It’s fair to say that Debra Crew isn’t relishing the prospect of this, her first proper newspaper interview. “I struggle with this whole thing about me,” she says. “I’m a little, just, uncomfortable. The first thing I learnt about leadership is that it’s about them” — meaning the staff. “It’s not about you.”
Yet here she is, in the private bar at the top of Diageo’s swish Soho headquarters, preparing to reflect on seven nightmarish months as chief executive of the drinks giant behind Johnnie Walker whisky, Smirnoff vodka and Guinness. It should be the most fun job in the FTSE 100, but after the start she’s had, any boss would be forgiven for wanting to hide under their desk with a stiff scotch. “Be nice,” Crew half-instructs, half-implores.
Appointed as a non-executive in 2019, then made head of Diageo’s key North America region and chief operating officer, Crew was groomed to succeed the long-serving Ivan Menezes, who was knighted in January last year. She did so in tragic circumstances: Sir Ivan was taken into hospital suffering from conditions including a stomach ulcer. Crew’s elevation was brought forward by a month, to June 5. He died two days later.
Against that backdrop, there was never going to be a honeymoon. But financial woe soon followed the human pain. Having reassured the market in August and September that everything was fine, Diageo put out a shocker of a trading statement in November, warning that, actually, sales in Latin America and the Caribbean, key whisky and tequila-sipping territories, would collapse by more than a fifth over six months. News of the slowdown knocked 12 per cent off the shares in a day. Then there was an unconvincing capital markets event, where Crew and her senior team failed to explain fully what had gone wrong.
The Sunday Times. To read the full interview click here
