MBS Inspiration
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The MBS Group
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A seamless plan
It’s been a dramatic week in the world of supermarkets. Sir Terry Leahy has to be congratulated on delivering a seamless succession plan. His boots are certainly big ones to fill, and the way he has done it is, to my mind, ingenious: he has, effectively, replaced himself with a formidable team – new group CEO (the redoubtable Phil Clarke) and several divisional, geographically-focused CEOs (Richard Brasher, Trevor Masters and David Potts), creating a new deputy CEO into the bargain (Tim Mason).
Sir Terry – who, during his tenure, has seen off five chief executives at M&S! – had a raft of internal candidates to choose from and it is only recently that one or two outstanding people have left the business, aware of an impending bottle neck.
Tesco now has to be compared to the likes of P&G, GE and Yum! Brands for having built a world-class top team and, in fact, the team below that. Extraordinary when you look at Tesco’s UK competitors, one of which only this week has had to look outside to recruit an operational board director – unthinkable at Tesco. We have to ask ourselves: why?
I won’t be able to spend too much time thinking about it, because this afternoon I will be watching the opening ceremony of the World Cup. I’m not sure if it is common knowledge outside South Africa, but President Zuma has called for businesses to shut at lunchtime today so that everyone can watch this momentous occasion for Africa. Although I have lived in the UK for nearly as long as I lived in South Africa, I am really hoping that Bafana Bafana gets through the group stages.
Come on England – enjoy the match on Saturday!
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