The Middle
The Middle is a podcast series exploring the challenges of improving middle management since that is widely acknowledged as having the biggest impact on organisational performance. Each podcast will feature an interview with a prominent executive from a wide range of contexts including public, private and charitable sectors. The host is associate professor Stephen Willson from Birmingham City University Business School.
The Middle
Justin King's turnaround of Sainsbury's
Justin King CBE was the chief executive of Sainsbury's plc, the UK's second largest grocery chain. He joined the organisation and engineered the corporate turnaround from 14 years of losing market share to 9 successive years of profit growth.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues underlying the decline and how they were addressed. This included changing from being centrally led to empowering the front line on the basis that the only place that customers are served is in the stores. This required fundamental changes in the top management lineup but illuminatingly no more than normal turnover in the 1,000 or so in the middle management ranks.