The Retail Leadership Lens

A few years ago I placed a chief executive into a consumer business everyone expected him to turn around. He did. Three years in, the numbers were good, the board was content, and he called me for what I assumed would be a catch-up. Halfway through, he said something I have not forgotten. The last genuinely candid conversation he could remember, the last time anyone had looked at him and said "I think you are wrong about this," had been with a former colleague at a differe

At the end of last month, Princes Group announced that its chief executive, Simon Harrison, was stepping down after two years in the seat to pursue a new opportunity. By the following morning the business had an answer of sorts. Giuseppe Mastrolia, the chief commercial officer, would run the company as interim chief executive while a formal search for a permanent successor got under way. As these announcements go, it was orderly.

Think about how much preparation goes into a leader before they ever reach the top. The graduate scheme. The first management course. The stretch assignment, the secondment, the MBA the company part-funded, the leadership programme with the five-figure invoice. Years of deliberate investment in getting someone ready. Then they get the job. And it stops.

We have never sounded more impressive. The board paper drafts itself. The script is tidied before the meeting starts. Emails arrive confident, fluent, perfectly on message. The thing that used to mark a person out, the ability to put a clear sentence together under pressure, is now available to anyone with a laptop and a deadline. So here is a question worth sitting with. If everyone can sound articulate, what is left to tell a real leader apart?

54 consumer CEOs at publicly listed companies left their roles in 2025. The highest figure on record. In percentage terms, the consumer sector had the highest CEO turnover rate of any industry tracked. The leaders who departed also served the shortest average tenure of any sector, at just 6.3 years. The number that struck me, however, was a different one.

A fortnight ago, Best Buy announced that Corie Barry will step down as CEO at the end of October, after seven years in the role. When she leaves, she will remain with the company as a strategic advisor for six months, helping her successor transition into the seat. It is a thoughtful arrangement. Jason Bonfig, the incoming CEO, will inherit not just the keys to a Fortune 100 retailer but also six months of access to the person who knows where every door leads.

Yesterday, Lululemon announced Heidi O'Neill as its next CEO. The appointment ends a four-month interim period during which CFO Meghan Frank and Chief Commercial Officer André Maestrini shared the top job, a co-interim arrangement that raised eyebrows when Calvin McDonald stepped down in January. Lululemon is the latest in a string of major companies to navigate leadership transitions through interim appointments.

Two departures in a single week. On Wednesday of last week, the Co-op confirmed that CEO Shirine Khoury-Haq would step down after four years at the helm, her exit shadowed by reports of a ‘toxic culture’ at the top of the organisation and a £126 million annual loss. Days earlier, Currys announced that Alex Baldock would leave after eight years leading the electricals retailer through its omnichannel transformation. The press releases told familiar stories.

I took a brief from a retail board last year that made me pause. They wanted a CEO who could lead a digital transformation, restructure a legacy supply chain, rebuild a brand proposition for Gen Z, manage a private equity relationship, and ideally, had run a profitable P&L in food or fashion. Oh, and they needed someone in 3 months. I told them what I’ve been telling more and more boards lately: what you’ve just described is not a person. It’s a committee. Welcome to

Two announcements landed in the same week that tell you everything about the debate tearing through UK retail boardrooms right now. On Tuesday, Asda’s executive chairman Allan Leighton stood up at Retail Week × Grocer LIVE and declared that the supermarket’s next CEO would be promoted from within. No external search. No beauty parade of outsiders. His logic was blunt…

Retail board renewal is happening faster than most senior leaders realise. The top FTSE boards are refreshing their non-executive cohort at pace, and the directors already seated are carrying heavier portfolio loads than at any point in the last decade. That context matters before you even walk into the room.

December gave us a little jolt, right when many hoped for a clean finish. Barclays reported UK consumer spending fell 1.7% year on year in December 2025, and the British Retail Consortium said retail sales growth slowed to 1.2% year on year in the same period. If shoppers are this cautious at Christmas, you can feel what that means for the months ahead.

As another year draws to a close and the festive season invites us to pause, I find myself reflecting not on the big achievements, but on the quieter lessons learned along the way. The world feels noisier and work has been demanding. In the midst of it all, people close to me have gone through illness, change, and loss. I have watched children grow, parents age, and colleagues change careers completely.

In today’s retail landscape, where disruption feels like the new normal, there’s immense pressure to fill a leadership gap immediately. But a hasty permanent hire often adds more instability to an already turbulent situation. With recent data showing that the average time to hire for a permanent role in the UK is over a month and often much longer for senior positions, that’s a long time to leave a critical function exposed. This is where the strategic use of an interim leade

The most powerful person in the room is rarely the one speaking the most. We call this quality ‘gravitas’. It’s a word that can feel a bit old-fashioned, but it’s the defining factor in moments that truly matter: navigating a difficult turnaround, steering a major transformation, or holding the line in a tense board negotiation. In a world saturated with noise, gravitas is what gives your voice weight. So, how do we cultivate it?

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping retail, making operations smoother, customer experiences more personal, supply chains more efficient.