The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly, Caroline Lambert

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly, Caroline Lambert https://amzn.to/3G4k0Mz A Wall Street Journal Bestseller Named a Financial Times top title How to unleash "human magic" and achieve improbable results. Hubert Joly, former CEO of Best Buy and orchestrator of the retailer's spectacular turnaround, unveils his personal playbook for achieving extraordinary outcomes by putting people and purpose at the heart of business. Back in 2012, "Everyone thought we were going to die," says Joly. Eight years later, Best Buy was transformed as Joly and his team rebuilt the company into one of the nation's favorite employers, vastly increased customer satisfaction, and dramatically grew Best Buy's stock price. Joly and his team also succeeded in making Best Buy a leader in sustainability and innovation. In The Heart of Business, Joly shares the philosophy behind the resurgence of Best Buy: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center of the business, create an environment where every employee can blossom, and treat profit as an outcome, not the goal. This approach is easy to understand, but putting it into practice is not so easy. It requires radically rethinking how we view work, how we define companies, how we motivate, and how we lead. In this book Joly shares memorable stories, lessons, and practical advice, all drawn from his own personal transformation from a hard-charging McKinsey consultant to a leader who believes in human magic. The Heart of Business is a timely guide for leaders ready to abandon old paradigms and lead with purpose and humanity. It shows how we can reinvent capitalism so that it contributes to a sustainable future. About the author Hubert Joly is the former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy. He has been recognized as one of the one hundred “Best-Performing CEOs in the World” by Harvard Business Review, one of the top thirty CEOs in the world by Barron’s, and one of the top ten CEOs in the United States in Glassdoor’s annual Employees’ Choice Awards. Joly is now a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and serves on the boards of Johnson & Johnson and Ralph Lauren.

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We have an amazing gentleman on the show with us today. He's the author of a great book called The Heart of Business, Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism. It came out May 4th, 2021. And we're going to be talking to him about his book and everything that went into it. Hubert Jolie joins us on the show today. He'll be talking to us about his book. And he is the former chairman and CEO of Best Buy. You may have heard of it. There's like a big box company there,

I think, on every street corner pretty much. He has been recognized as one of the 100 best performing CEOs in the world by Harvard Business Review. One of the top 30 CEOs in the world by Barron's. And one of the top 10 CEOs in the United States in Glassdoor Annual Employees Choice Awards. And I got to tell you, man, I've read a lot of Glassdoor reviews of employers. That's a hard thing to get. That really is because, man, if people like you on Glassdoor, your employees, man, they will say it. He is now a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and serves on the boards of Johnson & Johnson and Ralph Lauren. Welcome to the show, sir. How are you? Chris, I'm terrific and I've been looking forward to our conversation, so thank you

for having me. There you go. We've been looking forward to you, too. We have a lot of CEOs, entrepreneurs that listen to the show over the last 15 years, and I'm sure you're going to have some inspiring insights from them as well. What's your dot-coms or places on the internet you want people to go so people can get to know you better. My website is uberjoli.org My first name, my last name, .org. There you go.

So give us a 30,000 overview sir, if you would, of the book The Heart of Business. The Heart of Business, it's really three books in one. One, it's the story of my leadership journey, right? 100% of leaders were born, but none of us were born the leader. So this is the story of somebody who evolved from being a hard-charging, highly analytical McKinsey consultant to somebody who now believes in human magic. So that's one component.

The second component, of course, there is elements of the Best Buy, the delightful resurgence of Best Buy, right? Everybody thought we were going to die. Didn't die. How did we do it? And then maybe, Chris, more importantly, it's about a philosophy of leadership. It's about a call for an urgent re-foundation of business around purpose and people, business being a force for good, pursuing a noble purpose, putting people at the center, embracing all stakeholders, and treating profit as an outcome, not the goal. That's it in a nutshell. I love these concepts.

So noble purpose, people at the center, treating profit as an outcome. I love this concept because I think nowadays, I don't know, it appears to be in a lot of our Wall Street business world, and it kind of started in the 80s when I came into the scene. I didn't start it, by the way. It was the greatest good guy.

