The 2006 Leadership Excellence Summit
"Focusing on Customer Needs"
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Brad Anderson Chief Executive Officer Best Buy Co., Inc. |
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After breaking the ice by admitting that "I was highly intimidated when I got the invitation to speak here," Anderson said that his company, and essentially the entire world, are dependent on the leadership of places like the Naval Academy. More importantly than dollars at stake are the lives that are at stake. Everything that that he does is dependent on what happens at the Academy and the leaders that it consistently produces.
Anderson said that Best Buy's core hypothesis is that each employee comes to work with a unique set of talents and it's part of his job to discover those talents. Furthermore, he must cast the employees in a role that fits their talents and life experiences. Anderson explained that the company expects to be the best so it sets objectives that are the best "but this is dependent on unlocking the talent of those in our organization."
"If we can find a way to connect the talent to the customers, we have a superior way of doing business," Anderson said.
Believing and understanding the company's hypothesis is a long way from implementing it. The first step is to engage the employees. When employees are listened to they tend to work better. They bring more to the game if they are paid attention to. However, Anderson advised that this is not always easy to do.
Anderson explained that the mission of Best Buy is to take communication and technology and make customer's lives easier and more fun. There are four premises that his company uses to accomplish this mission: unquestioned humility and integrity, enable the employees to unleash their talent and connect to the customer, grow and learn through challenge and change and have fun while being the best.
As CEO, Anderson is often the last to know important things. He said that it's similar to when the President of the United States does not know something until an aide sees it on television and tells him.
To illustrate both how Best Buy allows employees to figure out and unleash their talent and how he, as a person at the very top of an organization, is often the last to know important things, Anderson told a story that came out of one of his stores in Westminster, CA.
That particular store is in a region where there is a large Vietnamese population. There was a common sentiment among employees there that this population did not make for a good customer because you could not understand them, they usually didn't buy more than one product and they did not buy an expensive product. There was a Vietnamese employee at the store that agreed with this sentiment. However, the more he thought about it the more he thought that perhaps the employees think they are bad customers simply because they don't easily understand them. He decided that an effort should be made to get to know them.
This employee found that Vietnamese customers were not viewed as "regular" customers not only because they did now know English very well but because they had a different lifestyle. This different lifestyle resulted in different needs than the other customers that Best Buy employees were familiar with. Many Vietnamese near the store were small business owners and read different publications than the non-Vietnamese customers.
The employee's hypothesis was that Best Buy had to offer this unique group of customers something different, speak to them in the publications that they read, and make an effort to speak with them in their own language. The company empowered this employee to make these changes. Without this employee, chances are the CEO and other higher-ups at the company would never have known of this problem at the Westminster store or how to fix it.
A CEO cannot notice and change all of the issues that come up in each store. It takes an employee to notice and fix the problems, Anderson reiterated.
In closing, Anderson reminded the audience that everyone in the room had an opportunity to lead in the world. No one should be fearful of the challenge that the rest of the world is giving us; you should embrace it.
"It's critical for us to make people's lives better in the United States" as well as the rest of the world, Anderson said.
His last piece of advice to the attendees was "be more than yourself." The reward isn't something you get from the connection with the employee, the customer or the rest of the world. The reward is the connection itself.
Anderson joined Best Buy, North America's leading consumer electronics company, in 1973 and was named Vice President in 1981. In 1986, Anderson was promoted to Executive Vice President and was elected to Best Buy's Board of Directors. In April 1991, he was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer. Anderson was named Vice Chairman in 2001. In June 2002, he assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer.
Today, Anderson leads more than 128,000 employees throughout North America and China who strive to provide customers with superior experiences as they seek the technology and entertainment products and services to make their lives easier and more fun.