High street nostalgia and Gunnery Highway

Indulge me this week. I had a dream the other night, an unconscious spark of enthusiasm about days gone by. It was around 1992, HMV were opening a flagship store in Glasgow and sent out a call for the most talented video games fans to join them as they set out to bring games to the high street like never before. Those who answered the call (and me) were whittled down to a chosen few and a legend was born. It was a time when Commodore began to kill off the Atari ST with the launch of their Amiga 1200 (The superior ST was discontinued one year later). Ecco the Dolphin told Greenpeace hippies that games could be cool for the environment and Nintendo released the SNES in Europe.

Okay so this was not so much a dream but a trip down memory lane but here is the thing, it's been 21 years since I started with HMV (16yrs since I left) and since then in my world I have had to, (quoting Gunnery Sergeant Highway) "improvise adapt and overcome" You do this according to the circumstances and surroundings at the time.

It is well documented that HMV was slow to tackle it's biggest competitors i.e. the online challenges by amazon, play.com and others etc and even slower to launch an online store but what annoys me more is the fact that the media and average person in the street is quick to blame the supermarkets and out of town malls. No blame on government cutting perceived loopholes that allowed HMV (and others) to compete with Amazon by distributing CD's etc from Jersey and Hong Kong and yet turn a blind eye to corporate tax returns. There is also little accountability from us as consumers despite the many nostalgic stories of Saturday afternoons heading up town to buy the latest 12" single, album, cd single, mini disc, cd, video, DVD, blu ray etc etc  and there are a couple of reasons for that. We move with the times.

So back to Sergeant Highway. Things happen, things advance and things evolve. To stay in charge and on top we have to sometimes IMPROVISE. You never quite know how some things are going to turn out so although it could be a blind leap of faith you are able to take control and work around any situation if you sit back and think about it. Only today I was struggling to get an image to fit to the right size and area for an eLearning module I was designing but I took a step back and had a wee think and a thought about it. Then with a nip a tuck a tweak and a twang and a sprinkle of improvisation. It worked. Not the way it should have worked but it worked :-)


The next thing we do when faced with adversity is we ADAPT. Evolution is all you need to know about how to adapt. Analyse situations and take a look at what works and what doesn't. Being flexible in your role or life can help make the transition easier and the more adaptable you are the more opportunities tend to come your way.

Finally we OVERCOME. You can beat anything you put your mind to. Pushing yourself to do something is better than being pushed by someone else. Yes you need support and encouragement by those around you but you do it for yourself.

Those retail giants who have fallen or are in stages of falling continued to pursue business models that failed to make changes quick enough. HMV looked at online retailing and thought everyone would still want to buy the CD and rather than looking to the music that made them what they were they filled shelves with iPods and MP3s to let people download and discard the need for the CD, they couldn't improvise as they had no channel to do so. Without that fall back the ability to adapt was limited and the only thing they were overcome with was debt. I believe they will survive but at a third of their size and I only hope they learn from the past.

That Learning Dude @learningxdude