Latest / The CEO Diary with Fexingo: Leadership Lessons, Executive Decisions, and Corner Office Stories / How Hubert Joly Revived Best Buy with Human-Centered Leadership
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- Lucas: In the summer of 2012, Best Buy was the corpse at the retail funeral. Showrooming was the buzzword — customers would wander the aisles, touch the laptops, then pull out their phones and buy from Amazon. The stock had cratered to around eleven dollars. Analysts were writing obituaries. Luna: And then they brought in a guy who ran hotels. Hubert Joly had no retail background. What made them think that would work? Lucas: That's exactly what I want to dig into, because Joly is a case study in not mistaking experience for insight. He came from Carlson, a hospitality company, and he saw that Best Buy's real estate wasn't a liability — it was an asset. The stores could become service destinations, not just product warehouses. Luna: It's a great example of questioning conventional wisdom. Speaking of that, if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, we keep the show ad-free because of listener support. If you'd like to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Absolutely. And that kind of independent thinking is exactly what Joly brought. He didn't try to beat Amazon at their own game. Instead, he asked: what can a physical store do that a website can't? Luna: So where did he start? Let me guess — price matching? Lucas: That was the headline grabber. In 2013, Joly announced that Best Buy would match prices from Amazon and other online retailers. Everyone thought he was crazy, that they'd get killed on margin. But he understood the psychology: if customers knew they'd get the same price in the store, they stopped showrooming. They stayed, and while they were there, they bought accessories, services, and extended warranties. Luna: But price matching alone doesn't save a retailer. Other chains tried it and still went under. Lucas: Right, and that's the crucial nuance. Joly called his plan 'Renew Blue', and it had four pillars: cost cutting, yes, but also investing in employees — what he called 'human-centered leadership'. He believed that if you treat your staff well, they'll deliver better service, and that creates a moat Amazon can't cross. Luna: Give me a concrete example of that investment. Lucas: He increased training hours for store employees, especially in the computing and mobile sections. And he launched a program called 'Total Tech Support', a subscription service for twenty dollars a month that gave customers 24/7 support, both in-store and remote. That turned Best Buy from a transaction hub into a relationship business. By 2019, it had over a million subscribers. Luna: That is a fundamentally different revenue model. You're selling expertise, not just boxes. Lucas: Exactly. Joly also forged partnerships with vendors like Samsung and Microsoft to create branded store within a store sections. Samsung opened its own mini showrooms inside Best Buy, staffed with Samsung-trained reps. That shifted the inventory risk to the vendor and gave customers a premium experience. The stores became a third place for tech, if you will. Luna: So it's a triple win: customers get expert help, vendors get a showcase, and Best Buy gets traffic without the inventory cost. Lucas: And that's the genius of Joly's strategy. He didn't try to out-logistic Amazon. He out-experienced them. By 2019, Best Buy's stock was trading above one hundred dollars — a tenfold increase from the nadir. Same-store sales grew for years, even as other electronics retailers folded. Luna: But let's be real — during the pandemic, online shopping exploded. How did Best Buy survive that? Lucas: They pivoted fast. They had already invested in their website and app, and they turned their stores into fulfillment centers. Curbside pickup became a huge competitive advantage because they had locations within ten miles of most Americans. Amazon couldn't match that immediacy without paying for Prime Air. Luna: So the stores became warehouses with a human face. Lucas: Exactly. And Joly stepped down in 2019, but the culture he built persisted. The new CEO, Corie Barry, was his CFO — so the leadership succession was baked in. That's another lesson from Joly: he actively developed his successor. He wrote a book called 'The Heart of Business' that lays out his philosophy. Luna: What's the single biggest takeaway you'd want a listener to remember about Joly's leadership? Lucas: That a business revival doesn't start with spreadsheets. It starts with a clear sense of purpose. Joly said, 'We exist to enrich people's lives through technology.' Not to sell gadgets. That purpose guided every decision — from price matching to employee training. And it turned a dying retailer into a company that could compete with the most dominant e-commerce force on the planet. Luna: Purpose as strategy. Seems simple, but almost nobody gets it right. Lucas: Yeah. And I think that's why this story keeps getting taught in business schools. It's not a story about discounting. It's a story about redefining what kind of company you are. Luna: Alright, so next time I walk into a Best Buy and a salesperson asks if I need help, I'll remember that it's part of a twenty-billion-dollar turnaround, not just a job. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the corner office lesson for today.