Seb James
The Steward
Legacy, values and the long now, leadership as care and continuity.
Seb James consistently frames his leadership through a steward's lens, telling a story about a 50-year Boots employee who could not recall any CEOs to underscore that executives are transient custodians of something larger than themselves.
“And it's also super fun. I actually did the advanced management program there, which is the cheat version back a long time ago. Now, you join Curries and in fact, I think if I get it right, you join Dixon's retail and then you end up as CEO of Dixon's car firm in 2014.”
“It has been incredibly galvanizing to our teams to say, well, what do we do to make sure that we have everything in our armory ready for when they open? In fact, in Westfield, we knew Sephora was opening. We had plenty of advance notice. We completely reconfigured the beauty halls and our growth was bigger than the whole of their sales.”
“And we saw that in the United States, in towns like Detroit and other places where the center of the town dies and everything moves out of town and suddenly you've got real problem of crime and fear in the center of your towns. And our towns are too important for that to happen.”
“And the other one was that suppliers were desperate for a place to showcase their products and were prepared to pay us to do that. So as soon as you understand that dynamic, you can begin to build a sustainable long-term retail business. And it's exactly the same with Boots. Right.”
Money Maze Podcast: “Retail in the 21st Century: Seb James, CEO of Boots, Discusses Health, Technology, Data and the Customer”
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