Partnership issues

John Lewis is struggling to weather the storm assailing the British highstreet. The Partnership, which now includes the Waitrose supermarket chain, is a long-established high-end outfit founded in 1864 by John Spedan Lewis. He set up the principles by which the business operates, where workers are referred to as 'partners' and receive a dividend from company profits.

The business has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons and its high-profile Chair, Dame Sharon White, has been partly blamed for her lack of retail experience and slowness to respond to the competetive pricing challenges affecting retail, especially acutely felt at Waitrose. Dame Sharon was appointed in 2020 on a five-year contract but has just announced that she will not be looking for reappointment in 2025, making her the shortest-serving Chair in John Lewis's history. She said “having led the partnership through the pandemic and the worst of the cost of living crisis, it is important that there is now a smooth and orderly succession process and handover."

This is a sad development as Dame Sharon is one of the few women to run a big business in Britain and one of even fewer Black women to do so. However, she has probably made the right decision in terms of her career development and her personal happiness. It's tough at the top (never more so than now) but sometimes it's wise to quit while you're still on top rather than risk a painful decline and possibly ignominious exit.

Dame Sharon ditched John Lewis's 'Never Knowingly Undersold' pledge, first introduced in 1925, last year. NKU, as it was known, had become an anachronistic distraction and was costing £1million a year to service at a time when the business was also struggling with enormous losses. These led to Ms White controversially proposing to sell a £1billion minority stake in the business. She also launched a closure programme for some Waitrose supermarket stores. The partnership reported a loss of £234m last year, forcing it to scrap the annual staff bonus.

I used to be an avid John Lewis customer and still use Waitrose, albeit selectively now that I'm a pensioner. I had a John Lewis store card which I used to furnish and equip a new home almost thirty years ago. However, the in-store experience was always a disappointment as the partnership unfailingly over-promised and under-delivered. There was always a tempting display of wares on offer but items were regularly not in stock and had to be ordered, often necessitating up to a six-week wait. And if you did find something you liked which was available for purchase on the day you faced a snaking queue waiting for the two partners at the tills to transact the seemingly demeaning task of handling your grubby money.

And, whilst on the subject of the partners, frankly, many of them needed to get over themselves. At the end of the day they were shop assistants whose role was to serve customers. Not a glamourous task, admittedly, but hardly a shameful one either. Some of them made you feel they were doing you a favour - if, that is, you could find one on the shop floor to engage with in the first place. But maybe not getting a bonus this year will concentrate minds. I imagine managing John Lewis partners must be akin to herding cats. No wonder Dame Sharon has had enough.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

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