Ken Morrison should hold his tongue – but former bosses rarely do

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/06/ken-morrison-hold-tongue

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"You've all done very well!" Thus did "young" Mr Grace, proprietor of Grace Brothers department store in the sitcom Are You Being Served?, salute his employees with predictable and barely disguised insincerity. He would then leave his staff and return to his female assistants, who actually were young, and pretty.

On Thursday Sir Ken Morrison's message to his successors at the business that still bears his name was less supportive. "You've all done abysmally!" would be a polite translation. In fact, he accused the supermarket's chief executive, Dalton Philips, of talking "bullshit". A 7% drop in sales and a 27% fall in the share price are no laughing matter. But Philips would be entitled to ask, quietly, why under Sir Ken (who stepped down in 2008) no progress at all was made in the vital area of online shopping. And others might wonder how clever a move it was for Morrisons to buy Safeway for £3bn in 2004, the sort of flashy big acquisition the no-nonsense Yorkshire-based firm had up until then rejected under Sir Ken's leadership.

When the founder's name is still on the door it can be hard for today's bosses to escape the unwelcome attention of interested family members, or of former bosses themselves. The bookseller Tim Waterstone was never very happy about what went on at Waterstones after he had left (though he is a supporter of its new chief executive, James Daunt). Family connections can complicate business life. The advertising agency M&C Saatchi was formed when Maurice and Charles Saatchi left the firm that still trades under the name of … Saatchi and Saatchi.

Even when family ties have been broken or when ownership has changed hands, distinguished former leaders often feel uninhibited about offering their opinion as to how the business should be run today. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, still controlling his family's large minority stake in easyJet, is a regular and noisy critic of the airline's current management. He has gone a bit quiet recently, however, as the business has flourished.

At Tesco, Ian (now Lord) MacLaurin helped steer the business towards modernity and greater success under the nose of its founder Jack Cohen. But MacLaurin has in turn criticised his successor (and former protege) Sir Terry Leahy, blaming him rather than today's CEO Phil Clarke for Tesco's current difficulties. Before his death, Sir John Harvey-Jones bemoaned what had happened to the once all-conquering ICI he used to run, and so on.

Perhaps retiring CEOs are given a pair of rose-tinted spectacles along with the carriage-clock when they finally step down. It is, it seems, just too easy to look back approvingly on one's own track record while belittling the efforts of those who have come afterwards.

Business leaders can be very poor judges of their own performance. Luck, the weakness of the competition and happy timing may all have had more to do with success than allegedly brilliant or inspired leadership. Mythology about so-called golden ages can spring up fast. And businesses and organisations, being complicated, can take a long time to go wrong. So the problems that have emerged today may actually have been created many years ago – for example, Morrisons' out-of-character takeover bid for Safeway, which led to years of difficulty at the enlarged business.

There is an art to quitting a top job and moving on with dignity. On ceasing to be prime minister, Stanley Baldwin is supposed to have said: "When I leave, I leave. I am not going to speak to the captain on the bridge and I have no intention of spitting on the deck." Advice from former leaders, given privately, may be welcome. Public denunciations, less so. If you can't say anything helpful then a bit of meaningless enthusiasm and good cheer might be the best option.

Maybe young Mr Grace had the right idea after all.