BUSINESS
“We’re in a
different
world at the
moment ...”
Simon Fowler
working conditions, offered shorter
working days, a third week’s paid
holiday, a house magazine and the
establishment of a staff committee.
Despite a rift with his father, John
Spedan Lewis’s innovations eventually
led to a profit-sharing scheme and a trust
settlement that allowed for the
partnership to be owned by the people
employed in it. Today, the 69,000
permanent staff in the John Lewis up a new role as head of internal
Partnership are still called “partners” and communication, to help the board
share in the profits. communicate a new three-year strategy –
“There’s a huge sense of engagement in which started at the beginning of 2009 –
that,” Fowler explains, “along with the called Fit for the Future. The aim is to
democracy that is built into the decision double the size of the business in the
making. It ensures that everybody in the next ten years.
organisation has the opportunity to help So, how does that fit in with the
step up to the mark and shape the economic slowdown?
business for the future”. “We’re in a different world at the
In fact, Fowler has had more than a moment,” Fowler says. “We’re all trying
little to do with shaping the future of the madly to protect the business as best we
business directly. After a career that took can. But one of the great things about
in stores at Welwyn Garden City, John Lewis is that we take decisions for
Newcastle, Kingston, Cambridge and the long term.
Nottingham, he was seconded to head “In any economic cycle, there’s always
office in Victoria to review service offers going to be a downside as well as an
in the John Lewis division, reinvigorate upside. The businesses that survive and
them and look at how they should be do best are those that take the right
taken forward. He was then asked to take decisions for the long term.”
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