Leadership lessons from a retailer’s "great experiment" and a waste company’s "Galileo moment"
LEADERS of two very different organisations which are each making their mark on the region showcased what their version of 21st-century leadership looks like at an event at Leeds Town Hall, organised by Leeds Community Foundation.
John Lewis Partnership’s managing director Andy Street described his role as “leading what remains a great experiment in doing business in a different way” while Estelle Brachlianoff, Veolia’s executive vice president for UK and Ireland, told a packed audience she is leading an organisation in the aftermath of a “Galileo moment” that has changed its vision and purpose.
Mr Street, fresh from opening a John Lewis store in Birmingham, is turning his attention to the £37m, 250,000 sq ft regional flagship store which will open within Leeds’ Victoria Gate development in autumn 2016.
He told the audience the company had been talking about a John Lewis store in Leeds on his first day, “so it’s taken at least 30 years”.
He also presented Leeds Community Foundation with a cheque for £125,000 – which will be used to create a fund to help young people in the city into employment – as part of the company’s commitment to doing business “the John Lewis way”.
Principle seven of the company’s constitution, introduced by John Spedan Lewis when he took sole ownership of the two-store chain in 1928, states “the partnership aims to obey the spirit as well as the letter of the law and to contribute to the wellbeing of the communities where it operates.”
“We believe our business should do the right thing for the community,” said Mr Street. “We want to be a long-term partner.”
With no shareholders to please, the company can theoretically be more patient, but it must still compete for customers’ loyalty against large and cost-conscious rivals.
He said: “In the short term, there is a trade-off. We could make more money this year if we did not do some things. But in the long term, it is all naturally reinforcing, because people think ‘that’s a place I can trust, I want to shop there’. You can’t put a value on the trust you establish. There’s no conflict over the long term.”
Trust has become an increasingly important issue since Mr Street took charge in 2007, months before the world economy was turned on its head.
“Since the crash of 2008 there has been a change of sentiment to a more sustainable form of capitalism,” he said.
“Customers expect their companies to be more responsible. You can see that much more in younger generations.”
The world may look very different, but Mr Street is content that the John Lewis approach remains appropriate nearly 90 years after the partnership model was created.
He added: “My role is to make sure that the values and principles of the John Lewis Partnership evolve so they are suitable for the period in which we are now trading.
“The principles themselves stay the same but how they are brought to life and how we trade changes with each generation. My job is to inch that forward.”
Ms Brachlianoff has set herself a very different challenge, seeking “permanent revolution” as she repositions a company with 14,000 staff thanks to a “Galileo moment”.
“We used to think the world was flat but it is round,” she said, encapsulating how the waste, water and energy company is embracing the idea of a circular economy to become a resource management company.
She said: “We have been on a journey to transform the company over the last three years. Now we help our customer to use less resource to have the same outcome.
“That’s quite a transformational journey from quite a traditional business – that’s what leadership is about.”
Veolia, which is creating a landmark energy from waste plant in east Leeds, already touches “roughly half of the UK population in one way or another”.
Ms Brachianoff acknowledges that while leadership in a time of great change is not easy, there is not another option.
“You have to be a bit brave, if not crazy at times, but I think fortune favours the brave,” she said.
“The time when you could just run a business as it has been run for 20 years is over.
“The world is changing very fast, and it’s happening faster and faster. You need to be innovative – in the widest sense, not just technology – and that means permanent revolution.”
Recycling, or finding a “second life” for a product that was once destined for landfill, can have the added benefit of shortening supply chains and therefore make them more resilient.
“We are a business ourselves and a profitable one,” said Ms Brachlianoff. “There is a business case behind it. It’s good for the planet but it makes good business sense.”
She belives that businesses are now ingraining the notion of doing good into the daily routines and the grand vision for their organisation.
“For a long time, corporate social responsibility was just put on one side in the business, as if you had the normal business and then a bit of charity on the side,” she added.
“For me we are now in a third generation, which is about putting that together. It’s about the meaning of the business and the purpose.
“At Veolia, the purpose is to tackle the biggest challenges the planet faces – that’s not going to change.”