It was Bioski, Ivan Bioski. But I think a lot of people actually started. It wasn't quite his fault. But, you know, it became a thing where CEOs seemed to be beholden to Wall Street and investor interest as opposed to people? Yeah, I think we've suffered from this for a long time. So on my FBI most wanted list, Chris, there's two people. One of them is Milton Friedman, of course, who in 1970 famously wrote that the sole responsibility of business was shareholder value creation.

And the other one, if you're interested, is Bob McNamara, former Ford executive, who was then Secretary of Defense. And he was the inventor of top-down scientific management. And these two concepts, I mean, I grew up, I don't know about you, Chris, but I grew up last century. Last century, the motto of business was all about shareholder value creation and top-down scientific management, meaning take a bunch of smart people, they create a smart strategy, they tell other people what to do. You put incentives in place and you hope that something good happens. It doesn't work. And what we know today, Chris, is that I think most people would agree with that.

The world as we know it today is not working. Right. It may be working for a few people, but in general, it's not working. We have we've had a health crisis. We have significant geopolitical tension. We have climate change. We have societal issues, tensions. It's simply not working.

And what's the definition of madness? Do the same thing and hope for a different outcome. And so that's why I think that if we want to create a better future, we need to revisit these two axioms almost of shallow diplomacy and top-down management and invent something that's better. And that's around purpose and people. There you go. You know, I don't know. Was he the same guy who invented trickle-down economics? Because I'm still waiting for my check.

No, different guy not trickling. No, different guy, but yes, it didn't quite work out either. And that's another thing that makes people angry. The way we've been treating frontliners is completely inappropriate. And in business, we know if things go well, it's because of the frontliners. If things don't go well, you have to look upstairs. But a focus on the wellness and the environment for the frontliners is really important. And it's easy to forget, but at your own peril.

There you go. You know, I've been watching this, the, the collapse of the middle, uh, you know, ever since the eighties, when things change, you know, up until the, in the, up until the seventies, you know, there was that concept that I grew up being taught where, uh, you know, you go to work for a company for 40 years, you get to go watch, you come out, you know, and, and, uh, you retire and, and you're good. Um, and then, you know, it became the eighties with the, uh, it became that, uh, like I mentioned before, the Ivan Bioskis, the greed is good, the junk bonds and, and, and, you know, the greedy capitalism.

And ever since then, I've been watching, um, the middle-class get compressed and basically die off, be eradicated because wages stayed stagnant for 40 years. And, um, you see a lot of people don't realize a lot of everything, all the strife that we're seeing in our world, politics and everything else comes from that. You know, you saw in 2016, an election that was based upon people that were very angry

from the, you know, what became the Rust Belt after it was abandoned by the manufacturing. And you saw the result of NAFTA and different things in China and jobs being shipped overseas. Now we're kind of seeing this interesting resurgent where there's power back in the employees and where they can fight and where they can organize better, and they're doing very well at it. We're going to get some more into your book, but like to hear the origin story tell us about your hero's journey your orange story how did you grow up what influenced you how did you become ceo of best buy etc etc me so i was born in in france uh century when i grew up in a happy family i had three brothers

studied in france um but instead of me of giving me giving you my resume maybe i can highlight a few milestones in my journey you know these searing moments that shaped me as a leader and that helped me prepare to be the CEO of Best Buy, where I had this pretty amazing experience with all of my colleagues. So I would go back to 30 years ago, Chris. At the time, I was with McKinsey & Company. And I remember having a dinner with a client in the office of McKinsey in Paris. I was based in Paris at the time. And we were trying to sell him a story. You can imagine how these things go.

But instead, this client, the CEO, Jean-Marie Descarpentries was his name, taught us a lesson. He had just been in a workshop with other CEOs. And Chris, this was 30 years ago. And he told me and my colleagues, the purpose of a company is not to make money. That's our conclusion. 30 years ago. He said, of course, it's an imperative.

You have to make money. And it's really a result. And he said, what we've concluded is that in business, and once you say it, it's really a result and he said what we've concluded is that in business and once you say it's obvious but sometimes we forget it there's multiple imperatives we have the first imperative is the people imperative you need to have the right team properly equipped and motivated you have then the business imperative you need customers who are happy with your products and then the financial imperative. And he said, you have to refuse trade-offs between these three. And then you have to treat them in sequence.

