The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 417: Hubert Joly - How To Unleash Human Magic & Achieve Improbable Results

Episode Date: May 2, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Hubert Joly is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School and the former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy.He is the author of the upcoming book "The Heart of Business – Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism." Notes: In May 2012. Jim Citrin, the leader of the CEO practice at Spencer Stuart, the global executive search company, asked Hubert, "Would you be interested in being the next CEO of Best Buy?  Issues at Best Buy were all self-inflicted. Hubert realized there was an opportunity to fix it... Hubert's "5 Be's" of leadership are purpose, values, clarity, authenticity, and service. "My purpose in life is to make a positive difference on people around me." - Hubert Joly "If you cannot go outside, go inside. Leadership starts from within." Work to be the best version of yourself Ask your people, "What is your dream?" -- "My job as a leader is to help you achieve your dreams." "We're the captains of our lives." "Profit should be an outcome, not a goal." The 3 imperatives in sequential order: Great people Great customers Make money Remember that 98% of questions that are either/or should be AND's... Key Philosophy: Pursue a noble purpose Put people at the center Embrace all stakeholders Leaders must create the environment to unleash the magic What Hubert learned at McKinsey: The emphasis in the early years was on solving problems. In 2012, when Hubert joined Best Buy, he hired an executive coach. Why? "100% of the top 100 tennis players have a coach." We all need a coach. "It sends a powerful message when the CEO has a coach." It shows that he understands he needs help. We all do. Must-Have leadership qualities: Knowing people... Who are they? What drives them? How do they want to be remembered? "Tell me about your soul" -- Accept imperfections of self and others How to turn around a business by putting people first and reducing headcount as a last resort. How to unleash "human magic" for outcomes that defy logic. This includes an actionable commitment to diversity and inclusion, such as the "reverse" mentor program that pairs Best Buy executives with employees who help broaden their understanding of differences and issues they face. How to become a purposeful leader focused on creating an environment in which others can flourish and perform at their best, and who inspires by showing vulnerability and embracing their and your humanity. How to place a noble purpose as the cornerstone of a company's strategy and concretely embrace and align all stakeholders around that purpose. For Best Buy, that purpose is enriching people's lives through technology. And it allowed them to form genuine partnerships with the world's foremost companies, including unlikely allies like Amazon, to the benefit of all. Jeff Bezos, founder, and CEO of Amazon: "Best Buy's turnaround under Hubert Joly's leadership was remarkable—a case study that should and will be taught in business schools around the world. Bold and thoughtful—he has a lot to teach.

I think leadership starts from within, being clear about how you want to live your life, what's important to you, how do you want to be remembered, what kind of eulogy would you like to have? Do you have team members asking you the same questions over and over again and you wish there was one place they could go to find all the information they need to do their work? well, there is. Sweet Process is software that enables companies to have a central place for all their procedures, processes, and policies. It makes it easy for management and employees to collaborate together to create procedures, processes, and policies. Sweet Process becomes the one source of truth, the one place where every employee, regardless of their role or place in the company can go to find information on how work is done. And our listeners will receive a special extended 28 day free trial. Go to sweet process.com slash learning leader to sign up now. No credit card required. Sweetprocess.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the learning leader show presented by I, Brixton Meyer.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4422 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, we'll receive a carefully curated email from me 9 o'clock Eastern Monday morning to help you start your week off right. The latest articles, books, trends, topics, ideas, videos, podcasts, to help you become a better leader.

You'll also receive details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will make you more effective at building committed teams. Text learners to 4-4-222. Now on to tonight's featured leader. A great one, it's Euberge Jolie, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. He was the former CEO at Best Buy

and one of the primary reasons for their incredible turnaround over the past decade. Also the author of a new book titled The Heart of Business, Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism. A few of the topics we discuss, the five bees of a purposeful leader. Then the quote must have qualities to get hired for a leadership role by Hubert. And then the three imperatives. to turn a business around a really good part of the conversations. Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to enjoy this one. It's Hubert Jolie.

All right, Ubert Jolie. Love the name. It brought me back to high school when I last spoke French and learned about the French culture. So it's good to have a Frenchman on the show. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Thank you, Ryan. Are we going to do this in French?

No way. I know, was it um petit or um pu? Uh, I don't. Okay. That's all I know. Um, Appel. I got some of that stuff. Let's make it Traybien, though.

Okay. We'll do our best to make it good. First, I want to ask you, even though you've accomplished so much in your life and you're still like at it trying to serve and help others. I have to ask you from an emotional perspective, how do you feel when you see this? This is the cover of your book. How do you feel when you see this? And Ryan, I got the first copy of the actual book, what you have is the advanced reader's copy.

I got it on Friday. This was emotional. I mean, I had it here. Yeah. This was emotional. Writing a book is a ton of work. I gave a lot of credit to Caroline Lambert, who's worked with me on this book and our editor, Scott, at H.B. opera. So I'm super excited. I can't wait. My dream is for the book to get into as many hands and

heads and hearts as possible to make a positive difference in the world. So this is, it's really hard to describe. Very exciting. That's what I would say. Isn't it amazing though? After everything you've accomplished, though, there is just something special and unique about getting your words onto the page and seeing it all put together and seeing the cover design. And it's like in your names the author of the book and i i find uh it's just such a cool moment it's such a cool thing regardless of anything else you ever done like having your your your words and print i would imagine and maybe you can speak to this usually it is because of of guys like you i can see behind you here your your bookshelf guys like you are so well read and you probably hold writers and authors

who have shared so much of their soul with you even though they don't know it directly that that you become part of that club. It's just a different type of a feeling, huh? There's that, and I was thinking, as you were speaking, it's also this idea, this is a gift that I'm making to people out in the world. And I put my, I put an out of my soul, my heart. We work really hard because we wanted, not just the ideas to be right, but we want it to be easy to read, and we want it to be helpful.

