Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz · Guy Raz | Luminary

Mobilizing Talent When it Counts: Best Buy's Hubert Joly

November 20, 2024·1 hr 8 min·5 clips

Hubert Joly took over Best Buy as Forbes declared it was going out of business and the company lost $1.7 billion.

1. Wisdom from the Top host Guy Raz interviews Hubert Joly, the French business executive who served as Best Buy's CEO from 2012 to 2019, about a career spent turning around companies in crisis. 2. Joly studied at HEC Paris, joined McKinsey & Company in 1983, and made partner, where he spent 13 years consulting primarily in the technology sector before moving into operating roles. 3. The episode's core thesis is that effective turnarounds start with people, not with cost-cutting, and that leaders driven by purpose outperform those driven by power or money. 4. At McKinsey, Joly worked with a French CEO named Jean-Marie who operated Honeywell Bull and who taught him that a company has three imperatives in order: people, customers, and financial results — with financial performance being an outcome rather than a purpose. 5. Jean-Marie's defining principle was 'refuse the tyranny of or and embrace the power of and': great companies do not force trade-offs between employees, customers, and shareholders but excel simultaneously on all three imperatives. 6. Joly's first operating role was as president of EDS France in 1996 at age 35, leading a 3,000-person IT services business that was underperforming against competitors including Capgemini, Atos, IBM, and Andersen Consulting. 7. His turnaround methodology, applied at EDS France and later refined across multiple companies, starts with growing revenue first, cutting non-salary expenses (which he estimates represent 80% of most cost structures) second, and treating headcount reduction as an absolute last resort. 8. Joly joined Vivendi's video games division in 1999 to oversee what was then the largest PC games company in Europe, including the Blizzard Entertainment studio in Irvine, California — the maker of Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft. 9. At Vivendi, Joly's team more than tripled international sales of Diablo II from one million copies to three million by simultaneously launching the game globally on the same date with copy protection, rather than rolling it out in the U.S. first and allowing a gray market to precede European and Asian launches. 10. Joly's worst professional period came when he took a role overseeing the Vivendi-Universal merger integration, driven not by mission but by proximity to power and hope of becoming group CEO — a motivation he now identifies as dangerous. 11. His principle from that experience: 'The best leaders don't climb to the top — they are carried to the top,' meaning excellent results, team development, and service to colleagues advance careers more reliably than political positioning. 12. After Vivendi, Joly became CEO of Carlson Wagon Lit Travel in 2004, then CEO of the entire Carlson portfolio — Radisson Hotels, TGI Fridays, and Carlson Marketing — in 2008, arriving two weeks before the Bear Stearns collapse. 13. The Great Recession caused Carlson's revenue to fall sharply, pushing the company close to running out of cash in 2009; Joly responded by cutting $500 million in costs while simultaneously selling Carlson Marketing to strengthen the balance sheet. 14. Forbes published 'Why Best Buy Is Going Out of Business' in January 2012; that year the company reported a $1.7 billion net loss, its CEO was fired over an inappropriate relationship with an employee, and its founder attempted a buyback as the stock fell below $15. 15. Joly was announced as Best Buy CEO in August 2012, the same day the share price dropped 10%, signaling shareholder skepticism about an executive with no electronics retail background. 16. His post-hire diagnosis concluded that Best Buy's problems were entirely self-inflicted through poor service quality — Amazon was not causing the crisis — and that stores could be turned into paid vendor showrooms where Apple, Samsung, and Sony could display products every day rather than only at trade conventions. 17. The turnaround plan, called Renew Blue, included immediate price matching against Amazon, a rebuilt website, and a new model where vendors paid to operate branded spaces inside Best Buy stores. 18. The episode is structured as a narrative biography with Guy Raz's voiceover framing key transitions, alternating with direct interview audio, giving it a documentary feel that differentiates it from a pure Q&A format. 19. Senior executives, MBA students, and people interested in corporate turnarounds, leadership philosophy, or the retail-versus-e-commerce debate will find this episode densely substantive. 20. Listeners seeking tactical business how-to advice, a fast pace, or current events coverage will likely find the biographical depth and philosophical tangents slower than expected.

As heard by us

A steady turnaround story about crisis, talent, and practical leadership.

Hubert Joly's Best Buy story lands less like a grand rescue and more like a hard, practical turnaround. The company is in real trouble in 2012, and the episode keeps coming back to Joly's basic instinct that the people already there still had talent worth using.

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Why you'd press play

You want a steady turnaround story about rescuing a retailer under pressure.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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