AT 10am on Thursday, staff at Marks & Spencer’s Paddington headquarters gathered in the restaurant for a presentation by chief executive Stuart Rose.

Not all the 2,000 people who work there fitted in and some had to watch on TV screens dotted round the building.

The previous day Rose had unveiled upbeat interim results, reporting a 20% rise in pre-tax profits to £308.2m. The figures certainly impressed the City — “Management has done a good job in stopping the market-share attrition at the same time as hacking back the cost base,” wrote Katharine Wynne at Merrill Lynch — and the shares closed up on the day.

With the morning’s papers full of talk of recovery at the iconic retail chain, and the share price at a six-year high, the staff expected an upbeat message as they filed into the restaurant.

But the 56-year-old had a blunt warning for them: “The killer now is complacency,” he told his employees.

Later, as we chatted in his ninth-floor office, he explained: “It’s not a slam dunk. It is tough out there.”

Rose was parachuted into M&S to defend the group from a £9 billion bid from Philip Green, the retail entrepreneur, in May last year.

Having spent the first eight weeks seeing off Green, Rose has since set about transforming M&S, which had lost its position as Britain’s No 1 clothing retailer. Boardroom battles, a lack of leadership and increasing competition on the high street had taken their toll.

So how has Rose put M&S back on track? Better products, better environment and better stores is Rose’s mantra — which he repeats often. “It’s a bit trite. But it’s true,” said Rose.

The key, he added, had been restoring the self-belief at M&S.

“I’ve given it a sense of purpose again, reminded it when it’s firing on all cylinders what it’s capable of doing . . . of what it stands for in the high street. No one person can run Marks & Spencer. This has to be a team.

“If you go to Tesco and ask the girl on the checkout what Tesco stands for, she gets it straightaway. If you had gone to M&S two years ago and asked what M&S stood for, you would have had thousands of different answers. Now I think people get it. There’s a bit of a buzz around the place.”

According to Rose, the retailer found itself in a vicious cycle — bad press and bad sales. Rose is now determined to break that cycle.

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