People first, people imperative, then business, then finance. And then, of course, every company on the planet says people is the most important thing. But then he said, no, no, you have to draw the implications. He said, for example, when you do your monthly performance management meeting, don't start with financial results. Start with people and organization. Then go to business or customers, products.

Finish with the financial results. He said, if you start with financial results, I know you're going to spend the entire meeting dissecting the numbers. It's a waste of time. If you end with the financials,

your CFO will make sure that you spend enough time on it, but at least you will have understood the driver. So that was 30 years ago. And at around the same time, Chris, a couple of friends of mine who were monks asked me to write with them an article about the philosophy and theology of work.

Why do we work? Which I think is essential to the conversation we're having. How do we see work? Is work a punishment because some dude sins in paradise and we have to pay for it? Is work something we do so that we can do something else like, you know,

on Thursday or Thanksgiving watch, you know, a great football game? Or is work part of our fulfillment as human beings and an opportunity

to do something good to somebody else? It's a choice. It's a conscious choice that we need to make. But I think it's a choice that changes everything. Okay, so that was 30 years ago. If you bear with me, 20 years ago, there was another searing moment.

So to quote David Brooks in many ways, Chris, I was at the top of my first mountain, right? I'd been a partner at a young age at McKinsey & Company. I was on the executive team of Vivendi Universal, a global media and entertainment company. So in many ways, I was at the top. I was being successful, except I was not happy. I felt that on the top of that first mountain, it was dry.

There was no joy. I was, you know, call this, I'm sure it never happened to you. Call this my midlife crisis. Oh yeah. Right.

And it forced me to step back and to unpack what was driving me in life. And what I realized is that I had been too driven by power, fame, glory, and money rivers this may be good drivers for some people I realized for me it was leading me to nowhere and so that led me to revisit that and think more in terms of eulogy virtues right in terms what do I want to accomplish in in the world and so that was 20 years ago. And then in 2009, so I was based in Minneapolis at the time. I was the CEO of CalSan Companies, which is a family-owned private

hospitality and travel company. So at the time, they owned TGI Fridays, a lot of hotels, region hotels, Radisson, a corporate travel management company, Council of Vagondi Travel, and so forth. And one day, I will always remember this, my head of HR, Elizabeth Bastoni, walks into my office and tells me, Hubert, would you like to work with a coach? I said, what do you mean, Elizabeth? Have I done something wrong as somebody complained? Because at the time, I had this view that coaching was remedial. You know, we would give Chris a coach because, you know, Chris has problems.

That's usually how it is. Usually just A.R. talks to me and gives me pink slips. That's right. And Elizabeth said, no, no, no. I have this guy, you know, his name, Marshall Goldsmith, is the father of executive coaching. And he specializes in helping successful leaders get better. And it's funny how when I play tennis, I'm trying to improve my forehand.

But, you know, most people at the time were reluctant to get help. And I was suffering from a disease, which was the quest for perfection. And everybody listening can ask themselves, you know, do they suffer from that quest? Many people do. And because it was confusing, certainly performance and perfection. And when you're driven by perfection, first, I mean, I was not happy because, gee, I'm not perfect. So I was not happy with myself. I was not happy with others.

Right? Because these are other human beings. They're imperfect. But Marshall helped me accept who I was and helped me discover feed forward. Hubert, what do you want to decide to get better at? And how can you, after getting feedback from your team, how can you decide the two or three things you'd like to get better at and then ask them for help?

There you go. That completely unlocked me. And by the way, if somebody listening, maybe one of their team members says, no, I'm good. I don't need to improve on anything. You can always suggest to them, how about working on humility as something you can work on, right?

Humility? Where's the fun in that? I like narcissism. That's my favorite. So these were a few milestones along the way, things that shaped me as a as a human being and as a leader chris awesome and and so how did you end up at best buy oh so it's now 2012 so i'm i'm i'm in minneapolis and i get this call from my good

friend jim citrin at spencer stewart He does a lot of the CEO searches there. And we've known each other for a long time. And, of course, Best Buy, as some of us may remember, has been a very successful company. But from 2009 to 2012, it got in trouble. They had this set of challenges with Amazon, you know, threatening the business model. So strategic challenges, the quality of service had gone down. So operational challenges, the share price was way down.

