Hit the road Positive leadership for troubled times - ICAEW

TURNAROUND
RETAIL THERAPY
Helping revolutionise Selfridges gave
Peter Williams a reputation as a turnaround
expert. Christian Doherty finds there’s more
to him than corporate paramedic – but in
an economy that refuses to recover, his
lessons are valuable to all FDs
DUANE NASIS
T
here aren’t many FDs who are
described as a “junkie” by a major
newspaper. Peter Williams was,
though he’s at pains to explain the Evening
Standard had him down as a junkie for
change – a reference to his habit of arriving
at stricken companies and playing a
significant role in their recovery.
“It’s inevitable that people are going to
want to pigeonhole you,” he says, pointing
out that turnaround work forms only a part
of a thriving portfolio of roles. He now
combines board roles at Cineworld,
Silverstone Holdings Ltd, the Design
Council, fashion retailer ASOS (a serious
success story) and football pools company
Sportech. That’s a pretty diverse roster.
But Williams’s most high-profile
engagement recently was as chairman of
Blacks Leisure, the outdoor retailer that hit
the buffers in the middle of 2011.
Managing that kind of decline isn’t easy. It
takes a certain kind of resilience to take the
helm of a company so clearly in trouble.
(His role ended in January when JD Sports
was secured as a buyer for the chain.)
Still, his work with distressed businesses
gives him particular satisfaction. “There
are plenty of people who do this work, who
come along to bury the dead,” he says. “My
aim is to heal the wounded, not read the
last rites to the dying.”
ACT QUICKLY FOR THE PATIENT
These “casualties” have been, for the most
part, consumer-facing businesses.
Following a stint as CFO and latterly chief
executive at iconic department store
Selfridges, Williams carved out a niche as
something of an emergency surgeon for
distressed retailers. In the last ten years,
JJB, EMI and most recently Blacks have all
had the Williams treatment.
Taking a deliberately vague job title –
“director of strategic development” is a
favourite – Williams usually arrives at a
company when the banks and investors
have lost confidence in the incumbent
management. His first aim? To shift the
direction of travel away from
administration.
Take sportswear retailer JJB. As an
executive director working alongside Sir
David Jones, Williams calmed investor
fears of an imminent collapse, then
restored the business’s credibility with
analysts – a crucial step. A series of strategy
changes were announced, including the
closure of unprofitable stores. Williams’
tenure was seen by many observers as
critical to the chain’s subsequent survival.
That decisiveness is the key: tending the
wounded means making a series of quick
decisions to stop the bleeding. But as
Williams points out, there’s more to it than
simply parachuting into a crisis, slashing
costs and buying time with the bank.
“You have to keep calm,” he says.
“Whatever fires are burning in the various
parts of the business, you have to keep
“You’re going to need
people to think
clearly and act
decisively if they’re
going to help the
turnaround – so you
must reassure them”
your head because if you, as leader of the
turnaround process, are seen to panic in
any way, then that’s not going to help.”
STATE OF MIND
The next step in Williams’s paramedic act
is simple: reassure the workforce, from top
to bottom. “By the time you get there, the
business will typically have been through
difficulties for a period of time,” he says.
“You’re dealing with an organisation that’s
made up of human beings, and inevitably
their emotions and worries can further fuel
the fear. You’re going to need people to
think clearly and act decisively if they’re
going to help the turnaround – so you must
reassure them.”
Once fears have been calmed, Williams
wastes no time in trying to establish
precisely how a company came to need his
help. There are generally two kinds of
situations that demand his help. First is
long-term – and usually irrevocable – shifts
in consumer behaviour. Think Kodak
falling victim to digital photography, or
HMV suffering as consumers migrate to
buying music online.
The second, and more common, issue is
that the companies lose sight of what made
them successful in the first place. “Take
JJB,” Williams says. “When I got there it had
a heritage as a specialist sports shop. But
when you went into a store, you were faced
with Hello Kitty and Thomas the Tank
Engine merchandise.”
Williams pointed out that anybody
who’d gone there thinking it was a sports
store would be confused. “There’s a reason
why I focus on that: there are more shops
than we need, there are countless retailers
out there, and the consumer is as time-
FINANCE & MANAGEMENT MAY 2012
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