So, guys, we've, giving it all. So this is a gift to you as you lead, as you seek to become a better leader, which is the journey that all of us are on. This is my gift. I've given everything. I love it. Well, let's start. Let's jump into it. So as I cracked it open, I have read about and actually talked to Jim Citrin. And Jim is the leader of the CEO practice at Spencer Stewart. It's an executive search company. And so can you, you bear, take us back to May 2012 and you're talking to Jim. And I'll let you go from there.

So Jim is an old friend of mine. We've known each other for more than 30 years. And in May we, you know, it talks to me about Best Buy. And I said, Jim, you're crazy, right? So, good. You have to rewind back in 2012. So I lived in Minneapolis, which is where Best Buy is headquarter. Everybody thought Best Buy was going to die.

And Jim tells me about, so the CEO has just gone, and he wants me to think about becoming the CEO. I was the CEO of another Minneapolis-based company. I knew nothing about retail, and the place was a complete zoo at the time, destined to die. So I tell, Jim, you're crazy. They say, no, no, no. First, they're not looking for a retailer. They're looking for somebody to take a fresh perspective.

you're a great turnaround guy, because I had done quite a few turnaround saving companies that were threatened by technology, the internet, digital, and so forth. And it tells me, I think you'd be great. I think this is for you. And so do me a favor, study, take a look at it. And so that's what I did. I did. It was a mystery shopper.

I visited stores. I read everything I could about the company. I spoke with alumni. I watched every, or listened to every earnings call that the company had done. investor meetings. And my mind, I changed my mind because I thought the world needed Best Buy, right? Because those of us who are interested in technology for some of our purchases, we need to, we need a place where to see, touch, and feel the stuff and get advice. And then the vendors needed Best Buy because they need a place where to showcase the fruit

of their billions of dollars of R&D investment. So I saw that and I saw that the issues that Best Buy had were all self-inflicted. The previous management team, was complaining about headwinds, you know, on the earning causes. We're doing great, but there's these headwinds, you know, price deflation, Apple opening stores. And so I told myself, let's imagine I would call Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos and say, how's the wind where you're sailing? I bet they would say, oh my God, bear. We're having the time of our life.

The wind is just fabulous. So I would hang up and say, wind's probably not the problem. We, best might must be the problem. And then that was great news because if it's self-inflicted, then you can fix it. You can fix the price. You can fix the website experience, the supply chain, the customer, and the constructure. You can do it. And that's what we did.

So I'm so glad. So when the time came for me to meet with the board, I told me, I won this job. And this is how I would approach it. I feel I've prepared my entire life for this. And so that's the story. Is there a part of you from your upbringing? or maybe just from your career that was attracted to the fact that that Best Buy was in bad shape and that perhaps you could be the one to fix it.

Yeah, I love challenges, right? And let's agree at the time Best Buy was the All You Can Eat menu of challenges. You had strategic challenges with Amazon and so forth. You had operational challenges with the quality of service having gone down. You had leadership challenges with a CEO being fired. you had and you had shareholder challenges with the share price really down to 11 dollars at some point. And then the founder, you know, the amazing Dick Schultz wanted to take the company private. And all of my, you know, professional life, I loved problem solving.

I did a few turnarounds at McKinsey and after that. And also Best Buy was this iconic American company, great success story. Right. And I had, When I was in the video games industry, so here's the scoop, Brian, in 2000, like greenlit world of Worldcraft when I was in the video games industry, and they have credits on Diablo too. So anybody who is in video games, that means something. But I would visit Best Buy in Minneapolis. And I had seen how much better they were compared to their competitors,

to the point that I had asked Brad Anderson, who was the CEO of Best Buy until 2009, to join my board at council and companies. And I felt that it was tragic that they had gone sideways. And so, yes, saving, you know, who doesn't want to save the world? In that case, not saving the world. I don't know. I don't know, though.

Do you, I mean, was it, like, was it just about the fact that, like, you love the challenge of it? Or what else was? I mean, I would imagine it was more money, too? Or was it not about that at all? You didn't care about that. No, in fact, if we slow down. Yeah. That leads to a number of reflections, right?

Yeah. Which are in the book. Why do we work? Yep. What's our purpose in life? Is work a curse or a punishment because some dude sinned in paradise? Is it something we do so that we can do something else that's much more fun? Or is work part of our quest for meaning and something that enables us can enable us

to be fulfilled as an individual, is it an invitation to do some good in the world? Or like the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran wrote, you know, is work, love made visible? Clearly, I mean, the second column. And what drives me in this question of what drives you as an individualist essential in business, right? Why are you here?

And so my purpose in life is to try to make a positive, difference on people around me and use the platform I have at any point in time to make a positive difference in the world. That's what drives me. And I felt that Best Buy was a platform. And when you look at it, and people have told me, you know, we saved, you know, of course, more than 100,000 jobs, but with the families and so forth, we've impacted hundreds of thousands of people at the company, the vendors, the community, the Minneapolis community, and the the communities in which we have stores. It's, we've changed lives.