I mean, it was a bit of a mess, messy situation. And Jim calls me and says, would you like to consider taking this job? And I said, Jim, you're crazy, right? I know nothing about retail and this place used to be great, but it's now in a mess. And he said, well, you know, they're not looking for a retailer. Somebody maybe with a fresh perspective and you've done turnarounds, maybe you should consider it. And he said, at least do me a favor, look at it and consider it. And so I took the time to study. And I considered that there was enough assets there to effectuate a turnaround.

And I decided to join. It may be that the board decided to pick me because I was already based in Minneapolis. And so they saved on the moving expenses when they picked me. But I must say, this is one of the best decisions I ever made. We went on a very exciting journey and I learned a lot. And I think we made a difference. There you go. And now, you know, we mentioned in your bio all the different ratings you have

and people who really love what you've done. Coming in from LinkedIn, Stephen Shepard says, people are the greatest thing. It's the greatest asset of time that creates results. I think for the most part. There's some people that I'm not sure are the greatest thing, but we'll leave that as an axiom for whatever. If we take the best buy story,

when I joined, the key advice I was getting was like what you hear in turnarounds, cut, cut, cut, right? You're going to have to close stores and fire a lot of people. Well, all of the stores were profitable. So what's the point of closing stores and fire a lot of people? It's as if people were the problem.

I thought people would be, you know, the source of the solution. So the turnaround, you know, followed a very human-centric approach that started with listening to the frontliners. Back to that conversation. I spent the first week working at Best Buy, working in a store in SunCloud, Minnesota. My badge said CEO in training. And I simply asked the frontliners, what's working, what's not working, what do you need? And my job was simple. Show up, ask the questions listen take notes and do as i was told so that was the uh this idea that as leaders we need to be great listeners

as opposed to pretending we have all of the answers did you really have ceo and training on your on your badge i did i kept the badge that That's amazing. There you go. Wow. That is powerful, man. You know, that really, that communicates, that sends forth a message that, you know, hey, I'm listening. I'm learning. I'm not here to just, you know, suddenly show up and boss everybody around and tell them what I think I know. And everyone's like, you just got here. Like, what do you know what's going on?

I love that concept of CEO training. And that's particularly relevant today, Chris. I feel that, you know, in this world of, let's call that, you know, multiple intersecting crises where every quarter there's something new and where there's no manual, right? Maybe you had the manual for COVID. Most of us did not. The idea, you know, from Bob McNamara, that as leaders, we have all of the answers, that we're the smartest person in the room, whether as Satya Nadella at Microsoft calls

them the know-it-alls. That's crazy. Plus, nobody likes to be told what to do. So a much better approach is to listen to those who know and then co-create the plan. And so I think if you check at Best Buy and you've been in the Best Buy store, you'll see that everyone has got two ears and just one mouth, right? It's to listen. That's the key thing. That is really key. That is really key that is really key uh so you you navigate them through the uh through uh the issue of dealing with amazon amazon put so many companies out of business and it's just it's astounding how many companies they put out of

business um and a lot of big box stores didn't survive i think was a bit path beyond recently closed um and, they just, it's just been really interesting to see how that works. And then there was a concept going on with a lot of companies. I think it was called showrooming where people go into big box stores to figure out what they wanted to buy, but then they go buy it on Amazon. Like they test drive stuff at the store and then go buy it at Amazon. And I've been guilty of that too.

I've been guilty of seeing a product at the store, usually, you know, something I'm buying at Walmart and, you know, using the scan code to scan it in and go, oh, what's the price on them? Oh, it's cheaper on Walmart. I ordered it from there. So what was some of the ways you overcame that sort of element that Amazon attacking you

and eating at you? We killed showrooming. How did we kill showrooming? By, number one, taking price off the table. So one of the first decisions we made was to match Amazon prices and align our prices with Amazon. So, you know, we, we have a lot of, we had a lot of traffic to our stores.

