Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Moment explores the pivotal moments that changed the lives and careers of the world’s leading CEOs and defined their leadership journeys.
Claire Blake (00:04):
From World 50, this is The Moment where we explore the pivotal moments that changed the lives and careers of the world's leading CEOs and defined their leadership journeys. I'm your host, Claire Blake, and today we are speaking with Hubert Joly, former chairman and CEO of Best Buy and current director at Johnson & Johnson and Ralph Lauren.
Hubert Joly (00:26):
My family told me at the time, Hubert, you're getting boring. You always work. You don't seem to be happy. You seem to complain a lot about the world and other people. There's something wrong. That's not you. You're lost.
Claire Blake (00:41):
Though progressing quickly through his career, Hubert shares a jolting moment that found him questioning his purpose and a journey to understand the soul's place at work. He shares how this profound revelation, the meaning and work and life guided him through a significant transformation at Best Buy and continues to drive his work in advising the next generation of CEOs.
(01:03):
When does Best Buy have the best sales? Is it really Black Friday or is there a secret day that other people sleep on? Just in case we're a little bit curious.
Hubert Joly (01:17):
Define best. So Black Friday is going to give you the best prices, but the best solutions for you may not be the cheapest. So the best-
Claire Blake (01:27):
Oh, that is too good of a sales answer. I don't know if I can accept that. What's the best part about no longer being CEO?
Hubert Joly (01:35):
I got to open a new chapter, which is allowing me to pursue my purpose. It's all about meaning, impact, and joy. Today, am I wiser, more experienced, have a stronger network than 20 years ago? You betcha, as we say in Minnesota. So my impact can be even greater than when I was a CEO.
Claire Blake (01:58):
I don't think I've ever thought I would hear a Frenchman say, "You betcha." It's too good. We're going to talk about when you wrote an article with not one but two monk friends on the philosophy and theology of work. I have in my mind some joke about two monks and a business executive walk into a bar, but I guess in this case, it's walk into a quote unquote executive team meeting to talk about the philosophy of work, which seems much more on brand for this conversation holistically. But tell me then, what were some of the findings?
Hubert Joly (02:28):
Yeah, so the article was around in the early 90s, so let's call it 1992. And we did an organizational study for this religious congregation, which was so interesting. Today, many companies are working on clarifying their purpose. Let me tell you, their purpose was super clear, right?
Claire Blake (02:45):
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Hubert Joly (02:47):
Work, especially if you grow up in France and in the Catholic church, work doesn't have a good reputation. Work is mainly seen as a punishment. Something we got punished for because some dude sinned in paradise. And therefore there's a controversy around the etymology of the word work in French. So in French, work is travail. Some people say that word comes from tripalium, which is an instrument of torture.
Claire Blake (03:21):
Oh my word.
Hubert Joly (03:22):
The more I dug into reading, the more I saw a different perspective on work, which is work is a calling to serve the common good, take care of each other. And the notion of serving is very important. And I love this quote from the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, who wrote work is love made visible. And of course, work also has a different image in modern societies because work can be something we do so that we can do something else that's more fun, like listening to a podcast by World 50, which is the coolest thing. And suddenly in the second half of the 20th century, that became quite prevalent. And so you escape work, you do the work. I think it's Mark Twain who said it. Work is a necessary evil to be avoided. It also resonates with another author that we need to talk about in this context, which is Viktor Frankl, right?
(04:22):
Man's Search for Meaning. When you go to Viktor Frankl, we all know that the search for meaning for us as human being is essential to our humanity. And Viktor Frankl says that there's three ways to find meaning in life. One is love, nothing wrong with that. Two is courage. Three is work. And if you go back to Kahlil Gibran, then work is connected to love. So then the discussion was around, so what does it mean? Because again, there's a general philosophy that if you read the manifesto of the communist party, which I did read when I was a teenager, the history of mankind is the history of exploration of man by man. And so work can be dull, work can be exploitative in business, but can we create an environment where us human beings can find meaning in our work and can find fulfillment in our work?
