Dame Sharon White caught my eye in the press last week. White is the new boss of John Lewis who faced a baptism of fire ‘courtesy of Covid 19’. We all know that sales during lockdown have moved from offline shops to online – leaving shops with lower footfall and high overheads – nothing new there.
However, what White is proposing is radical – she wants to ramp up the Partnership’s financial services, move into garden centres and ‘turn department stores into affordable housing’.
But how will this affect our lives….
White’s proposal is in line with the Government’s plans to ‘revolutionise’ England’s planning laws. Last week, Robert Jenrick the Housing Secretary, announced that he would tear up the ‘outdated’ planning rules which he says have held back development and kept young people off the property ladder.
He wants a new system which will make it easier to convert derelict buildings and empty shops into affordable housing. Jenrick wants to make it easier to turn disused commercial space – which is likely to be on the increase post lockdown – into residential property.
For decades the UK has failed to hit targets on housebuilding ‘in 2018, just 2.25 homes per 1,000 people were built in the UK compared to 3.6 in Germany and 6.8 in France
Some say the real drag, however, is not the planning system but the big developers who sit on ‘tens of thousands of sites’ with planning permission in the hope their assets will increase in value’. Currently there are one million homes given approval in the past decade still unbuilt.
This may be set to change post lockdown. If there is an increase in stock and hopefully a limited time window for a tax incentive – these developers should start building – there will certainly be demand.
Employees post lockdown will not want to put up with the long commute to work in jam packed public transport. These people will happily live in a converted John Lewis department store in Oxford Street close to Oxford Circus and walk to work in the City or West End!
At weekends rather than travel to Oxford Street for a day’s shopping they could go out of town to huge garden centres where they could walk about large spaces of plants and home furniture, buy all their domestic appliances as well as check out what is in fashion.
People are social human beings – we like company – but that does not mean we like being crammed together in tight spaces where disease and infections thrive, when travelling. Air travel for example used to be a joy, now it has been dehumanised – standing in long queues, told to take off shoes, belts, jackets and emptying laptops and mobile phones into separate bins. Remember these procedures were introduced to keep our travel safe, now we need to wash our hands, keep our distance and cover our face – like airport safety precautions I cannot see these procedures going away.
We will all need to get used to less travel, more work through remote connections, less conferences and face to face networking.
This is why I have set up Caroline’s Club where private client professionals can meet and network through online zoom calls curated to find the right people with whom you need to mingle quickly inexpensively and efficiently. This will leave you with more time and money to spend on holidays, social life and family. If you would like to register click here
Of course, this will mean change and for some people change is upsetting. They like being surrounded by people it blocks out their inner fears of ‘not being good enough’ Without people to work alongside these fears surface; financial fears of being made redundant, fear that without an office they will be overlooked for promotion, fear that they can never learn without being surrounded by mentors and opportunities. We all have fears – some rational, many not.
The person who has helped thousands of people face and overcome fears is Britain’s no 1 therapist Marisa Peer and her breakthrough ‘Rapid Transformational Therapy’ who is our podcast professional of the week.
Marisa when growing up was told that the best she could hope to be was a nanny because she was simply not ‘good enough’ to be anything else.
When young she was engaged by Jane Fonda to work in her exercise classes. Many of Jane’s celebrity clients were troubled by bulimia, alcoholism and chronic gambling. So, Marisa started working with them and it wasn’t long before she had a steady stream of clients. She gave up the fitness classes and the rest is history.
In Marisa’s experience most of us think we are not ‘good enough’; the block to our success, which is why her teaching and philosophy is focussed on ‘I am enough’
To listen to this week’s Podcast Professional Marisa Peer, click here.
Episode 30 -
Britain’s No.1 Therapist, Marisa Peer: Marisa Peer
In Episode 30, Caroline Garnham talks to Marisa Peer, she is a world renowned speaker, Rapid Transformational Therapy trainer and best-selling author. Marisa has helped thousands of people face and overcome fears and is Britain’s No. 1 therapist. Caroline talks to Marisa about her book 'I Am Enough: Mark Your Mirror And Change Your Life', listen now to hear firsthand what Marisa has to say about the thought of "I am not good enough".