RetailCraft 21 - "One-way and two-way doors" - Chris Poad, Managing Director, Online at Tesco PLC

Chris Poad, Managing Director, Online at Tesco PLC joins us in the studio for a wide-ranging and extensive discussion. Fresh from a series of senior roles at Amazon (heading Fulfilment by Amazon, then Director, Amazon Business International), Chris has returned to the UK to take up the reins at Tesco's online activities - just in time to be in the eye of the COVID storm! 

We segue from his career to the Tesco response - an impressive and sustained activity at scale - and we learn about the values that drove the work, the decision-making approaches, and how the team runs under such great pressure.

The interview is chock-full of insights, expressed with clarity and openness - it's a privileged view inside Tesco at a defining time. There are too many quotable nuggets to list here, but the title of this podcast references a perceptive classification of decision-making - jump to 22m10s if you can't bear to wait! It's worth it.

Our thanks to Chris for giving us so much time, and we'll pick up with him again post-Christmas to see how the peak-upon-peak of trading turned out.

 

Run time: 38 minutes

INFORMATION:

Chris Poad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispoad/

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ and www.twitter.com/ianjindal

Jamie Merrick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiemerrick/

Recorded remotely and at Spiritland Studios, UK.

Episode photo credit: Ian Jindal.