ThisI week, the much-anticipated results from Pick n Pay revealed a story we have been longing to hear. Since Sean Summers reassumed the role of CEO in 2023, the company has shown a marked and encouraging improvement. It was deeply pleasing to witness this nascent turnaround. While the journey to full profitability is not yet complete, the losses have been significantly reduced, and one can finally sense the great ship beginning to correct its course.
Of course, we must acknowledge that the group’s very survival through its recent trials was, as I understand it, secured by the stellar performance of the Boxer group. It is a fascinating historical footnote that Boxer was not some external acquisition, but a home-grown creation, first formed under the visionary leadership of the group’s founder, Raymond Ackerman, in 1977.
The years between Sean Summers’ departure in 2007 and his dramatic return in 2023 represent a curious and, at times, painful period in the company’s history. The leadership strategy seemed, for lack of a better word, strange. It appeared that successive CEOs arrived with what I can only describe as “bolt-on” strategies—intellectual constructs designed to force success upon Pick n Pay, rather than strategies that grew organically from its core.
This is a subtle but critical distinction. It is the difference between an organic strategy, which is nurtured from the unique soil of a company’s history, its ethos, and its values, and a synthetic strategy, which is an abstract idea imposed from the outside. The former has life; the latter is merely a blueprint.
Observing Sean Summers—a man with his own faults, as any strong leader must have—I was struck by a single, overriding quality: his character. He possessed a formidable character as a young leader climbing the ranks, and that same strength has since been gracefully tempered into a profound leadership capability. This led me to a compelling question: What kind of character is required to steer a behemoth like Pick n Pay? It forces one to consider how the very character of a leader not only aids but may indeed be the essential ingredient for the success of a great institution.
This line of inquiry was given powerful resonance when I recently encountered a poignant story from history. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his grieving widow, Jackie, sought to comfort his brother, Robert. She did so not with empty platitudes, but with a book: Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way. This gift would profoundly shape Bobby Kennedy’s character and, in turn, his leadership in the final years of his own life.
It is a thread that leads us from the boardrooms of modern South Africa back to the ageless wisdom of the ancients, all in pursuit of understanding this most vital of human qualities.
The Greek Way: Character as the Stamp on the Soul
The Greeks, those masterful architects of the human spirit, did not see character as a vague personality trait. For them, it was something far more concrete and forged. As Edith Hamilton illuminates:
“To the Greeks, the word ‘character’ first referred to the stamp upon a coin. By extension, man was the coin, and the character trait was the stamp imprinted upon him.”
This is a stunningly powerful image. Our character is the indelible mark pressed upon the metal of our being through experience, choice, and habit. It is not what we say, but what we are made of.
The Greek philosophical project, particularly for Aristotle, was the deliberate cultivation of this stamp towards aret?—excellence or virtue. This was not an academic exercise; it was a practical pursuit of a life well-lived. Virtue, he argued, is a habit, not an act. We become just by doing just things; we become courageous by performing acts of courage. This forging of character requires an understanding of the “Golden Mean”—the balanced point between two extremes. Courage, for instance, is the mean between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of recklessness.
Perhaps Aristotle’s most enduring insight for leaders is that “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” We have, for too long, privileged intellectual strategy over the education of the heart. The results, as we have seen, can be catastrophic.
The Pick n Pay Crucible: A Lesson in Character and Its Absence
Let us apply this ancient lens to the modern case of Pick n Pay. The “neglect” Sean Summers spoke of upon his return was not merely physical or financial; it was a neglect of the company’s soul—its core values.
For decades, Pick n Pay’s character was stamped with the mark of the “consumer champion.” This was its core virtue. Yet, in the intervening years, this stamp became blurred. Under the leadership of Richard Brasher, a former Tesco UK CEO, a new, synthetic strategy was imposed: an “Everyday Low Price” model. It was a classic “bolt-on” strategy, an intellectual idea imported from a different market. In trying to out-Checkers Checkers, Pick n Pay lost its own identity. The core supermarket chain was neglected, stores grew tired, and the sacred trust with its customers frayed.
This period highlights a critical point about the outward manifestation of character. A company’s character is revealed in its actions and habits—the consistency of its service, the quality of its stores, the clarity of its message. Under stress, it defaulted to a strategy of imitation, rather than one rooted in its own strengths.
The contrast in leadership character is telling. Between Summers’ departure and return, two of the four main leaders—Pieter Boon and Richard Brasher—were foreigners. The issue is not one of nationality, but of context and cultivation. A leader who has not been steeped in the culture of a business, who has not had the company’s character stamped upon them through years of shared experience, may lack that “in-the-bones” understanding of its core values. They are more likely to reach for an imported model than to nurture an organic one.
And yet, amidst this strategic confusion, there was a shining example of virtuous leadership: the story of Boxer. While the core brand floundered, Boxer, under the masterful guidance of Deputy CEO Richard van Rensburg, thrived. Its strategy was perfectly aligned with its character: no-frills, low-cost, and fiercely focused. It was an organic success, a proof that the group still possessed the DNA for greatness when led by someone who understood its essence. Boxer did not save Pick n Pay by accident; it did so by remaining true to its own clearly stamped character.
The Inner and Outer Landscape of a Leader’s Character
So, what constitutes this character we speak of? It is so much more than personality. It is the person you are—your strengths and, importantly, your weaknesses. True strength includes the capacity for compassion, and weakness, in the right context, is not derogatory but can manifest as perseverance. It is about having vision, and it is especially about knowing the difference between right and wrong, about being prudent.
We can understand it by distinguishing its internal and external manifestations:
· Inwardly, character is the internal compass: our deeply held values, our moral conscience, our true intentions, and our fundamental mindset. It is the private, inner strength that allows for self-control in the face of temptation. This is the realm of the heart that Aristotle insisted we must educate.
· Outwardly, character is revealed to the world. It is in our consistent actions and habits—our honesty, our diligence. It is in our speech and, most tellingly, in our reactions under stress. Do we become petulant or patient? Do we cast blame or demonstrate accountability? Ultimately, it is proven in our treatment of others, especially those who can do nothing for us.
This is what we see in a leader of character. They are the same in private as they are in public. Their strategy is an extension of their values, not a contradiction of them.
The Awful Grace of God: Wisdom Forged in Crisis
This brings us back to Bobby Kennedy and the book that changed him. In her profound wisdom, Jackie Kennedy gave him The Greek Way to provide a framework for his immense suffering. From it, he drew a line from the playwright Aeschylus, a line he would later recite to a heartbroken crowd in Indianapolis on the night Martin Luther King Jr. was killed:
“And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
This is the ultimate test of character—not to avoid pain, but to be transformed by it, for the better. To have wisdom forged in the crucible of despair. This is what separates a mere manager from a true leader. A leader of character accepts, as Hamilton writes, that “Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.”
Sean Summers now bears that responsibility. His task is not merely a financial turnaround; it is a restoration of character. It is to re-stamp the coin of Pick n Pay with the values that made it great. The early signs suggest he understands this deeply. He is not implementing a foreign “bolt-on” strategy, but leading an organic return to the company’s core.
As we look at the leaders in our own lives—in business, in family, in government—let us look beyond the intellectual blueprints and the personality cults. Let us look for the stamp of character. For as the Greeks knew, and as history continues to teach us, it is the one compass that reliably points true north, especially in the fiercest of storms.
