After NRF: Decide the Real Problem (Part 1 of 4)

After NRF: Decide the Real Problem (Part 1 of 4)

Most conferences don’t fail because the ideas are bad.
They fail because leaders come back with volume instead of judgment.

NRF expands what feels possible. Leadership is deciding what actually matters.

In Part 1 of this four-part series, Steve Worthy focuses on the first and most important post-conference decision: deciding the real problem you’re solving this year.

NRF pushes solutions. Vendors do their job well. The risk for leaders is acting before reality is clearly defined.

This episode explores:

• Why conference energy fades faster than leaders expect
• How “presenting problems” distract from the real work
• The hidden problem stack inside every organization
• Why structure, relationships, decision rights, capacity, and culture quietly block progress
• How solving the wrong layer creates motion without outcomes

This isn’t about doing more after NRF.
It’s about deciding better before momentum turns into noise.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:50

So what you're about to hear is a it's gonna be a four part series. Um I realized as you know I was going through the material that I wanted to make sure that I gave you enough time um to digest each one of these decisions that you have to make after a conference, right? The majority of you are listening to this, gonna be listening to the series after NRF, and but more importantly, as a preparation for any conferences that are gonna be coming up this year. I want you to make sure that you you listen to this, you give this four-part series to your team so that they can listen to this, because collectively, everybody needs to be on the same page. And what I am about to present to you is is going to help you make a difference in your year if you listen, if you actually implement the things that we are going to talk about on how to make and how to think about four decisions that you need to make after any conference that you go to this year. All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Welcome to Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy, where we go well beyond the corporate playbook to unpack major opportunities, hidden challenges, and critical issues that senior retail leaders face every day. So let's get started right now.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Welcome to another episode of Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy. And as you can tell by the title, we are going to be talking about uh at the NRF and also, you know, conferences, right? We are kicking off the new year, 2026, and NRF is always uh one of the biggest, if not the biggest, conference of the year to start the conference season. There are gonna be a whole bunch more. And I wanted to have this conversation. It's almost a spinoff from a podcast episode that I did with uh Jamie Hancock, who is the founder of Commerce Futures. Um, please go ahead and take a listen to that episode. It's a really great um uh conversation about conferences and how to get the most out of them while you're there and prior, probably even prior to. And so the conversation that I wanted to have today is uh around four four decisions that retail leaders and and founders need to make. And the reason why I I put in founders into this is because if you can see, you can if you're looking at this on the video, you'll see I'm wearing a um a hoodie that says decode. And what we have in the campus is uh a decode accelerator, and this is for founders and startups, those who service the retail industry, and that they they are on the peripheral of the of the you know of the retail industry. They provide products, services, and ideas for the actual industry, and we um and we do an accelerator to help them craft their ideas, their messaging, go to market strategies, and things like that. And one of the things that we tend to do is um help these uh startups with different ideas um as they go to conferences. So this is um two-part. This is really for um retail execs after the conference, and this is also for those founders and and and startups who are thinking about uh what do they need to do after the conference. There are four four decisions, four decisions that I need you to truly, truly understand and get. Um we're gonna run through these because um I have a I don't have a lot of information. Um I want to keep this as neat and uh as tidy as possible. Um so if you are thinking about a conference, I I love conferences. There's a lot of information, there's a lot of energy. And can I tell you what tends to happen is that everything becomes possible when you're at a conference, right? When you hear people speak on stage, rightfully so, right? The these individuals have are have have earned the right to be on these stages, and they are having robust conversations about store of the future, AI and some implementation, um, supply chain, innovation, um, all these different things. One of the things that they don't talk about enough is leadership, but that's a whole nother story. That's a whole nother story. Right? They've earned the right to be there, they've earned the right to you know allow you to listen to them. And what tends to happen is that everything is possible. Conferences, almost like if you if you've ever been to um, is it CES, right? Uh out in Las Vegas, I think that's actually taking place right now as I record this. Um, you go to a conference like that, and they will have products and automobiles of the future concepts, right? And and more often than not, a lot of these concepts never come to market. They just don't. It is a really great opportunity for you to stretch the imagination of your company and of the audience that's actually going to be attending these conferences. Uh, NRF, all the other conferences are um are the same. And I'm not I'm not knocking that at all. That