If you're in our store, you are ours to lose. So if you like the product, you know, why wouldn't, why just take it? Why would you take the trouble of ordering it or we'll ship it to you? You know, it doesn't matter. So now, so that's the decision we made. Now, when we made that decision, a lot of the investors already said, that's nice. We understand why you're doing this, but you're still going to die

because your cost structure is too high, right? You can't compete on cost with Amazon or Walmart. And that was a strategic lesson, a leadership lesson. We didn't try to be a better version of Amazon than Amazon or a better version of Walmart than Walmart. We tried to be the best version of Best Buy we could be, which meant focusing on the customer and being helpful to the customer. Now, in order to fund that, we had to find ways. So one of the ways was something creative we did, which was to partner with all of the major tech companies to help them showcase the fruit of their billions of dollars of R&D investment.

And so I remember that in December of 2012, JK Shin, who at the time was the CEO of Samsung Electronics, he came to visit us in Minneapolis. And if you're Samsung, you have a choice, right? You see Apple building all of their stores. Maybe you can build Samsung stores. Instead, Samsung, you know, JK did a deal with us, whereby in a few months, he had 1000 Samsung stores within Best Buy. So it was good for the customers because they could see a beautiful representation of the Samsung products. It was good for Samsung, right?

Because instead of having to build an entire retail organization, they could partner with us. And it was also good for us because, of course, there was some economics, right? We had customers as customers, but we also had vendors as customers. And they supported our financials by supporting our business model. So that was transformative. When we announced that deal in April of 2013, I think the share price, Chris, went up 23% in one day because people said, oh my God, it changes everything.

So we killed showrooming and then we turned it on its head to promote showcasing and being paid for it. Oh, wow. That makes all the difference in the world. And then Samsung didn't have to build standalone stores. They could utilize your thing. They could go in there and kind of give you probably a little bit of competitive advantage when it came to the stores there.

So let's get to your book here. On your book, you talk about a central philosophy in the heart of business, and you talk about a new era of capitalism. Can you elaborate what you mean by this and the core principles you advocate for? Yeah, it's this idea that the profits above all things model that we've talked about with Milton Friedman, the extreme pursuit of profit has been toxic and dangerous. Short-termism has been dangerous.

And if we step back, capitalism was actually born not along the lines of Milton Friedman. When you think about the companies that were created in the 19th century, think about Adam Smith, or if you think about any startup in the world, you create a business to serve a need in the world. And so the purpose of business is first and foremost

to do something important in the world. And a good question for businesses is, would the world miss us if we did not exist are we bringing something unique you know that only we can provide and that's really valuable and so this philosophy of business which is based on this idea of the pursuit of a noble purpose, the idea of business doing something good in the world is rooted in this idea that this is why we exist. As human beings, at a personal level, it's important to us to find meaning in our lives. Why am I here?

Why do I work? Viktor Frankl, in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, has written beautifully around this. And if you think about a company as a human organization made of individuals working together, this same idea applies of doing something good in the world and pursuing that noble purpose. That's the first premise of this leadership philosophy. The second premise is that people are the source of everything in a business.

They're not something to be minimized. You hear sometimes businesses say, they talk about human resources in the same way they have oil or energy as a resource or raw materials. And people are treated at the same level. No, no. People are different. It's's different they're they're they're precious they're they're magical

they're unique and they are the genius who can provide the extraordinary outcomes for the customers uh working with you know vendors and partners and creating great outcomes for all stakeholders and so it's a rediscovery that people is the source and not a necessary evil. And it's the rediscovery that profit is an outcome. And yes, you know, we need to make money. And yes, shareholders are a very important group of stakeholders. By the way, they take care of our retirement.

So it's important that we do well. But an excessive focus of profit, especially in the short term, can be destructive. My good friend Jeff Bezos believes the same thing, right? That's how he built Amazon. The other idea in this philosophy is that business cannot be successful in isolation. So Best Buy is headquartered in Minneapolis.

Following the murder of George Floyd, the city was on fire. If the city is on fire, you cannot open your stores. If the planet is on fire fire you cannot run a business and so we cannot ignore what's happening outside of the full world of the business and as we have this responsibility to do well for all our stakeholders our employees our customers our vendors the community the planet and our responsibilities to find ways to create win-win-win outcomes in support of these various stakeholders. It sounds nice, but it's actually how I think the best businesses create the best outcomes.