You know, after a jail manager, store general manager meeting, one of the GMs came to me and said, Ebert, thank you for saving Best Buy. Thanks to this, my children will be able to go to college. I told him, oh, my God, let me go back to work. I need to work harder. And that's that, in this idea of what drives us. Everybody, many people now in business talk,

about corporate purpose, you know, the idea that contrary to what Milton Friedman wants to believe, the purpose of a company is not to make money. It's an outcome. For me, the magic, that's, you know, not part of what drives, or has driven, the amazing results of Best Buy is when people can connect what drives them, what's in their heart and their soul with the purpose of the company, doing great things in the world. That's where magic happens. So for those people currently who have a fine job at a fine company and they earn a good living to support their family, but they don't really care about the mission. Maybe they don't have a good boss who's not a good leader who doesn't care about listening to podcasts or reading books or not they're not in it to serve.

They're in it to see their bank account get bigger. What advice do you give to that person? because I, the reason I say that is because I feel like that's, unfortunately, it's, it's more common than I wish it was. What do you like, do you say, hey, it's, you got to go find another place to work? Do you try to make it make, make your current place great, even if there's others around you who don't feel that like? What is it, what advice you give to that person?

Because it seems like you certainly want and made that change at Best Buy, but you, you led from the top as the CEO of the company. And, and then it kind of went to the, your leadership. flowed to the leaders within the business and on down to every single person that work there. But that's not the case. Other places, what about the people who are in the middle? What advice you give to them? There's a pandemic of these engagement at work, right?

There's all sorts of statistics that show that vast majority of people are not fully engaged. So what advice? Number one. So it actually applies in this COVID pandemic. If you cannot go outside, go outside. go inside. So start about, I think leadership starts from within,

being clear about how you want to live your life, what's important to you, what are some boundaries, what matters, how do you want to be remembered, what kind of eulogy would you like to have and being clear about this.

And that's a journey for all of us to work on that. We find this, a lot of spiritual work and personal work. And then where you are in your life, whether it's at work or in any group of people where you're a member, try to be the best version of yourself and make it, you know, do what you are meant to be, be the most beautiful, biggest version of yourself. Sometimes bosses can be an excuse, but I've seen at best by so many of our store general manager, I've learned, you know, Ryan, I've learned so much from these leaders.

So one of them, for example, in Boston, he would ask every one of the associates in his store, what is your dream? Tell me about your dream. At Best Buy or side of Best Buy, say, write it down in the break room. And then he said, okay, my job is to help you achieve your dream. Now, nobody told him to do this. I mean, we created an environment where it was completely congruent to one of the or this, but he was able to do this. Now, having said that to your question, if you feel that the environment in which you are does not allow you to be yourself and the best version, the most beautiful,

biggest version of yourself, and you know, you've tried and it doesn't work. And if you have the choice, not everybody does, right? But if you have the ability, then leave. So as an example, in the late 1990s, after leaving McKinsey, I was the president of EDS France, electronic data system, the old Ospreo company. And we were doing a lot of great stuff. We were turning around the business, growing the business. And then there was a change of leadership in Plano, Texas.

And it felt that the new regime was really focused purely on profits. That was the only thing that matters. and the only way they were thinking about it. It fell to me, rightly or wrong. And they were centralizing a lot of decisions in Plano, Texas. So in France, we were growing, and we had to have a hiring phrase. I said, how can you grow a service business if you have a hiring fee? You just can't.

It's crazy. So I said, that's okay. The world is big. They can have EDS. I can explore the rest of the world. And I left. You're a president at the time. I was president of the French business.

Wow. Okay. Big job, yeah. Big job, but small on the global scale. And I didn't feel that the environments made it possible for me to do what I aspire to do. And so we're the captains of our life. So we have to decide what are the boundaries. And if we feel that we cannot, you know, create the right environment.

Now, that doesn't mean that we have to look for the perfect environment. There's always problems. There's always people who are that you think should behave different. So this is not about looking for perfection. But if the environment is beyond the boundaries that you define, and if you have a choice, then leave, you'll be happier. Because when you ask people how they want to be remembered and what's going to be important when they retire or during their eulogy,

It's rarely, I made VP by the age of 30 or my banking account was bigger than my neighbors, right? That's not the source of happiness, right? I read something that you said you picked up from, I believe, a mentor. It might have been at McKinsey where you said profit and you just briefly touched on it. Profit should be an outcome, not a goal. And yet, so was there no profit goal? at Best Buy, and you just said, hey, okay, go ahead. Let's talk about this.

This is fundamental. So I learned this from a client when I was at McKinsey. There's the CEO of a French client. And he said, the meeting I had with him, he said, the profit of a corporation is not to make money. It's an imperative. It's not the ultimate goal. In business, he continued.

You actually have three imperatives. I think it's gotten even broader since then, but he said, you have a people imperative. You need to have good people. who are well-trained, well-equipped, able to do a good job. Then you have a business imperative. You need to have customers who are happy and want more. And then you have a financial imperative, which is you need to make money.

And his view with that excellence on the people imperative is what leads to excellence on the business imperative, which leads to excellence on the financial imperative. And it draws some immediate implications, say, for example, when you have your monthly business review, don't start with financial results. Start with people and organization, continue with customers and business, and finish with finance.

You will always have enough time because your CFO will make sure, but if you flip it, you're never going to have time for customers and people. And so I think the role of business leaders at any level, whether you're a store channel manager, or a CEO, it's the same, is to manage all of the stakeholders of your organization. You have to see the company or your organization as a human organization made of individuals

working together in pursuit of a goal, which I think to me has got to be to do something good in the world. And you have to work with all of the stakeholders, so employees, customers, vendors, community, and shareholders to create extraordinary outcomes. And you have to refuse. So here's a trick to remember.