that that's the purpose, right? The purpose and uh and and sort of underpinning of these these conferences is to stretch your imagination, stretch your thought process, challenge your assumptions, think differently, collaborate, right? Get new ideas, all those, all those great things. But then what happens afterwards? What happens afterwards? There's four decisions that you have to make. Four decisions that when you hear this, it's going to probably be after NRF. But I think the timing is gonna be perfect because you are gonna still be in that um the the the hype phase, right? Um the aftershock of the conference, where there is just a lot of energy that's still associated with the conference. People are posting, um, people are um sharing lessons learned, all those great things, all those great things that you should be doing. So let's get into um these four decisions that you need to make. And the first one is is definitely the most, for me, the most important. There is a lot, each one is great, but um I spend a lot of time talking to founders uh and even leaders about this first one. It is decide the real problem you're solving this year. Decide the real problem that you are solving this year. See, in NRF and conferences in and of themselves, they do a really good job of pushing solutions. But as a leader, as a founder, you have to, and is it is the most important thing to do is to define the problem. I always put it in this context. The number one job of a leader is to define reality for themselves first and then for their team. It's it it holds true directly after NRF, or maybe even while you're going through a conference. Maybe this is something that you need to listen to before you attend your next conference. And the area that is that that we don't talk about enough is the the um the problem hierarchy and also the the problem stack, right? We we talk a lot about data stacks, we talk a lot about data integration, data implementation, AI, um um um interfaces, all these different things, but we don't really talk a little, we don't talk about the problem hierarchy and the problem stack. So I want to talk about those two real quickly as it relates to what you need to do to define the problem. So here's the issue that I have when when um when companies and individuals are struggling or they don't know where to start. Uh each problem, each problem that a company has has a set of mini problems inside of it. And for each mini problem, each one of those many problems, they have a very specific solution. And then here's the thing that you need to understand, please get this. For each mini problem, there is a person or a department associated with it. I know rudimentary, you you get that. I understand it, right? You're probably like, yeah, I kind of get that, but do you? But do you really understand? Because if you understood that, you will understand there's an emotional tie to that mini problem as it relates to the bigger problem. Please understand that. Because there is an individual, their job is on the line, their department is on the line, there could be a massive problem with logistics, but from a from a from an assortment and procurement standpoint, there are multiple people who have issues or may have a mini problem that needs to be solved. And if and if those problems are not solved, nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen. We get so enamored by the big problem that we forget that there are multiple problems, multiple layers. Right? And so if you are, think think about this. If you're a founder, you have a prop, you have a product and or a service or whatever a solution, and you are talking to retailers, and you are so excited about the um the problem that you want to solve for them. And it's not landing. It's not making sense to them. They're like, I get it, but I kind of don't. And here's the the the the problem without me going through um a whole list of of uh or creating a whole nother podcast inside of this podcast is because you are probably solving problem number three in the hierarchy, but problem number one and two haven has has not been addressed. Right? And the only way that you will get to understand that is by asking the right questions and then being very laser focused on the problem that you want to solve. Because if you're laser focused or if you start to drift in your in the scope of the problem that you solve and you start to become all things to all people, that's where you get lost. That's where uh companies turn off, they they they they they turn internal to uh a team or somebody else to solve their problem, and you're and your problem, and excuse me, and your your um your solution doesn't land appropriately. It just doesn't. So understand that each problem has many problems, right? And I say many, I mean M I N M I N I. Mini problems inside of it. And for each one of those, there's an individual and a department that's layered to this. So let's talk about the problem stack. Let's talk about the problem stack. And I'm gonna run through these because there are six of them that you need to think about as you think about your company, um, if you're the exec, um, but also if you are the founder or uh um or or startup and you're thinking about your company and what problem you want to solve. There is the presentation problem. Let's talk about this. What feels urgent after the conference? There is the the presenting problem. This is the problem that sort of um on its face, it stands out as as obvious. It's obvious. Okay, this uh based on everything that I I I want to hear at the conference, this is the problem maybe that the industry is facing, and this is the problem that we may be facing as a as a as a company. Or this is the problem that my um that my users are facing, and uh this is how we need to address it. There is, number two, there is a structural problem. How the organization is actually set