I think I'm missing a _lot_ of context here. Obviously management consultants are sycophantic but why post this now?

kristianc 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Score-settling by the ousted (and then returning) CEO Malcolm Walker. After Iceland merged with Booker in 2000, Walker was pushed out and a new management team led by Bill Grimsey took over. Sales declined, head office staff ballooned and they hired a lot of McKinsey types. Walker's point is that they'd overcomplicated what was basically quite a simple business.

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Doctor_Fegg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I worked for a public sector organisation around then that had the same chairman (not CEO) as Iceland, sorry, “the Big Food Group”. He was genuinely one of the most obnoxious, bullying people I’ve ever encountered - known internally as the Poison Dwarf. So none of this greatly surprises me.

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mikepurvis 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interestingly the "dark ages" subpage is not linked from the parent page: https://about.iceland.co.uk/our-story/

	▲	kristianc 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Reading between the lines, you kind of get the picture... 2006 A spectacular turnaround sees a 10% sales decline turned into growth of 20% year-on-year by March 2006, making Iceland the UK’s fastest-growing food retailer. 2005 The Big Food Group is taken private and Iceland returned to the management of Malcolm Walker and other senior executives who had been ejected in 2001. 2004 The Big Food Group is nearing bankruptcy as provisions made in 2001 come close to exhaustion. 2002 Iceland-Booker is renamed The Big Food Group and launches a grandiose recovery plan (Click here to read the saga of ‘The one, two, three, four, five year recovery plan’) but customer numbers and sales remain in steady decline while costs escalate. 2001 New Iceland chief executive Bill Grimsey issues a massive profit warning, and Malcolm Walker and other senior managers are forced to leave the company

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twic 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Grimsey was boss of Iceland, but also, Grimsey is in Iceland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%ADmsey

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john_strinlai 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

someone saw this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49350677

and thought it was interesting enough to submit on its own

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ferngodfather 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They saw it commented on another thread.