Almost there...

So here we are, made it to Friday. Feels like a long time when you're outside of your regular routine, buts it's been an amazing week connecting with some great people in the Lux universe. Really happy with what's come out of it, the opportunities to collaborate & the things we're able to build on with these guys.

Another good day with the guys at Lux HQ, largely spent with Sean Dineen & his team looking at a whole bunch of stuff - talent, HQ curiccullum, blended learning plans, career development tools, leader development programs, evaluation strategies - you name it.  

What's really interesting is that while the US business is huge (c38,000 employees), the issues & challenges they're facing are very similar to ours, but obviosuly on a much bigger scale. While the retail market here seems to be more bouyant than at home, the challenges their brands are having with their positioning / propositions etc have many similarities, particularly between Pearle Vision and Laubman & Pank.

From an L&D perspective, lots of good ideas & content that looks like being a good fit in our business, so really valuable to spend the time with the crew here & get a sense of what's keeping the Oakley guys awake at night (insert smart-ass line about being high here) or how the Lenscrafters guys are transitiong into their Digital strategy. Sean is trying to free a great & yet-to-be released Lenscrafters TVC from the internal server for me which provides a great story of what the digital retail piece looks like in action.

Lux's US Retail HQ, Mason Ohio.

Apparently no guns are allowed on site at Lux. Geez, like, lighten up dude.

Meet Newman, the Lux mail robot. He's always getting stuck in the lifts trying to sneak out to the carpark for a ciggie...


Well guys, gotta run. Hope you've enjoyed keeping tabs on me & hope also that I've been able to give a slightly different view of a Lux business trip. See you soon.

Ohio, must be Thursday

Hi again & apologies for not posting yesterday. Had a morning of meetings yesterday then spent the rest of the day making my way across to Ohio, finally rocking up to the hotel at 1:30am. What they dont tell you is the airport is actually in Kentucky, so of course I figure I've caught the wrong flight until I checked in with Uncle Kleetus the airport cleaner who swore I was aaaall guud, y'all. Good times.

So its Thursday & this Mason. Mason is the North American HQ of Lux & is houses something like 1800 employees on site. Mason itself is 20 miles north of Cincinatti & is kind of like an quieter, lesser populated Macquarie Park on the feeway north. There's a couple of big employers in town including Procter & Gamble, plus it hosts the Cincinatti Masters tennis tournament in what is apparently one of the largest tennis stadiums in the world. There you go.

The Lux HR team here is big by comparison to us & is largely structured with brand-specific roles for each of its retail brands (Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, SGH & Ilori) as well as some which are shared across, including Wholesale.

They are doing some great work in the online space, particularly in Target Optical & are rolling out a huge digital imaging project in Lenscrafters which will go live in September. Both of these are great areas of collaboration for us & there's lots of common ground to cover. They are also doing some great things in the Talent & Leadership space which I have to bring home & are also rolling out a 9-box talent matrix for the calibration process. What's also interesting is that they have one of their team focussing specifically on delivering HR metrics & reporting - while that's nothing new for generalist HR data, I've never seen the level of L&D evaluation & metrics as these guys are doing on their big programs. Very impressive & something I really like.

Current Lenscrafters campaign in the US.

The Lux HQ has it's own media & film studio. These are the guys make those SGH video clips to get the kids pumped up at conferences as well as producing a whole bunch of training & comm's pieces. Nice.

Anyways all, must dash. Have a whole bunch of reading to do before tomorrow. Speak soon.

The O Matter...

Hi all & welcome back to day 2. Another good day at Oakley which we've spent mainly on the O Matter platform.

Oakley launched O Matter in 2008 and provides its retail network with the latest Product, Technology & Culture pieces to help these guys live the brand through its stable of professional athletes who provide the video content in O Matter. The key to O Matter is its ability to get consumers and retail teams excited about the brands foothold in performance sports & it tells stories by people inside Oakley who are passionate about what they do. O Matter also provides a channel to interact with Oakley designers, ask questions as well as get tips and tricks that they can use immediately on the sales floor. All ways to deepen the relationship in a "community reserved only for those lucky enough to sell the iconic Oakley brand".

O Matter provides you with points for completion of each section, kind of like CPD & these points are redeemable for discounted product. In the screen dump below, you can get a sense of what the O Matter dashboard looks like - really easy to navigate & with loads of great info on the latest product, promotions etc that are going on in the Oakley world.

I'm talking to the guys here about how we are able to link in with this space & how the platform could be set up to align with us in Aus, but a pretty nice piece of work.

Quick snap of the Oakley museum...

More B52 ejector seats, these guys are outside the CEO's office...These things are all declassified which means they've all been used - you can see where they've hit the ground after ejecting. Not sure you can get 'em at IKEA...

Thats me for today folks, need to get back into it. Speak tomorrow.

Welcome to the world of Oakley!

So the first piece of good news is that I managed to navigate my way thru LA traffic with both me & the rental car in one piece with no lawsuits, carjackings or celebrity encounters to report & made it to Oakley's HQ as per the program. Foothill Ranch is located is about about 90 mins south of LA & home to Oakley's 2000+ employees & covers all things Oakley from global design to manufacture, HR included.

Like all normal offices, they have an ex-military tank out the front which they take the staff for spins in around the track they built for it. Apparently not long after they got the tank (like, where do you buy tanks?) Colin Baden the CEO went out & bought a boat just so he could run over it & crush it in his tank. Like you do. All that is right next to the heli-pad that Jim Jannard apparently used to get to & from work most days. Out the back there's bmx & mountain bike race tracks as well as a golf cage for working on your 6 iron's. So pretty much it's just like North Ryde then.

On the work front, have had a great Monday so far with Jennifer McClusker & Daphne Felicitas (Global Talent) & the broader HR leadership team. Also caught up with Mark Howell the Director of Global Retail who'll be out in Australia in July. There's a lot that these guys are working on around succession, competency frameworks & performance management which is very much is the same space as us, so lots of opportunity to collaborate which is great!

 The company vehicle...

Oakley HQ - it's a huge building housing 2000 staff & running 24 hour manufacturing shifts.

Inside reception. They have ex-B52 ejector seats as the visitor seating in here. Could come in handy...
Well that's all for today folks. Will keep you updated with a new post tomorrow (Tuesday US time) with another update which will give you a run down on O-Matter, Oakley's online product training tool.  

Welcome!

Hi all & welcome to the Learning@Lux blog site. Over the coming weeks I will be updating this page daily with updates & photos which I hope you'll find interesting & informative!

Watch this space & stay tuned - my first update should be live on June 13.

Cheers, Mark