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Hello, welcome.

Now, this week we have just one guest, Dame Sharon White, the chair of the John Lewis Partnership,

the department stores and waitrose the upmarket supermarket.

All safe in her hands?

Well, that's the question.

And if they're not safe in her hands, Well, that's the question. And if they're not safe in her hands,

is her position safe at JLP, John Lewis Partnership.

Now, I'm raising these questions because the partnership is a case study, really,

in dealing with a corporate challenge.

Sharon took the reins at a really difficult time for retail, February 2020. But even as physical stores

have recovered from the pandemic, JLP has had its share of difficulties. It lost, getting on

for a quarter of a billion pounds last year. It's been closing stores. It's trying to do some new

things, but should the focus be on core retail, on online retail,

or maybe other things? Not all the 74,000 partners, the staff, are sure if the vision is there

to build a strong future. There are many critics of the strategy, the five-year partnership

plan. And I should say, Sharon doesn't have a retail background.

She's an economist by trade. She began her career as a civil servant working in the Treasury

and in the policy unit of number 10 during the Blair years. And then until 2019,

she was the chief executive of Offcom, the UK media regulator.

Is John Lewis a bit like the civil service?

Maybe it once felt like that, but of course the world has been changing.

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