The art of chairmanship

Listing page content here

‘We all have different ways of doing things,’ says David Jones, when I ask him what makes a good captain of a corporate ship. He certainly has his own way of preparing for a high-pressure day like the one he had last week at the annual general meeting of Wm Morrisons, the supermarket group where he is deputy chairman and troubleshooter-in-chief.

‘I generally wake up about 6 a.m. My body is stiff and I’m almost unable to move. If I’m at home, I ask my wife Ann to move my legs out of the bed and pull me up. If I’m away, I have developed a technique of rolling off the bed on to the floor, then getting on to my knees before making a supreme effort to stand up. This can take anything up to half an hour. I then take my first medication; depending on how stiff my body is, I either lie down to wait for the drugs to work, or check my emails or play patience.