So that's the general philosophy. Most business leaders today agree with this philosophy. The challenge is not so much that. The challenge is how do you put purpose to work? How do you make this happen? How do you lead a company in a way that allows every employee working at the company to connect what drives them with their work in support of that noble purpose in a way that can unleash that human magic?

And that's what we learned so much about at Best Buy. And Chris, it has significant implications about how we lead and how we behave in companies. And I felt this philosophy and what we had learned was so important, so timely that we had to put it in writing. There you go. People, like you say, people are everything. You know, they're not just a resource like, hey, we get steel from here and we get people from here. They are the creativity of people. You know, you don't have that with steel or, I don't know, wires or whatever you buy to do stuff in a business. business um the the creative uh uh implemented people uh the customer service aspect of caring about people and working with your customers you know you can't you can't replicate that where it's

just like it's just a given uh you know if you buy if you buy like i don't know wiring for i don't know some phone you're building you know yeah there might be some technical elements to it but it's pretty much uh i don't know black and white is how it's going to show up, but people are very diverse. They're, um, you know, there's different levels of quality of, uh, you know, delivery, they're going to get employment, but also, you know, being creative too and, and, and developing your company and take it to the next level. And of course, their individual aspects of leadership as they lead through the levels of management and to help keep your company diverse. There's no, if you look at a major kind of almost army,

there's no, it's not a monolith. It's, and neither are your employees. Maybe that's really the message there. It's not a monolith. Your employees aren't a monolith. Your employees aren't a monolith. You know, I learned a long time ago as a CEO that I'm not the arbiter of all the great ideas in the world. In fact, I ran out of them pretty quickly.

And so more so it was important that I had a learning organization where people could contribute ideas and they could have an environment or culture where they could contribute ideas and they could they could you know know enough about what was going on and to go hey there's a better way to do this chris uh and i'd be like thanks you just saved me a ton of money um you talk about the role of empathy in leadership and being a key leadership quality how do you think leaders can cultivate and demonstrate empathy more effectively? Ah, so I think it starts, Chris, with changing ourselves. You know, we can say it's hard to change other people. It's hard to lead change.

The hardest thing is to change ourselves. The hardest thing starts with knowing ourselves. And I believe, and I've been on a journey on this because for many years, I had my head cut off from the rest of my body. I thought as a leader, I could lead just with my head, right? Being the smartest, assuming I was the smartest person in the room.

And today leaders need to lead with all of their body parts, right? Their head, their heart, their soul, their guts, their ears, their eyes. And to be able to do this and do the journey from the head to the heart, it starts with knowing ourselves. It starts with self-awareness, self-acceptance. And learning to love who we are. It's hard to love others if you don't have self-compassion.

And in these challenging times, being kind with ourselves is something that's important. When I was saying that I had suffered from the quest for perfection, I didn't like myself when I was trying to be perfect, right? Because any imperfection was a source of not liking ourselves. So I think there's a lot of work on ourselves and forgiving ourselves. And then, of course, forgiving others. We cannot build human connections if we are trying to be perfect, right? We can admire somebody who is perfect, but we cannot love them. And I think we connect in our weaknesses. One of the things I've learned to do, Chris, is to say, my name is Hubert, and I don't know. My name is Hubert, and I need help. Oh, my God. Okay? Oh, wow. And if I can do this, then I'll know it's counterintuitive, right?

I'll know that others may also need some help. If they're struggling, it's not that they're imperfect human beings. They must be struggling with something. And I have to be curious and try to put myself in their shoes. So let's take a concrete example. In retail, it's very important for the salespeople in the stores to be on time. That's a very strict rule. Maybe there's this young associate.

Last few weeks, Chris, he or she has been consistently late on Mondays. And you could say, well, you know, John or Mary, that's unacceptable. Next time it happens, I'm going to fire you. Or you could say, John, you're a good person. What's happening in your life that's leading you to be late? And John may say, or Mary, well, I have an aging mother. I need to visit them in the morning in the hospice. And the bus that I take to go from the hospice to the store has been consistently late in the last few weeks. And I feel it's my obligation as a son or daughter

to visit my aging mother. And so then we can have a conversation. Maybe, oh, John, maybe we can think of a different shift for you. And so it's this idea of being curious. And we've all learned this or relearned it during COVID. Employees are not just employees they're human beings yeah sometimes quirky messy complicated but always beautiful human being and one of the things certainly i've learned is to be curious about who is this person what is their life story um know, what's the other story behind the fact that they're late?

