Britons are trapped in autopilot mode with 61% sticking to the same, familiar patterns.
That was the slightly bizarre line pulled from a study being punted around by Marks & Spencer earlier this month, as it took time off from running a clothing business that for 133 years has largely stuck to familiar patterns.
Still, as we await the group’s results this week, M&S is going through one of its periodic attempts to do things differently by updating itself.
Its newish chief exec, Steve Rowe, is to be joined by a fresh chairman, former Asda chief executive Archie Norman. Meanwhile, the retailer is also poaching Halfords boss Jill McDonald to run the clothing business – the improvement of which is Rowe’s “number one priority” as well as it being something of a family dominion.
Not only did Rowe once have that job himself, but so did his father Joe – whose tenure as an M&S director is perhaps best remembered for his decision to tell the 1999 annual meeting: “My wife, who is 52 I think, buys her underwear from M&S and I have to say it does look quite sexy.”
Or as Rowe fils’ new research put it: “The average person in Britain makes 15 decisions on autopilot a day ... without truly thinking about them”. If only more people would buy M&S clothing using the same rationale.
Halfords lacks a spare boss
Jill McDonald will not be joining M&S until October, at the end of her notice period as boss of the bike-shop-cum-car-accessory-store Halfords.
The chain has been shifting a few more chamois leathers under her two-year command and who gets to grab the handlebars when she dismounts is likely to be the main focus during its results this week.
The trading numbers are already a given – seeing as the company tried to soften the blow of news of McDonald’s departure by announcing that results were expected to be in line with market predictions.
But that didn’t stop the shares from slipping, as investors fretted that, despite the company making a lot of progress over the past few years, it keeps hiring decent chief execs who end up getting poached.
McDonald’s predecessor Matt Davies began the company’s so-called transformation (currently dubbed “Moving Up a Gear”), only to leave in 2015 to go and run Tesco’s UK and Ireland stores. Now McDonald is defecting too. As Liberum puts it: “Securing a credible replacement with relevant expertise will be critical in order to maintain the market’s confidence in the strategy and growth prospects”. Developing.
Co-ops in cyberspace?
How does Twitter start to handle all of that hate speech and abuse that constantly seems to swamp its platform, as well as possibly finding new revenue sources and innovating?
No, not by hiding the phone of the US commander in chief. The answer, at least according to a couple of Twitter shareholders, is to take the company off the stock exchange and convert it into a co-operative.
At this week’s annual meeting, shareholders will get to vote on a proposal that the firm starts to “prepare a report on the nature and feasibility of selling the platform to its users via a co-operative or similar structure with broad-based ownership and accountability mechanisms” – and you can quickly guess what the board reckons to all that.
Still, Wall Street lawyers being Wall Street lawyers, the response is tedious and lengthy, employing phrases such as: “Our directors and management are constantly seeking to maximise long-term stockholder value and do so by evaluating all opportunities to strengthen and focus our business.”
All of which might be overkill – when 140 characters would probably have sufficed – as even the campaign organisers don’t sound hopeful. Their motion needs 50% support to be carried, but the petition’s website states glumly: “Even with 3%, we can learn and re-submit next year.”
