Advice for Tesco's chief executive as he checks out for last time

Terry Leahy is achieving something that is rare among chief executives – he is quitting while still ahead

MY SELF-HELP guide for Tesco’s retiring chief executive.

Dear Sir Terry,

When I read last week that you were leaving Tesco, I thought of that hackneyed quote from Macbeth: Nothing in his work became him like the leaving of it. You’ll see I’ve substituted the word “work” for “life”, on the grounds that as you have toiled at Tesco for more than 30 years, the two amount to virtually the same thing.

Shakespeare wrote the line about the Thane of Cawdor who was a traitor and a bad hat. You’re also a traitor, only in your case it’s to the idea that we should still shop as our mothers did, walking round to the greengrocers to buy a limp lettuce and a pound of sprouts.

Otherwise, much became you in your job, but the way you’re leaving it is more becoming still. You are doing something that is now almost unheard of: quitting while you are ahead.

You’ve found Philip Clarke, another Tesco lifer, to replace you. And now you’re going to stay for nine months to make the handover smooth.

This sort of management succession is as delightfully old-fashioned as Green Shield Stamps, which your company became too modern for a long time ago. Equally delightful are your plans for the future. You’ve said no to government (which you’d surely hate) and no to another big company (which you’ve done already).

It doesn’t look like you need much help in managing this leap into the unknown, but as I’ve seen how badly others do it, I hope you don’t mind if I offer you some don’ts. If you stick to even one of them, you’ll be doing a lot better than most.

Don’t interfere. I remember meeting your predecessor, Lord MacLaurin, two years after he’d left you in charge. He had the grim, lost air of a man who had emerged from a painful divorce but was still unable to move on.

He told me that the previous day he’d gone into a Tesco store and thought the bakery section looked dull and had phoned you to tell you so. “Terry really appreciated it,” he insisted.

But did you really, Terry? I bet you didn’t. So don’t do that to Philip.

And if you can’t stop yourself drifting disconsolately through the stores at least do it on your own. When he left Marks and Spencer, Sir Richard Greenbury walked through stores with journalists in tow.

Don’t write a book about your 14 years at the top. Most big chief executives allow themselves this indulgence – Sir John Harvey Jones, Lord Browne, even your predecessor, all responded to retirement by picking up their pens. You are a great grocer, but are you a great writer? Your book probably wouldn’t sell, and who cares anyway? Lord MacLaurin’s dreary book Tiger by the Tail is number 630,110 on Amazon.

Admittedly Jack Welch’s memoir, Straight from the Gut, did quite well. He got an advance of $7 million and it has sold over one million copies. But he is American and can get away with cheesy stories about his mother and a whole lot of tripe about winning. We Brits aren’t so keen on that sort of thing.

Don’t say the word “Tesco” ever again after you leave in March. Lord MacLaurin told me that it was in his blood, and I expect it’s in yours too, so it’s going to be hard, but you must try.

The next piece of advice is even more of a cheek. Don’t get divorced. Lord MacLaurin elected to tell the world last week that you’re looking forward to spending more time with Alison, and I hope he’s right. Jack Welch got divorced after he left General Electric and then the great man’s name started to look rather less wonderful as all the greedy details of the penthouse, the limo, helicopter and private jet came tumbling out.

And finally, don’t do anything rash in the next nine months. Recent history tells us that good reputations can turn bad in no time at all. Don’t start drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. And don’t try to make a £24 billion acquisition in Asia.

One thing you can do more safely than hapless Tony Hayward, however, is tell the media that you want your life back. I only hope when you get it back you find that you’re not entirely lost inside it.

Having begun this letter so pretentiously with English Lit, I want to end the same way with William Blake. This time I only need change one letter: He who binds to himself a job, doth the winged life destroy . . .. The only trouble is that by changing the “y” to a “b”, the rhyme is lost.

But I hope you get my drift anyway.

Best of luck,

Lucy Kellaway.

– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)