What's happening? So that's, I think, the journey. And leaders used to think they needed to be superheroes. Yeah. To know it all. I think what we need today is leaders who are human leaders, who are able to exhibit and role model authenticity, empathy, you've just said it, vulnerability, humility, and humanity. These are five words that 10 or 20 years ago we would never have used in business. It's so interesting. But today, who wants to lead, to follow a leader who is a super,

who think they're a superhero? Nobody. Yeah, nobody wants that. It's because, you know, that's a fallacy of ego, I think, if you think you're a superhero. You know, I used to keep, my audience has heard it over the years but i used to keep a picture of my desk and i probably should keep it somewhere around here but it's uh it's in my storage unit but it was a it was basically uh uh one of those motivational things that said

you know you have to earn your position every day just because you have the title doesn't mean that you are a success at that given title. You have to earn it. The irony, Chris, is that this humanistic approach that you and I are talking about and that you've employed in your own ventures, this is actually what gets extraordinary business results because that's how you get extraordinary, your words, creativity, ingenuity,

in support of that noble purpose. So it's not purpose or profit, or it's not people or profits. It's great outcomes through purpose and people. That's what I've learned. There you go. I love that concept. That's brilliant. Let's see.

There was another question I had for you. What advice would you give to emerging leaders who aspire to implement the leadership principles that you discuss? And I love spending time with emerging leaders. You know, now that I've passed the baton at Best Buy, that's how I spend my life. You know, teaching at Harvard Business School, but also both with students, but also executives and spending time with this next generation of leaders. Maybe the best advice, it's always daunting when you're asked to give advice to other people. So use this advice at your own peril, right? There's a big giant product liability disclaimer here. But maybe the advice, you know, when we are flying on an airplane, we are being told if the oxygen masks come down, put the mask on yourself first before you help others.

And so maybe the best leadership advice is take care of yourself. And also, you know, during COVID, when we couldn't go outside, we could go inside. So spend time with yourself. And over time, try to figure out, you know, why are you here? How do you want to be remembered? In the new CEO workshop we do at Harvard Business School with new CEOs of large companies, we ask them the first evening to deliver their retirement speech. Oh, really? What would you like your retirement speech to be? My beautiful wife, Autance Le Gentil, who is an executive leadership coach, and she's just got this great book out called The Unlocked Leader.

She asked her clients to think about their eulogy. Wow. That goes one step further. I can guarantee you, Chris, that either in the retirement speech or in the eulogy, people are not going to talk about how the share price went, how much money they made. On their deathbed, they're not going to talk about how the share price went, how much money they made. On their deathbed, they're not going to talk about this. They're going to maybe think about the difference they've made in the life of other people. Irrespective, the key advice is spend time with yourself and define what kind of person

you want to be and be yourself. Everybody else is taken, so might as well be you. There you go. It and be yourself. Everybody else is taken. So might as well be you. There you go. It's really important. And I love the aspects that you tell people because we need to think of, we really need to redefine leadership. And it's amazing to me how many CEOs ask,

what is your leadership style? They have no idea. Like they don't have any sort of mantra around it. I don't know. I just boss people of launch around it. I don't know. I just boss people around, I guess. I don't know. Is there a motive?

Final question for you. Based on your insights, what do you think the future holds for capitalism? As you say, we need to change things. Are there any emerging business trends that leaders should be aware of? And what is the future of capitalism? So I'm optimistic about the future of capitalism if we reinvent it around purpose, people, and a sense of responsible business. The world in which we are operating, there's many, many scary trends. But as a result, we can have as an attitude, you know, to become depressed because of the fact that the environment is scary and daunting.

And there's an alternative, which is to think about this moment as a great leadership moment. And with the idea that as business leaders, you know, we hope to be remembered 10 years from now as, you know, with people saying this was their finest hour. They didn't take these trends as, you know, inevitable. They focused on creating a future that did not exist at the time, but that had to be better.

