Marks and Spence Group PLC is something of a great British institution, as life began in 1884 as a center in the Kirkgate market in Leeds. Fast forward until 2025, and enjoyed Stuart Machin, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Stewart Machine, with some Renaissance. The share price is currently 343 pixels and increased by 345 % over the past five years on the group’s revenues, which amounted to 13 billion pounds (16 billion dollars) compared to 10.1 billion pounds (12.6 billion dollars) in 2020.
However, it was not always; For years, the M&S struggled, as she was moving from one crisis to another, as she imposed taxes on the capabilities of even most operators such as former President Lord Stewart Rose.
In 2016, Steve Rowe became the CEO and soon realized that the company became a very bureaucratic, and has a complex institutional structure, and had unclear responsibilities. In 2018, I reported that the M&S was “behind the curve in digital”, where the clothes needed more work about “style and value”, which is “weak performance in food”, and that he had “ineffective supply chains” and that the store “was not suitable for the future.”
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M & s rank on Fortune 500 Europe
In fact, a current chair was then transferred, Archi Norman, to say in 2018, “This work is on a burning platform.”
Something should have changed, while Ro put the foundations, it was not the case until Machin took over the position of CEO in 2022 that the transformation had already gained momentum. But what was the strategy behind this? How can one turn a great and complex job like M & S?
High performance culture is part of how to reshape the M&S growth, which also includes speeding up the store rotation program, updating the supply chain, using data, digital and technology to make better decisions and providing better service while maintaining a strong public budget and investing for future growth. Tell Machin luck“A high culture of performance is an important part of our transformation-we need a culture closer to clients and closer to colleagues. We need to constantly lift the tape on talents. We make progress but there is a lot to do with building the culture that we need to reshape M & S.”
He continued, “I often talk about the way we need to protect the magic of M&S and modernize the rest. In fact, this is what sits in the heart of our strategy today – protecting the heritage of what makes us M&S but we are really clear that we also need to update business and accelerate the pace of change.”
An insight into what a high -performance culture means can be found in the fact that the manager of the people, Sarah Vendaner, spent three months operating the M&S store “to get a better understanding of the challenges their colleagues face in stores.”
She said luck“What this means is that the sleeves are paid, frankly, seeing things from different views and listening to the comments so that we can make the M&S a better place to work and shop.”
“Culture is the key that opens the next stage of our transformation,” she continued.
An integral part of this is the M&S program closer to the customer program that requires all colleagues from the store support center (the official office officially) to spend at least seven days every year at the store. In 2025, this was extended with all the new carpenters at the store support center their career in M&S in a store, starting from a few days to month.
Machin added, “When I joined M&S six years ago, there was a very defensive culture and constructive reactions were not received well. The work is completely different today and now, when there is a problem, it is not a matter of blame to understand what happened and learn what we can do better next time.
The strategy appears to be working.
The latest stock prices in the next 12 months show an increase of 475.00 and an average of 447.50, and according to Nick Bubb, “M&S was one of the winners in 2024, but it is in a good position to build on the success he achieved in 2025, thanks to its important investments in creating great dining halls and the development of” The “.
“I took all I learned from my time in the store to the support center, and for this reason we focus on leading a culture closer to customers and closer to colleagues because only then we can only understand the challenges and opportunities.”
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
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