Claire Blake (05:20):
Was there a moment when you started to feel at odds in terms of your purpose in life and your purpose in business?
Hubert Joly (05:28):
It took me a while because if we go back at the time, what kind of a leader was I? I thought that being a great leader, a great consultant was all about being the smartest person. And so the rest of my career was a long journey to go from a hard-charging McKinsey consultant all about problem solving, to now somebody who believes in unleashing human magic and the role of a leader, much more about creating the right environment. And Satya Nadella beautifully talks about the know-it-alls, we need to evolve and be learn-it-alls. So I was a pretty extreme case of a disease about thinking that the leader needs to be a superhero who knows everything and tells other people what to do.
Claire Blake (06:14):
But you had a moment where you felt a little bit of a spiritual awakening where you realized that it wasn't just about the fame and the glory and everything else that comes with being the smartest person in the room. So can you tell me a little bit more about that moment?
Hubert Joly (06:28):
This moment was 20 years ago, so in 2002. And I had left McKinsey at the time. So let me give you the context. I was the CEO of a video games company based in Los Angeles. That's now part of Activision Blizzard. So I've got I greenlit World of Warcraft . So for the kids listening, that's street cred. That company was part of Vivendi in 2000. Vivendi acquires Universal, so Universal Studios, Universal Music. And when I see that, I said, "Ah, I'm going to offer to the CEO who I had known for many years who maybe play a role in the post-merger management, maybe leads the post-merger management." But the true motive was that I wanted to get closer to the top. And so I actually got the job of leading the post-merger management in the US. The good news is that I was punished because the job was completely meaningless because there was no synergies between a French company that was a mobile operator in France and a pay TV operator in France and at Universal Music and Universal Studios.
(07:35):
The CEO eventually got fired and I was called to move back to the Paris and be a member of the executive team of that global company. And so by many measures, I was in my early 40s. I'd been successful. I'd been a partner at McKinsey at a young age. I was on the executive team of a large company and working with the rest of the executive team on saving the company, restructuring it and so forth. But there was bad news, which was there was no taste, there was no joy. So to quote David Brooks, "I was at the top of my first mountain, but it was desolate." And during the weekend, I did a bit of a retreat and silence to take some time off and I realized that I was lost. So call this my midlife crisis that probably won't happen to any one of our listeners here.
(08:28):
That led me to step back. And what I did, you're going to think I'm very religious and whether or not I'm really, very religious is an important consideration for all of us is that we all have a soul. So as leaders, taking care of our spiritual life and our soul is so important. And I was prompted by somebody in that retreat who was a former client of mine at McKinsey to do the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, the founders of the Jesuits. And that's a case where you revisit your life, you try to discern the moments in your life where there's energy, there's joy versus when you're drained, and then you reflect, you meditate, you pray around, what kind of life do I want to live? And the purpose of these exercises is A, to practice spirituality, that's why they call it exercises, and then to try to discern your calling in life.
(09:19):
And that's when I realized that the reason why I got lost is that I had been too driven by power, fame, glory, and money, which may be fine for some people. I'm not saying this is bad, but for me, it was not fruitful. It was, in fact, it led me to the wrong place. And so I had to find a better journey. And so I began to spend more time more explicitly thinking about my life purpose, my purpose in life, and my key values in life. I think, Claire, in the heart of every human being, and I don't care which part of the world they're from, there's a desire to do something good to somebody else. Even Darth Vader, his son believes the force is still in him. A key question for us as leaders is, do we spend enough time trying to uncover what drives people around us?
Claire Blake (10:19):
Well, it's interesting. I mean, I think I've shared with you before that my mother is a hospital chaplain. And so this concept of the soul feels very near and dear to me because I understand that we are talking and it's part of the story about the Bible, but what you're talking about is not religion. You're talking about another subset of physical health, mental health, soul, spiritual health, regardless of what you believe. When you had this moment of realizing there was no taste, do you visibly remember what that feeling was like, what room you were in, or is it just kind of an epiphany that happened over time and you went on this retreat which really helped give you clarity?