98% of the questions that are asked as either or in business are better answered as ends. So should we take care of our customers or the shareholders? Both. Should we take care of the short term or the long term? Both. You know, should we focus on revenue?

or cost both. You know, it makes life so much easier. And so, of course, you have targets in terms of employee engagement, customer satisfaction, your carbon footprints, you know, the growth of the company, the long-term financial return. And your job is to orchestrate that in a way that is congruent and harmonious. And that's what we did at Best Buy. So you do have goals that are of the financial nature because showlers are really important. They take care of our retirement. Ryan, you care about retirement? Yes, you do. For sure. So that's how we're going to get our retirement is who what they do with. So you have the goals, but it's just your your method for achieve them may look different than than others. And there's a big difference between

an imperative and the ultimate goal, the true north like my friend Bill George likes to say. Your noble purpose, I think that, you know, in my vision, because let's again slow down. can we agree, Ryan, that the world today is facing a multifaceted crisis, health crisis, economic, societal, justice, systemic racism, environmental. You know, you got the list. And then what's the definition of madness, right, per Einstein? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Exactly. So I think the last pick a number, 40, 50 years have been dominated by.

the thinking of two individuals, or you can summarize it like this. One, Milton Friedman, with the idea of shareholder primacy, and that profit was the only thing you cared about. And two, Bob McNamara, with the idea that, you know, the former Secretary of Defense in the 60s, that the approach to business is you take a bunch of smart people, they create a smart strategy, implementation plan, you communicate, you track, maybe you put incentives in place

and hope that good things happen. none of this happens. So the conclusion for this is we need a refoundation, and that's the purpose of my book, right? We need a refoundation of business and I think capitalism. And it's around two or three key ideas. And that's the philosophy that was behind the turnaround and research and self-best. Number one, it's about pursuing business,

about pursuing a noble purpose, doing something good in the world. We'll use examples, right? But that's the first thing. Two is put people at the center. A company is a human organization made of individuals working together. So it's all about the people and what they do. And I don't care whether you're a tech company or a professional services firm. In both cases, it's people that do things.

Nothing happens other than through people. The third idea is embrace all stakeholders. And the fourth idea is your job as a leader is to create an environment where people can do amazing things, that this idea of unleashing human magic that I talked about in the book. And then you treat profit as an outcome rather than the goal. That's the architecture. Now, what's interesting, Ryan, is that today, I would say that most people agree that this is the right approach. I think there's a bit of sea change.

Frankly, after last year, you. would need to be blind not to see that we need to change our ways in that this is the right approach. If you live in Minneapolis, after the murder of George Floyd, when the city is on fire, do you think we can open the stores? Of course you cannot. If the planet is on fire, do you think that you can run a business? Of course not. So we have to change our ways. I think that's the approach And the challenge today is not convincing people that this is the right approach. It's how to do this. This is, it sounds soft.

It's really hard to do. And the purpose of my writing this book is to provide a, based on what everything I've learned in the last, you know, 10, 20, 30 years is to create a guide for leaders who are interested in getting rid of the old ways. And, you know, progressing on this journey of leading from a place of purpose, and with humanity, which I think can create extraordinary results in a much more sustainable future. And back to your point, a lot more happiness with employees, right? Yeah.

Ubert, can I ask you a question or two about McKinsey? I've read about McKinsey a lot. I've worked with people from McKinsey that come into a previous company I worked at. You worked there for, I believe, 13 years, the beginning of your career, right? Yeah. So I was always fascinated about you're very, you're very. highly educated, went to great schools, that to go into a consulting role without a ton of real world experience seems like it would be really hard. How did you be a value-added resource to your

clients at McKinsey when you didn't have that much experience? Yeah, so I have very fun memories of my time at McKinsey and all with my friends there and everything I've learned. The emphasis in these early years of my career was around problem solving. So that's what you did as a consultant. You didn't go in and say, I have 30 years of experience in retailing. Let me tell you what's key in retailing. I mean, I had zero experience. But you take a problem, you analyze it, you break it down,

you do some fact-finding, some analysis, you look at all sorts of facts. You work collaboratively with the client who's got a lot of the ideas. You manage your process to get to a great outcome. So, you know, the consulting profession, whether it's Bikinsey or others, has grown significantly because there is value in doing this. What I say in the book, though, is that for me personally, as a human being, I've had to make a journey, frankly, from, you know, the hard-charging, very analytic, really oriented towards problem-solving kind of guy who believes that being smart is really what matters. And sometimes it's a bit too driven to have too much value and wants to make sure

that everybody knows how smart I am. We've all seen some of these, right? For sure. For sure. And there was an evolution. There's an arc in my life moving from that to today somebody who believes in human magic and believes that the role of the leader is not to be this the 20th century image of the leader is the superhero who is here to save the day, very smart, very powerful,

oftentimes driven by power, fame, glory or money. Right? No, we don't want that. And today, the role of the leader is much more somebody who can create the environment in which others can be successful. And that means, you know, being clear about, again, why are you here? What's your purpose? How you want to be remembered?

That also goes through vulnerability. You know, it took me years, Ryan, to understand that the quest for perfection was evil. And that being able to say, my name is I, Ebert, and I don't know. Or my name is Ebert and I made a mistake with the right approach. You know, it's hard. But I'll tell you a story to make it concrete, right? Because so back to 2012, right, when I joined Best Buy, before joining Best Buy, I started to work a few years before that with an executive coach in 2009, where I was CEO of Kalsam companies. Before that, if somebody had told me, you know, Jack or Mary, they're working with a coach, they would say, what's wrong with them, right?

