Waterstones retail director Rik McShane talks about the changes at the bookseller under owner Alexander Mamut.

You’ve been leading an internal change programme – what have you been trying to communicate to staff?

One of the biggest challenges for me was to make the shops relevant. We’d become generic. James’ [Daunt, Waterstones managing director] vision is to have local bookshops. Internally we hadn’t made that adjustment. We’ve been working with The Writer, who’ve helped us talk to people in their own language, so we sound like humans rather than robots. We asked [staff] to give us their ideas, and had booksellers talking about changing goods in and where we could open shops.

How does this compare with three years ago, before Alexander Mamut acquired the business?
Communications were always filtered – it was like Chinese whispers. It was a company run by planograms and spreadsheets. The only way to run a decent book shop is to understand your customer.

How has customer perception of Waterstones changed?
One of the biggest changes is the flexibility in the shops. We used to change our books based on weekly promotions but now we sell more new books, it’s much more organic. In York we have an incredible military history market, so you will find those books in that store. We spent too long replicating [London flagship] Piccadilly in tiny shops.

Is Waterstones aiming to expand its non-book offer?
Physical book sales will keep declining. We have to work out what we can sell sensibly on the side, not just cards and diaries. The Holy Grail is to find out what people will buy as well as books. We had incredible success over Christmas with a camera lens mug – it fits in with our photography books.

What role can Waterstones play in digital books?
We can have a very big role. As long as people are reading that’s a good thing. We can offer the experience and passion you just won’t get from an electronics retailer. And you can’t have a book signing on a digital device. We need to offer something different in terms of content, such as author interviews.