Hubert Joly (10:57):
I think my family told me at the time, Hubert, you're getting boring, you always work, you don't seem to be happy. You seem to complain a lot about the world and other people and there's something wrong. That's not you. You're lost. And sometimes people who know you realize how gradually you got lost. I think the most important decision we make as leaders, maybe one of the most important, if not the most important, is who do we put in positions of power? Because there's very little we do on our own. And we can look at the skills, the experience, the competencies, the track record, and that's important and we should look at it and so forth. But what matters even more and the higher you go in the organization, but it's true for leaders at every level, is the character is who's this person, what drives this person?
(11:50):
What is their purpose in life? It's all the same question. By the way, connecting to this moment, one of the things we've all learned, I think many of us have learned during this crisis or polycrisis or permacrisis we're going through, we need to lead with all of our body parts, not just the brain. So that's the ex McKinsey consultant, but also our heart, but also our soul, our guts, our ears, our eyes. And I think the words that we use to describe leadership around vulnerability, empathy, authenticity, humility, humanity, these are highly relevant words today that we would not have used. And certainly in my experience 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and taking care of our own soul during these challenging times is essential. And so a mistake I made, Claire, for many years is that I had my head cut off from the rest of my body.
(12:43):
And as a leader, that can't be the case.
Claire Blake (12:46):
Have you continued to do silent retreats?
Hubert Joly (12:48):
I've continued to do silent retreat. I've also, I'm working on being disciplined around self-reflection and whether it's in the morning or in the evening or on a regular basis, you can only do your best. And it's the one thing I learned from my coach Marshall [Goldsmith] is the questions that can prompt the reflection. And one of the things he's shared with me is when you do your reflection at the end of the day or at the end of a month, doesn't matter, is as you have things that you're working on, the question is, did I do my best to bring joy in the world or to be a source of impact or take care of people around me, whatever the case may be? Not was I perfect, but did I do my best? And if I didn't do my best today, this didn't do my best today or this month, there's always tomorrow.
(13:43):
And so one of the things I had to learn was to be kind with myself because if I'm not kind with myself, I cannot be kind with others.
Claire Blake (13:51):
It's interesting to me, you talked about this midlife crisis moment. In a lot of ways, for a lot of people, that implies a change in course. If I look on paper, I would've never really even known. When you look at your career progression, CEO multiple times over, our Fortune 50 board director, how did it actually change for you? Because I think when you talk about this moment of tastelessness and I was about power, fame, glory, and money, but now you have a different view of leadership. You're thinking about being kind with yourself, kind with others, but that office of CEO implies power, fame, glory, money. How did you get that to connect with your people? How did you work on your soul to ensure people met with your soul? I'm just kind of curious to dig into that a little.
Hubert Joly (14:41):
So again, it's a journey, right? It requires exercise. So one answer to your question, Claire, is that I was never the CEO of Best Buy. I had that job and I was all in and I loved having that job and I did my best to do the best possible job at doing that job, but that didn't define me, which by the way, means that when I passed the baton to the amazing Corie Barry, I don't know, three years ago, I was still me. I hadn't lost anything.
(15:13):
So I was never the CEO of Best Buy. Now that I'm at Harvard Business School, we have a program for new CEOs called the New CEO Workshop that has been going on for 25 years. And I now co-lead it with Bill George and Nitin Nohria, our former dean. And the first thing we ask the CEOs to do when they arrive, it's a two and a half day program. First evening, we asked them to deliver their retirement speech, how they want to be remembered. My amazing wife Hortense le Gentil who is a coach, she goes one step further, she sometimes asks her clients to write down their eulogy. And it's fascinating when you hear the CEOs, and these are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies of different sizes. The retirement speech is never about the share price. That's not how they define. It's the impact they've had. It's how they've made people feel.