Are they in trouble? Are they going to be fired? Who needs a coach, right? But then it hit me that exactly 100% of the top 100 tennis players in the world have a coach. Exactly 100% of the NFL teams, NBA, you know, Major League Baseball, you know, Champions League in soccer, everybody's got a coach. So what would be, you know, so special about executives, are they demigods that they don't need a coach? And so I started to work with the coach, the fabulous, the one and only martial goals. who's like a father of. Adamant. He's the man. He's the man. And, you know, he was at the time

working for successful leaders like Anand Malawi and Dr. Jim Kim at the World Bank. And I say, oh, I want one of those. And he taught me about feet forward. He made it, he made the process of getting better, a very joyous process. And so fast forward. So when I joined Best Buy three months after that, I told my team, look, let's agree. This term, around is going to be hard, right? Everybody thinks we're going to die, so we can't agree it's going to be hard. So that means each one of us is going to need to be the best version of ourselves, the best possible leader we can be. And that starts with me. So I have a coach. His name is Marshall. It's going to come in. It would really appreciate it if you could spend

time with him and give him some feedback about how I'm doing. And at the time, things were going great, don't get me wrong, but I would really value that. So I got the feedback. And Marshall, one of his trick is to say, on the good stuff, digest it. And the other stuff, you don't need to do anything, right? There's no God that says you need to address any of this. It's your decision. So I decided, based on what I heard, that there was two or three things I wanted to get better at. I went through, so I gathered the team, and this is excruciating pain, right?

Make it sound easy. This is excruciating pain. Thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate it. There's two or three things I've decided to work on. Number one, number two, number three. You have to say it.

I'm going to follow up with each of you to ask you for advice on how I can get better on these three things. And then three or four months from now I'll follow up with you to check how I'm doing and ask for more advice.

So is that making yourself vulnerable? I think so. That's how it felt. But what it does then is that it's signal to, first it helped me, frankly, because we all need to get better. Every year, ever since I was when I was CEO of Best Buy, every year we would repeat, rinse and repeat.

Because you're always working, and if you run into somebody from Best Buy, ask them, what are you working on to get better at? But the other thing is, it's related, is that it's a signal that it was okay to want to be better at something. And it's creating an environment where we could be vulnerable. We could help each other, right?

Because if you're Jack or Ryan, you're working on three things. And I'm Uber and I'm working on three things. So you're going to ask me for help. And of course I'm going to help. So we're going to help each other. So the idea of the all-powerful superhero is gone. But you don't imagine, you know, Superman or Batman. My name is Batman.

I need help. He doesn't do this. And so that's a. I think that's a critical point, Euberra, that all leaders, I have yet to meet somebody that either wouldn't benefit from a coach or isn't currently benefiting from a coach. That person in my mind doesn't exist. In fact, it's amazing to me personally, the people who reach out to me to help with this line of work and part of my business, the cool thing about it, Euber is they are, in a lot of cases, ultra successful as far as business and home life is concerned. Their people, for the most part, are really impressed with the way they lead.

They're very humble. They're like the last people who seem to need it. And yet they're the ones consistently reaching out. And the ones who I've looked out upon in the world who definitely need it and should be reaching out. They don't ever seem to be doing that. And so I think it's like a signal in itself from a great leadership perspective. are you raising your hand to say, absolutely, I want to coach. Absolutely, it's worth it to invest.

I know Marshall is not cheap. He told me how much he charges when he was on the show, right? It's a big investment. But it shows from your end how committed you are to working on yourself to get better. So what message is that sending to the rest of the team? That's amazing. Yeah, exactly. And one of the greatest joys I have now that I'm not a CEO is that together with my wife,

or Tons, who's written this great book that you also see behind me, right, aligned. We are working together and coaching CEOs and senior executives. It's awesome. And bringing the very personal side of personal development and the business side together. Because as leaders, one of the lessons for me of the last 12 months, if it was not obvious before, is as leaders, we need to lead with all of our body parts, right, not just the brain, but the heart, the soul, the guts, the ears, the eyes. And it needs to be integrated.

And the mistake I made for too long, Ryan, was I had my head cut off from my body. All right. And I thought that the only thing that mattered was the head. And it's not true. You know, when I, in fact, it struck me, you know, when you lead a large organization, you have big meetings suddenly before COVID, right? And after I would make a speech about where we are as a company, where we're going and so forth, do you think that people in the audience truly remembered everything I said and were so impressed by how smart I was?

No, it was all about how I made them feel. And, you know, again, a company is a human organization made of individuals working together in pursuit of a goal. And it's a human adventure. When you're hiring for a leadership role, Hubert, what are some of the must-have qualities? And maybe even what are some of the, I love to go inside your interview process. When somebody's meeting with you to get a big job, a big leadership job, that's obviously important. What are maybe some questions to you ask and some absolute must-have qualities in that person? And so there also have evolved, Ryan.

I used to place a lot of emphasis on expertise and experience. So I would want, you know, the best e-commerce person or the best supply chain person or the best whatever, marketing person. And then, of course, you know, see whether the person was a good person, but really placed a lot of emphasis on expertise and experience. Over the years, when people got to my office, usually we had assessed their expertise and experience and the U-U search firm that they help you with that. My main focus was understanding the person. Who is this person? What drives them?