And they did their best. They were not perfect. They were not a perfect bunch. They were people like Chris and Hubert, right? So there we go. But they did their best to create a better future. They understood what were the key trends. They understood what were the key problems. They understood what were the key problems

to be solved in the world. And they focused their activities on bringing great ingenious, creative solutions, innovative solutions, to these big problems in the world. And they did this as a team. They

coalesced the organization around a higher purpose, a high level of ambition and they created a better outcome so i think this kind of capitalism has a great future the greedy the greedy greed is good kind of capitalism dead dead we need more of that messaging in this world uh you know and as you said earlier in the show the short-term outlook of business leaders isn't working um it's it's it and i think it's really i think one of the aspects is really hard i can't remember the we had sam um on the show i'll pull up his his uh last name here but but I remember we talked to a CEO of a major

company and he said, you know, one of the biggest problems we have in this world, Chris, is that, uh, CEOs are only in for a very short time. Kind of, it was Sam or it was Jay Samet. Um, and, uh, they're only in for a few years. And so a lot of the impacts they make don't get to be seen long-term. Uh, we were talking about his book called future-proofing you by Jay Samet. And, uh, I can't remember what company he ran,

but, uh, um, uh, he said, one of the problems that CEOs have is, you know, even if they invest in R and D or try and do something with a long-term vision,

they know they're only going to be there for maybe two, three, four, five years. Oh, no, maybe 10 years. That's a great point, though. But what I'm seeing, I think that generally speaking, leaders of companies, CEOs are actually great souls. And they know if you're leading, let's say, a pharmaceutical company or a medtech company, you're absolutely right.

The drugs you're working on now are going to come to market 10 years from now. And so they know, of course, they need to deliver results in the short term, but they know their responsibility is to be stewards of great organizations and invest in the future. And the CEOs that boards pick these days to lead companies,

a key criteria is the moral compass. Is this a leader that's going to do the right thing for the long term? We know that they also need to deliver in the short term, but they'll be equally focused on the long term. It's not easy, but every CEO I know and that I work with has this mindset of, I'm a steward. I was given, I'm not a founder, I was given a responsibility, and my responsibility is to pass the baton to the next generation 10 years later in better shape than I found it. And that's really what I'm seeing.

There you go. Well, this has been super insightful, Hubert. Give us your final thoughts and pitch out to people to pick up your book and get to know you better on your websites. You talked about leadership principle, and that's the subtitle of the book, right? So we did the work at Best Buy, and it's the subtitle of the book, right? So we did the work at Best Buy and it's the last chapter of the book of articulating leadership principles. We call them the five Bs of purposeful leadership.

And it's about being clear about our own purpose as leaders, being curious about the purpose of people around us and how it connects to the work and the purpose of the company it's about it's about being clear about our role as leaders which is not to be the smartest person in the room but to create an environment for others to be successful it's about being clear about who we serve i told the officers at best buy chris if you're here to serve yourself or your boss or me as the CEO, it's okay. Don't have a problem with that. Oh, except we're going to promote you to customer.

You know, you can't work here. We're going to promote you to customer and we'll take care of you. On the other hand, if you're here to serve others, then we're good. It's about being values-driven. Integrity is foundational. And it's about being, as we discussed, authentic, vulnerable, empathetic, humble, and human. Definitely. And these were the criteria we used to pick the leaders. Most important decision we make as leaders is who do we put in positions of power?

You better be clear about what criteria you use. These were the criteria we used, Chris. There you go. So give us your.coms one more time as people can go to your website and check you out. So it's uberjoli.org, my first name, H-U-B-E-R-T, my last name, J-O-L-Y.org. Thank you for this wonderful dialogue, Chris.

So enjoyed it. And thank you for the work you do in the world. You're helping the world be a better place. Thank you. And you too as well. I mean, any way we can improve this world and make it better. Thank you for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate you, Bear.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thanks, Manas, for tuning in. Order of the book wherever fine books are sold. The Heart of Business, Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism, available May 4th, 2021. Get it wherever fine books are sold. And remember, it's almost Christmas. People watching this 10 years from now on YouTube are going to be like, it's not Christmas time.

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