Claire Blake (16:12):
Some of these things are easier said than done, or some of these things are easy to say in quotes and that you write down on a wall. I think you've given me a lot of these that I could write down and put and just remember forever-
Hubert Joly (16:24):
And do it. Please do it.
Claire Blake (16:27):
Is there a moment though where this kind of culminates, or you could give me an example of Claire, this is when I knew, and I'm really interested in this soul piece, right? This is when I knew this person or this team really understood my soul and that was true because I think to your point, the role of CEOs has changed today. There's a lot more vulnerability and humility and humanness to the role. And I think there's a lot of learning here and how to share soul, something you're super passionate about. So can you give me an example where you said, "Claire, I knew this was clicking. I knew it wasn't about power and my title and that this person saw me as a human and saw my soul."
Hubert Joly (17:08):
It was a completely magical moment in 2016. So this is three or four years after I started at Best Buy and we had saved the company, we had finished a turnaround Renew Blue and we were starting to work on our growth strategy, our purpose and so forth. And as an executive team, like most executive teams too, every quarter we would get together, work on our strategy, our plans and so forth. We had asked every one of the executive team members to come to the offsite with a picture of themselves when they were little. So we got some really cute pictures, as you can imagine. And over dinner, we spent the evening sharing with each other our life story, not our resume, our life story, and our purpose in life. And we discovered a few things. I mean, one is we discovered a lot about the fact that every one of these executive team members was a human being, beautiful, but also messy, quirky, complicated human being, which changes everything because then I'm no longer seeing Corie as my CFO or Mike as our chief merchant.
(18:24):
We see them as these complicated, beautiful human beings. And then the second thing as relates to the individual purpose, that was maybe the most magical. With a couple of exceptions, all of us shared the same kind of purpose in life, the idea of doing something good to somebody else. It was expressed in different ways so for Corie, not a secret. It's about stewardship, right? If she gets something, she wants to leave it in a better state when she leaves, but we got to know the soul of these individuals and that was transformative because then we stepped back and we said, "Look, we're the leadership team of Best Buy. So why don't we use this platform that we have to create an organization that we would love to work at, that employees would love to work at, that customers would love to work at, and that we can be so proud of.
(19:18):
And so the word became a calling rather than just a job, and we could personally collect what drives us with the work. And this had massive implications as the power of spirituality here, because subsequently, whenever we had a team at a transformation meeting, they would open the meeting with, "How is this project connected with my personal purpose? Why is it meaningful change?" And it was not about, "Oh, this will add 10 cents to the earnings per share." That too, but how is that meaningful? And we got to have this almost be, not almost, scratch, almost, be a pervasive sort of practice throughout the company where leaders got genuinely interested in the purpose or the dreams of people around them and felt that part of their job was to help them achieve their dreams.
(20:14):
There's two ways you can see people around you. You can see them as an instrument. Labor is an input to an output, a means to an end, or you can see them as human beings and it changes everything.
Claire Blake (20:29):
I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to close us with the exercise that you put your Harvard students through and give me the headline because we don't have time for you to share with me your entire retirement speech or your eulogy, but I'm sure you've forced yourself to go through this exercise. I mean, what is the headline of the end chapter for Hubert Joly?
Hubert Joly (20:50):
Unleash human magic. That's my purpose in life. And in abstract terms, my purpose today is to help the next generation of leaders and it's to unleash their own magic and to help them unleash the magic in others. And so like Christensen, of course, famously wrote, How Will You Measure Your Life? It's the number of people that I will have touched and helped on that journey to be a more human leader, unleash their magic and help them unleash more human magic around them. That's what it's all about for me.
Claire Blake (21:27):
Well, I'm thankful that you had that midlife crisis. And thank you for the clarity of children who will tell their parents when they're being boring and tastelessness in order to get into the end state here, which is a sitting board director, former CEO that's touching the lives of many.
(21:47):
World 50 is the safe space where leaders of the world's most respected companies exchange ideas and learn from one another. To learn more about membership, visit us at www.world50.com.