Is it about themselves? Is it about their success? How do they want to be remembered? What kind of a leader do they want to be? So when I was interviewed for the CEO job at Calston Companies, another Minneapolis-based company, I was interviewed on a long place. So this was on our plane coming back from Paris,

going back to Minneapolis. So this was an eight-hour interview. So she was the daughter of the founder, and I was a candidate to replace her as the CEO of the company. one of the questions she asked me is, Ebert, tell me about your soul. Tell me about who has this question? What did you say?

Well, I told her about my soul and what my inner life was and what mattered to me and, you know, the meaning of my life and things of that nature. Deep, man. And I thought, now I don't use these words because Maryland is, you know, special, fabulous. the chat, but I ask, I use questions such as what drives you. How do you want to be remembered? You know, what would you like people to say that you know, in your eulogy?

And I place a lot of emphasis in this because the, I believe the most important decision we get to make as leaders is who do we put in positions of leadership? So if you share this vision of purposeful leadership and purposeful human organization, having a purposeful leader is critical. So back to your question about criterion. So at some point in our journey, at Best Buy, the team, my executive team encouraged me to be more explicit about our leadership expectations. We've been implicit, but they wanted me to be explicit. And so I developed the five Bs of purposeful leadership.

That's the last chapter in the book. So I'm going to share it with you. The first B is about being purposeful. So being clear about your own purpose, which is what we've been talking about, being clear and curious about the purpose of people around you. And if you have time, I'll tell you a couple of stories there. And to be able to do a good job of connecting.

these individual purposes with the purpose of the company, making the link, which is where magic happens. Second, be clear about your role as a leader. We talked about it. It's not about being the smartest person in the room and making sure everybody knows how are smart you are, but it's about creating this environment where others can be successful.

It's about being clear about who you serve. So I told the officers at Best Buy, you know, if you're here to serve yourself or your boss or me as a person, the CEO of the company, it's okay. I don't have a problem with that. Except you cannot work here. You can be promoted to being a best buy customer, which is a fabulous thing. We'll take care of you. It's going to be great, but you cannot work here. On the other end, if you're here to serve people on the front line, then we're good. The fourth B is, you know, be values driven. Of course, integrity

is foundational. In the fifth B is be authentic. Be yourself. Be human. Be vulnerable. Be the best version of yourself, because that's how you're going to connect with others. If you're, if you're perfect, you cannot love somebody who's perfect. You can admire them, but you cannot connect with them. In order to, in Bernie Brown, of course, talks about this beautifully, in order to connect somebody else, they need to be vulnerable. In fact, to love somebody else, it's well known that you first need to love yourself. If you don't love yourself, you cannot love others. And loving yourself starts with accepting your imperfections and your vulnerabilities and making peace. I'm not perfect. I'm doing my best, but I'm not perfect. And I blew this and I blew that.

And so these are the five bees. And we were very explicit about this in our selection of leaders, in our promotion of leaders, in our development of leaders. It matters. You also, I think, were known for someone who used layoffs or reducing headcount as an absolute last resort. And I feel like there are places I've been where it didn't feel like it was the last resort. It felt like it was a yearly tradition because you got to hit profit for the quarter or the year or whatever may be. and I realize CEOs have really tough jobs that I haven't had yet, but it feels like there's got to be a better way than just having the yearly tradition of where are we going to cut

in order to hit the number. There has to be a better way. And this is one of your, this is something that you're known for. Yeah. My turnaround manual is several chapters. One of the chapter is four levers you pull. And the last one, last resort is headcount reduction. The first one is grow the business.

Find out how to grow the business. Growth can, you know, we'll do marvelous things. As it is to cost. And I do believe that companies on an ongoing basis need to improve efficiencies, right? That's what human beings do. We try to be better and better at banks. And at best buy every year we would take out $200,000 million of cost to be able to fund our investments, right?

That's something that's healthy to do. But you focus first on what I call non-salary expenses, which is everything in the cost structure that has nothing to do with people and that is usually at most companies the majority of the cost structure. So let me take an example. So at Best Buy, do we sell a lot of TVs, Ryan?

Yes, we do. they're large, they're thin, so they break. We used to break about $200 million worth of TVs every year. Wow. That's a lot. But presumably maybe we sell, I don't know, $10 billion worth of TVs or something like this. If you can reduce what we call the TV junk out by 50%,

you save $100 million. Good for the customers, right? Because we've done a survey, zero percent exactly of customers want to buy a broken TV. That's how you know. And it's good for our vendors. It's good for us. And so that's what you do.

And continuously look for waste to eliminate. We call it waste and efficiencies. So reduce waste and reduce inefficiencies in all of the processes. Now, the third lever is optimize benefits. So an example of this is healthcare costs. Of course, in the US, most companies are self-insured. So if your workforce is healthy, guess what? Your health care costs go down.

But good for the customers, good for the employees, good for the P&L. If one plus two plus three, so revenue growth, non-cellar expenses, benefits is not sufficient to drive the necessary, remember financial performance is imperative, the necessary, you know, financial performance, sometimes you have to go after headcount. but you do it as a last resource. So you don't see employees as the problem. You usually see them as the solution. And yet, even when you reduce headcount, you try to redeploy people. So let me take an example.

At some point in our journey, we decided to close the best buy mobile stand-alone stores. These are mob-based, small-ish, 1,000-square-foot stores that were just focused on setting smartphones, essentially. At some point, when we opened them around 2006, the launch of the iPhone, they made complete sense. 12 years later, not so much. So for good business reasons, we decide to close them down.

