From outcast to on-track: How M&S found a culture to turn a crumbling business around

Marks and Spencer Group PLC is something of a great British institution, having started life in 1884 as a stall at Kirkgate Market in Leeds. Fast-forward to 2025 and the business, under the leadership of chairman Archie Norman and CEO, Stuart Machin, is enjoying something of a renaissance. The share price currently stands at 343p and is up 345% over the last five years on group revenue of £13 billion ($16 billion) compared with £10.1 billion ($12.6 billion) in 2020.

However, it wasn’t always so; for years M&S struggled, lurching from one crisis to another, taxing the abilities of even the most experienced of operators such as past chairman Lord Stuart Rose.

In 2016 Steve Rowe became CEO and quickly realized that the business had become overly bureaucratic, had a complex corporate structure, and had unclear accountabilities. In 2018 he reported that M&S was “behind the curve in digital”, that clothing needed more work on “style and value”, an “underperformance in food”, that it had “inefficient supply chains” and that the store estate “was not fit for the future”.

Indeed, current and then chair, Archie Norman, was moved to say in 2018, “This business is on a burning platform”.

Something had to change and whilst Rowe undoubtedly laid the foundations, it wasn’t until Machin took over as CEO in 2022 that the turnaround really gained momentum. But what was the strategy behind this? How does one turn around a business as large and as complex as M&S?

Driving a high-performance culture is one part of how M&S is being reshaped for growth, which also includes accelerating its store rotation program, modernizing the supply chain, and using data, digital, and technology to make better decisions and offer better service while maintaining a strong balance sheet and investing for future growth. Machin told Fortune, “A high-performance culture is a critical part of our transformation – we need a culture that’s closer to customers and closer to colleagues. And we need to constantly raise the bar on talent. We’re making progress but there’s much more to do as we build the culture we need to reshape M&S.”

He continued, “I often speak about how we need to protect the magic of M&S and modernize the rest. And actually, that is what sits at the heart of our strategy today – protecting the heritage of what makes us M&S but being really clear that we also need to modernize the business and accelerate the pace of change.”

An insight into what driving a high-performance culture means can be found in the fact that People Director, Sarah Findlater spent three months running an M&S store to “get a better understanding of the challenges their store colleagues face”.

She told Fortune, “What this meant was being sleeves rolled-up, hands-on, seeing things from different perspectives and listening to feedback so that we can make M&S an even better place to work and shop.”

“Culture is the key that unlocks the next phase of our transformation”, she continued.

Integral to this is the M&S Closer to Customer program which requires all colleagues from the Store Support Center (formally Head Office) to spend at least seven days every year working in store. In 2025, this was extended so that all new joiners to the Store Support Centre now begin their careers at M&S working in a store, ranging from a few days to a month.

Machin added, “When I joined M&S six years ago, there was a very defensive culture and constructive feedback wasn’t well received. The business is very different today and now, when there’s an issue, it isn’t about who is to blame but about understanding what went wrong and learning what we can do better next time. That’s the culture we want to build – where every colleague feels able to tell it as it is and give their honest feedback”.

And the strategy appears to be working.

The latest share price forecast for the next 12 months, shows a high of 475.00 and a median of 447.50 and, according to retail analyst Nick Bubb, “M&S has been one of the winners of 2024, but it is well placed to build on its recent success in 2025, thanks to its significant investment in creating impressive food halls and the development of a ‘weekly shop’ food range, as well as its stronger multi-channel positioning in clothing”.

Summing it up, Findlater said, “I took everything I learned from my time in store back to the Support Centre. That’s why we are so focused on driving a culture that’s closer to customers and closer to colleagues because only then can we truly understand the challenges and opportunities.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com