up to respond. This is the this is the core issue that I see within a lot of companies, and um that where problems can never become truly solved because the structure of the company isn't set up properly to address it. Because once again, once again, there are many, many little problems inside of the structural problem. And if you are not addressing those many problems and the individuals associated with it, you will never get to the core issue. Everything will feel like it's solved for a minute and then it'll go back to the norm because your cultural, your culture is set up that way. Your culture is set up, I'm gonna get to the cultural problem here in a second, but your culture is set up that way where it uh it fights against itself in order to maintain its relevance. And those are the individuals. So you have to understand that. How is your organization set up to respond to a problem? Is it structurally sound? Once again, each one of these is a podcast episode in and of itself, and I probably will end up doing that too. Number three, the relational, this is all under, this is all still under number one, decide the real problem. So I want you to understand that. And these are just the that the problem stack that we're we're going through. The relational problem, how leaders and teams interact under pressure. Oh boy. How does your team deal with pressure? What I see more often than not is there is a presenter and a company that is on stage at a conference and they're presenting an idea, and that idea hits at the heart of a issue that your company is facing. And once again, it is hitting at the heart of the individual who was probably responsible for solving that problem, and they begin to feel the pressure. They feel the pressure because that speaker is speaking directly at them to the heart of the core of who they are, the core of that problem. And so they they feel the pressure. What they immediately start to do, they start to blast off text messages to their team, WhatsApps, emails. This is what I'm hearing from the conference. We need to get on top of this, we need to do this, da da da da da, all these, all these different things. And then the team that is not there, and we'll be talking about this here in a second, the team that is not at the conference, they're getting the brunt of all this unfiltered um information and ideas. And they have no context, zero context, zero context. And the pressure mounts. And so when you get back from the conference, you go in and you say, Hey, did you get all the information that I sent you? And they're like, Yeah, what the hell do you want me to do with this? So that is the relational problem that you have within your within your company. The decision problem, number four, the decision problem. How choices really get made or avoided. Oh my gosh. As I'm going through this, I'm like, man, these are these these are these are definitely podcast episodes because I I got so much more I want to say with this, but I want to get through the rest of these questions, rest of these decisions that you need to make. The decision problem, how how choices really get made? Do you know how how decisions are made? Who is the last line of sign-off for a decision in your company? Are they at the conference? Do they see the problem the same way that you see the problem? Do they have the um the resources uh necessary? Do they have the buy-in of the board? All these different things. We we think about um coming up with uh solutions to a problem where one, we don't have the authority in order to solve it, nor uh do we know how the actual decisions are truly made within our organization. And these are this is what stalls innovation. This is what stalls um uh the the implementation of really sound ideas because uh the decision matrix is so convoluted and we have no idea how things are actually being decided within our own organization. Number five, the capacity problem. What the organization can realistically absorb, what we tend to see, and we see this a lot with AI, we see organizations who who have a um been to an AI conference and they understand its merits and they want to implement something, but um fundamentally their company cannot absorb the um the the actual influx of uh data, um of uh information, of of truly understanding what their what their problem is, because there are too many gatekeepers, they're um they're fundamentally flawed in how they make decisions. Uh they have a culture that isn't really truly set up to win. They don't have a uh uh uh capacity. They're they their their team is outdated in maybe their leadership quotient um and their ability to understand and problem solve. Um they may be low on uh emotional intelligence, the team has lacked self-awareness, um, the decision, the decision mindset isn't there. Listen, I can go on about uh about capacity problems within organization, but you are the one that actually needs to understand where where this problem is, where this this problem um stacks up within your organization. And the last one, which is probably one of the most important ones um from a data problem stack standpoint, is uh the cultural problem. What do your organization truly rewards or avoids? Man oh man. What does your organization truly reward? It's a really good question to ask yourself. There's a sense of frustration that I have when I think about this one. Um I'm not going to get into it because I see it so often. I see so many companies and organizations and leaders say they value X, but they reward Y. And so many companies, so many leaders are losing and lose credibility and they just continue to lose it, and it's just it's it's it's frustrating. And so, um yeah. I'm gonna leave that one alone for a little bit. Here's the question I need you to answer. And this is once again for problem number one. If we execute one thing exceptionally well this year, what problem must it solve?