It's about 200 or 300 stores, 1,000 people out of 125,000 people at the time. We tell the employees what we're going to do and why. And then we tell them, we love you. We think the world of you, you have these great skills that's, we spend years, you know, you spend years developing. And we've got this great company called Best Buy. Probably there's a big box, you know, Best Buy store, not far from your Best Buy mobile standard store. And we're going to work, we're going to do our best to see what opportunities exist at the company. And we're going to take the time. We're going to take three months,

I think it was, to do that. Now, if for whatever reason you decide that, you know, you want to move on, Or, you know, there's actually not a good opportunity for it. That's okay. You know, you can decide to leave and it will give you severance and whatnot, but we'd like to keep you. And, you know, at most companies, it's the opposite. We're eliminating your job. Here's the check.

Because there's a legal obligation to offer severance. But, you know, the legal profession should not drive how we deal with people. You tell them, if you want, you can have severance. But, frankly, we would love for you to stay because we love you. You know? And so that's the philosophy. And yes, when I joined Best Buy, a lot of people were telling me, cut, cut, cut. You're going to have to close stores. We do headcount massively. And I looked pretty much all of the stores were profitable. That was not the problem. You know, the problem is that our prices were not competitive. Our website was terrible. Our supply chain was awful. And our store experience was not great. So all things we could fix. So, These are fundamental points about how to lead. You know, there's a chapter in the book that's how to turn around a business without everybody hating you because the principles we're talking about,

about purposeful human leadership. It's not just for the good times. It equally applies when things are tough. In fact, even more so because you need the heart and soul and the energy of every already at the company to save the company as opposed to treating them like, you know, the problem. The way we're going to hit earnings is we're going to, you know, catch Jack and Mary.

You know, that's crazy. One of the other aspects that was going on as you get the role is Amazon's becoming just a behemoth. They're taking over the world. I've bought a TV on Amazon and I've also bought one at Best Buy. And it seems pretty easy to buy one on Amazon. You get reviews. You can even go look at them at Best Buy and then buy it on Amazon.

Maybe it's cheaper. So you're facing this challenge that I think some would say is just this is inevitable. What to do? This is the end. And yet when you look at the kind of the pub for your book, one of the top blurbs is from Jeff Bezos himself. What did you decide to do and how did you work with Jeff Bezos and Amazon in order to thrive when I think a lot of people thought it was going to put you, they were going to put you out of business? the first thing we did because the phenomenon you described Ryan was called showrooming.

People coming to our store, talking to our social. I think I've personally done this. A lot of people probably have. Of course. And then buy online, particularly at the time, remember there was no sales tax when you bought online. It was a bit of an unfair advantage that Amazon had. And then prices were perceived to be lower.

So if somebody asked you, who killed showrooming in America? you said, well, I met him, it's a bear. How did we kill showrooming? Well, we decided that our prices were going to be the same. And number two, that blue shirts would have the power, the authority to match online prices. No question asked. Right? Because, Ryan, you've spent 30 minutes with Mary to talk about this beautiful Sony TV or Samsung, whatever.

And then you leave empty-handed. Mary can say, no, no, no. If you think about buying it, I'll match the price, and then you'll have it. Everybody will deliver it for you. So we took price of the table, number one. Number two, Amazon, you know, is Amazon good online? Yes, they are.

With Best Buy good online, no, we were terrible. The blue shirts week one told me better. The search engine on the Best Buy.com site is not working. I said, what do you mean? It's not working. Well, type Cinderella. in the search bar, you'll get Nikon cameras. It rhymes, but it's not quite the same.

So we fixed the website. We also invested in the supply chain. So now we deliver as fast as Amazon. So in many ways, we actually neutralize Amazon. Same price, buy online, great supply chain. You can either ship or pick up in store. So very convenient. And then we invested in our own strength.

So I was not obsessed by Amazon. So I want to be obsessed by the customers. And so we created a whole series of things great for the customers, you know, improve the customer experience. We created these partnerships with the vendors. Come to Amazon in a second, but, you know, Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Amazon, you know, and so on and so forth. And we gave them the opportunity to showcase the fruit of their billions of dollars of R&D

and showcase that in our stores. That's something they needed. So it was good for the customers, right? Because you could look at Apple, which is Samsung, and then integrate, right? There's no home in America with a single brand. Tim Cook's home has non-apple products in it, right? Because Apple doesn't do TVs or refrigerators, right?

I've checked. And so you need somebody to integrate the whole thing. So we work with that. As we dates to Amazon, So there's a disease in the world, which is the idea of zero some gain. Ryan, if you're going to win, that means I lose. I think that's a terrible disease. You know, if you take Amazon and Best Buy together in the U.S.

collective market share of the consumer electronics market is about 25%. And so what I used to tell our investors is, yes, Amazon is growing. Oh, we're growing too. And there's this other 75% that we can go after. Oh, and by the way, we can grow the market as well. So it's not a zero-sum game. Second, Amazon, of course, you know, is multiple facets. They have Amazon Web Services, their retailer, and their product company.

You know, remember, they have the Kindle, all of the Echo Alexa products, and so forth. So we made the decision early on. It started before my time, and I decided to continue, to sell Amazon products in our stores. other retailers were not so enamored with the idea because they saw Amazon as the enemy. We said, no, these are great products. Customers want it. Why do we exist? It's to help customers.

