Greenbury Over the Past Several

Greenbury

Over the past several decades, the acceptable leadership style has been steadily changing from hierarchal to delayered. Sir Richard Greenbury, chairman and chief executive of the retail establishment Marks and Spencer for 46 years, exemplified the former style -- in fact, was sometimes noted as an "ogre" (Lucas, 2001, p.1). Despite this non-egalitarian form of management, however, he was not only able to keep the company up and running during most of his tenure, but as one of the leading retail establishments in the world. Even in 1999 when the walls came tumbling down, "King Rick may have retreated bruised to the sidelines"...but M&S still supplied 40% of the nation's underwear, held half the market in ready-made meals, and maintained a grip on 19% of the women's clothing market.

According to an article in the Manchester Guardian (2000, p. 125), Greenbury oversaw a corporate culture where the status quo was never questioned. "It was a rigid, stuffy and supremely arrogant organization" and Greenbury had "a corrosive air" where every time he opened his mouth "confidence on both the shop and management floors must fall another notch." One person summed it up as "once Rick thinks you're disloyal, you're dead," (Gwther, 1999, p. 78).

Control" is a primary word that can be used in how the company was run for nearly five decades. Greenbury assumed the role of chief executive in 1988 and moved into the chairman's position in 1991. When filling this number-one spot, he fired 600 employees and created anxiety throughout the company. Despite some of the company's bad decisions at this time, Greenbury was named 1993 Retailer of the Year by a poll of institutional investors and retailers. In 1997, M&S made profits of nearly L1.2 billion on sales of more than L8.2 billion, while trading in more than 30 countries.

For years he dominated the company with his personal forcefulness and intimidation. He was also physically impressive, which added to the impression that he was overbearing. However, a colleague said: "If you get to know him, you realize that his bark is worse than his bite, but some people do find his bark pretty frightening. And to his credit, when he really does upset someone, and he realizes it, then he does have the grace to apologize."

Of course, the truth always depends on from where you view it. An interview with Greenbury with Davidson for Management Today (2001), said that he kept his position with ruthlessness and a lot of hard work. As many other high executives, he rarely spent time with his family or in a life of his own making. Although he loved all the perks, such as expensive car and fancy home address, what gave him personal satisfaction was being and remaining number one.

When Davidson interviewed him for Management Today (2001) regarding what happened at the end of his career that brought all the gates crashing down, Greenbury refused to assume responsibility -- or most responsibility -- for the company's downswing. That, in fact, was one of the things he did that made people so angry. He always found other people or things to blame other than himself. When this interview was being written in 2001, he was being admonished for resisting innovation, bullying subordinates, souring relations with the city and the press, heading off at a crucial time to lead a government committee since he desired a peerage, and failing to identify a suitable successor for his own job, partly out of vanity.

In return to his defense, in this Management Today (2001) interview, he responded that he just saw two main problems toward the end of his term at M&S -- and not during the beginning or the middle of his term; then, apparently, he did no wrong. These were: through a series of serendipitous events, he had put the company in position where its success was so great, it simply could not keep on at the same level of profitability and, second, the board had fatally delayed appointing his own successor. The overall problem, said Greenbury, was just not leaving soon enough -- in other words, when the going was still good! If he had left a couple of years earlier, his successor would have taken all the blame for what happened.

Looking back, Greenbury reluctantly said that he should have treated the press better -- but look how they treated him by being such pests. and, yes, he was a bully and "did push colleagues hard on their ideas. 'But my experience was that when people had the courage to argue their case, they believed in it. Once I had been persuaded, I would put my whole weight behind the policy.'" Indeed, it was definitely true that he detested when anyone else talked to the cursed press. Apparently, Greenbury would fire off emotional line-by-line rebuttals to journalists who had written anything which he felt had traduced his beloved corporate charge. These became known throughout Fleet Street as 'Rickograms' and no business correspondent was truly blooded until he or she received one. In addition, some business associates have accused him of having no sense of humor. This, too, is unfair, Greenbury said. He just found it impossible to see the funny side of any jibe about his beloved M&S (Gwyther, 1999).

Overall, he was able to agree that no people are as good as others sometimes make them out to be, nor as bad as when people start to slaughter you. "There's got to be something in-between." Most observers concede that Greenbury's decade-long tenure at M&S was productive. Rick introduced disciplines. He made people ask questions about how many individuals it took to do a certain job, and he introduced a greater awareness of the need for control.