedback means you’re always learning, adapting, and improving. Whether it’s from your team or your own experiences, embracing challenges and new ideas helps you move forward and build stronger connections with others.

The importance of a strong network should not be underestimated. During my career with Kingfisher I have built good working relationships with key contacts who I can turn to for further information and advice. This was extremely useful following the creation of my team in 2022 as it enabled me to gather open and honest feedback which meant we could ensure we delivered and exceeded the expected level of service. The creation of the People Operations team in 2021 led to bringing together three different ways of working and the processes that involves. My team's focus on continuous improvement has meant there has been a lot of change during the past year which has led to our service becoming more efficient and streamlined. The level of change within our team and Kingfisher as a whole has highlighted to me the importance of being flexible and open to new ideas. Since I have become People Ops Team Lead, I have been in many meetings where to fully understand the implications of decisions which need to be made, I have had to ask a lot of questions! I was originally concerned how this would look but now appreciate it is the only way I would understand the full picture and could make a fully informed decision. In addition to a strong network, the importance of a sense of humour should not be underestimated!! Having a laugh with my team and other colleagues has definitely helped us through some challenging times!

There are better and worse days in my job, but each of them can be considered a success when you work in a close-knit team with people who know what to do. Working in a purchasing office involves a lot of dynamics and decision-making under time pressure. In such a situation, teamwork is the key to success. I see my daily work as a quality engineer as a challenge - new experiences, new people, and unusual problems. There are days when achieving new goals is easy, but there are also moments when every step is bought with a lot of effort. My most important advice for 'beginners': Work with people you can rely on. Set yourself goals that you are capable of achieving. Build good relationships with suppliers.

In order to build and create the best ranges and products, it all starts with a deep knowledge and understanding of what our customers are looking for and the job expected by the products. This everlasting thrive to understand how to provide the best solutions for our customers as well as good analysis skills will be the foundation of your success. Good relationship and communicating skills are also very important, as you will need to pitch and convince Banners that your products are both relevant and worthy of commitment. Finally, i believe that the love of the product is the most important feature sought after in a Product Lead. The ability to know what a product is made of, from components to material composition is what will enable you to brief as accurately as possible new products and create differentiation or cost optimization.

By experience a project is like a journey, the goal is essential but the path to get there is just as important. Keeping good relationship, a "can-do" attitude, open to find the right compromise to move forward are essential. There are strong things to take away from all projects, even in the failures and that should in no case affect the following experience, on the contrary it should reinforce it. Grow together all the time in contact with others, whatever the age or experience, mutual exchange is essential. Work is an important part of our life, it must be source of wisdom as well and part of our personal development.

Looking back to when I was starting out, if I could give my younger self any career advice, it wouldn't be anything to do with networking or improving my excel skills and it definitely wouldn't have been to do lots of free creative work for potential exposure. The first does help but not in proportion to how much it's touted, the second is still very much work in progress for me and the third only saw me poorer in time and hope. My advice would probably be three-fold. 1. Know yourself. Spend time noticing what excites you, what brings you joy and what ignites that spark in your tummy or gives you energy. Follow that. Go after that. See where it takes you. Nurture that side of you instead of focusing on areas with "room for improvement". There's plenty of time to learn a VLOOKUP or improve your presentation skills. You want to be doing something that's good - that you're good at and that's good for you. 2. Career paths aren't like the movies, despite what films like "What Women Want" will have you believe :). It's not all glamourous and straight forward. Your career path will likely include jobs that you hate, jobs where you're watching the clock like a hawk and jobs that you even forget you had! But I've lost count of the number of times I've thought, "huh, fancy that coming up here" and knowing the answer or what steps to take because of something I learnt trying to teach a 4-year-old how to hit a volley in tennis. Approach life with open ears and eyes, be a collector of thoughts, experiences and skills and remain curious! You'll be amazed at what you can sponge up to later put to use when you really need it. 3. and finally 3, if you want it, go for it. In spite of all the discomfort and worry and number of things on the job spec you don't think you're qualified for. It's hard and comes with a lot of mental hurdles to overcome but you won't regret it. It always seems to me to be more about the attitude you approach something with rather than your current level of experience. We've often found that people new to a subject come with a fresh perspective which can be worth its weight in gold! Good luck - you've got this.