So we always sold their products. In fact, to the point that if you go into a Best Buy store today, there is an Amazon store within a store. There's a table with all of the Alexa products next to the Google table where you can test and see how all of the Alexa products work together. So we're showcasing. So we killed showrooming, and we invented showcasing. We're showcasing Amazon Sparks. And then what happened, which was a Joe dropper, Amazon decided to give us the exclusive

rights to the fire TV platform, you know, their smart TV platform, which is fabulous, to be integrated in smart TVs. And these fire TV powered TVs would only be sold at Best Buy or buy Best Buy on Amazon. Pretty amazing deal. When we announced it, we did a little event in a store not far from Amazon's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, and Jeff came, and we had a good conversation. I knew him, you know, from business circles and from being a vendor, of course. And so we had media, we had the Wall Street Journal,

we have the Star Tribune, variety, and so forth. And one of the things that Jeff said is, look, a TV is a considerate purchase. You need to see it. And Best Buy is the best place in the world to see it. And of course, then he was complimentary about a turnaround. And the reporter from the Star Tribune, which is the Minneapolis newspaper,

I mean, their job literally dropped. And you used the word trust. Right? One of the things that Jeff told me is that because we had been working together for 10 years, we had the two teams, not he and I, simply, but the two teams that develop a trust-based relationships. We knew we could work together and that we could trust each other. And so that led to the deal. And so I love this idea of seeing possibilities and of going for win-win-win deals good for the customers, good for the vendors, and good for us.

Big lesson for me of the last, you know, of my time at Best Buy. Love it, Euber. One more question. So there is probably somewhat earlier in their career who is listening, who really wants to live a purposeful, purposeful life, help others, serve, be an excellent leader. leave their mark in a positive way so that it impacts others. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you would give to that person? So I would highlight maybe a couple.

One is we've already talked about, which is spend time. It's going to take time. You know, if you're when I teach the MBA students at Harvard, they don't have the answer usually. But spend time during the life, trying to figure out why you are, here and your purpose in life, right? And you can get help through meditation, you know, spirituality, a coach, a personal board of directors, your spouse. But spending time with yourself is really good on that. My friend Bill George has got a man's group that he's been,

they meet every week on Wednesdays at 7 a.m. And they've been doing this for 35 years. Wow. So they support each other. So that's a, so really work on that. The second thing is the advice from, we mentioned him at the beginning, right, of my good friend Jim Citrin at Spencer Stewart. And he wrote years ago in Yahoo finance a column where he wrote the best leaders don't climb to the top. They are carried to the top. The best leaders don't climb to the top. They are carried to the top.

So there's a big element of philosophy, which is where you are today. because the only moment where we are always living, right, is today. Try to be the best version of yourself and help others do a great job and assume good things will happen. Now, I think his advice is primarily good, notably good for us boys. I think the advice for women needs to be slightly different. There's a great book by Sadi Helgson called How Women Rise, that she actually wrote with Marshall Goldsmiths.

I may have it here. I do actually. I'll do a little infomercial for her. So how women rise. It's advice for women in their career. And one of the things that she has noticed, and I've noticed too, is that when a boy is,

I say a boy, right, a man is 80% ready for a promotion. We'll tend to say, oh, we're ready. When a woman is 125% ready for a promotion, promotion. Generally speaking, not always true, but more often than not, we'll say, not sure I'm ready. Plus, I may not have

finished what I was doing here. And so that means as leaders, and I gave Sadi's book to all of our people leader at Best Buy. Notice the difference. And when there's a promotion opportunity, don't be fooled by what people, the man and the women are saying.

Develop your own perspective. Potentially put your thumb on the scale so that the woman who's 125% ready actually has a better chance to have the promotion compared to the man who is 80% ready as opposed to the other way around. So these would be some thoughts. I love it. Well, you bear, I could listen to your stories all day, man. I really appreciate it.

The book is called The Heart of Business Leadership Principles for the next era of capitalism. It looks great. Love the title, man. I know and I love the cover you have of all the people because that's that's what you're really all about shaped in a heart. I encourage people to check it out because it's really well done. And I just appreciate your investment of time. And the way that you came to this and showed up, I'll say it here publicly, just that you came with such excitement and generosity towards me and care and preparation, man.

That means a lot to me. So I just want to say thank you very much and acknowledge that. well thank you Ryan and for everybody who is in this journey good luck I hope that this book is a gift you know and that you can use it to as I've learned from others right along the way to try to get better that's our journey right to get better that's it that's it well Euber thanks so much again and I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress man look forward to that thank you Thank you. As Eubair and I connected on Zoom prior to hitting record,

he joined the Zoom with this huge smile and looked at me and said, Ryan, how can I make this an awesome podcast for you and for everyone listening? And it reminded me of John Chambers to see someone so accomplished show up with so much care for me as well as you. It meant a lot, and it shows in each of the answers he gave and the stories he shared, a few of my takeaways, the world is not zero sum. I loved how Euber worked together with Jeff Bezos and Amazon, among others, and that in turn helped his team, which helped his customers and helped Amazon and helped the overall business,

creating win-win-win situations, great examples of how that's possible and not just viewing them as a competitor or in a zero-sum world. And then we all need a coach and the fact that he invested in Marshall Goldsmith and it showed his team, look, I am trying to get better. I need help. All leaders need a coach. We all need someone to help us understand where we can improve what we're good at and then some of the how-to when it comes to getting better. And I found the most impressive leaders in the world seem to be the ones who are always reaching out for a coach.

And then profit should be an outcome, not a goal. Good people lead to good customers, which lead to profit in that. order. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. I want to say again, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and tell a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to the Learning Leader Show. This episode with Ubert Jolie really helped me in my quest to serve others and be an effective leader. And because you do that and because you continue to write a review an Apple podcast and rate the show hopefully five stars you give me the opportunity to do what I'd love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful thank you so much talking soon can we