The Changejobs Interview
with it some responsibilities for projects,
delivering improvements, efficiencies and cost
reductions. I found that the project work was
more interesting than the operational
management side of my work, and I also
realised that I could be more influential
being involved in change than I could be in a
business as usual role. I graduated towards
change from that point on.
CJ: How has your career progressed
since you started in change?
JH: It has progressed fantastically. Although
it has been something of an evolution over a
number of years, a big step up came when I
We talk to John Hugo, Change Direc-
took on the delivery of a major new
tor and change enthusiast about his
distribution centre at Tesco. There were
career and the state of the change
enormous challenges in delivering the project,
market
but so much of it was about people. I have
a longstanding interest in psychology so the
people aspects of work in general are fasci-
nating. The fact that I’d come to understand
Changejobs: How did you get into the
that change is fundamentally about people
change business?
meant that I was drawn to it in a big way.
Once the distribution centre project was de-
John Hugo: It happened by accident in actual
livered, my bosses were
fact. I started in industry doing operational
asking what they could give this Hugo guy to
management jobs, but that territory brought
do next. I thought I had a career strategy,
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