This week, I interviewed Sir Terry Leahy about his new book.

Acting like a neural pathway into one of Britain’s best ever business brains, it’s a fascinating read, finely paced, deeply cerebral, yet witty and inspiring. And whether coming to his innovations for the first time, or simply being reminded afresh of a familiar one - perhaps with the benefit of new insight or anecdote - it’s impossible not to be impressed by what he achieved. In retirement he even seems to have mellowed a little. (He was as formidable an interviewee as he was a competitor and a customer to many of you in the trade.)

Yet, in recollecting his transformation of Tesco, there are times when the sense of irony is overwhelming. “Tesco tried to protect its margins by cutting costs,” he recalls of the recession in the early 1990s. Where have we heard that one before? The stores were “cold, unwelcoming, a bit industrial.” Hmmm. “A customer in our Trowbridge store summed it up. ‘I like Tesco, but I just can’t afford to shop here anymore.’”

Of its approach to competitors, Tesco was “playing ‘Follow My Leader’ - which is not the way to get ahead.” “Up against me were calls for ‘something to be done now - this instant.’”

It is as if, 20 years on from the promotion that was to catapult Sir Terry into the management stratosphere, history has been repeating itself in the latest recession.

As I explain in my Big Interview, Sir Terry’s leadership of Tesco was underscored by a surprisingly strong moral and spiritual dimension, in which profit was not the first consideration.

“Companies that focus solely on the bottom line rarely endure,” he explains. The problem for Tesco is that it has become too big, and too profitable, in recent times, not to put profit first. The “noble objective” developed by Sir Terry at the start of his tenure, in which Tesco “created value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty,” has somehow been sullied.

As he says in one of the chapters, management involves ‘Balance’. Tesco has been lopsidedly supporting both its expansion (here and overseas) and its demanding shareholders. The customer has clearly twigged it. And given all its Clubcard data, it’s taken (is taking?) a surprisingly long time to turn Tesco’s Steering Wheel back towards the centre, and the moral highground.

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