Unlocking Your Power at Work: How to empower others with Hubert Joly

Did you literally give them a card? Oh, yeah.

Oh,

yeah, of course.

I love this.

And I want to get into the mechanics of empowerment because in our experience, people often discover that it's it's harder than it sounds in some ways.

So in this in this pivot, how did you prepare the people around you to receive power and to start taking up more space?

We worked on clarity of decision-making.

The team first asked me, Hubert, what decisions are you responsible for? Well, I said, well, you know, clearly who's on the team, the strategy, of course, in consultation with the board, the culture.

And major capital allocation decisions.

These are the four main decisions I'm responsible for.

So I'd say, okay, you get to keep those.

They were kind.

But let's talk about the other decisions.

Because there was a tendency, sometimes in organization, there's a tendency for everything to percolate to the top.

And we said, no.

So let's take an example, the mobile phone strategy, right? Best Buy sells mobile phones.

So Jason, who is the merchant at the time for mobile phones, he is the decision, should be the decision maker.

And then we worked on what's going to be the decision-making process, right? Is it going to be autocratic where Jason gets to decide on his own? Is it going to be a democracy where everybody gets a vote? Is it going to need to be unanimous? Or is it going to be more a consultative process where Jason gets to think about who he'd like to involve in the decision-making process? I can still provide input.

Anybody can provide input.

By the way, as a senior leader, if you're going to provide input, make sure you underscore its input, not directive, and provide that input early rather than late.

Because if you provide late, it derails things.

And then once you've created that input, let go.

Now, of course, Jason, if he needs to spend $500 million back to capital allocation, he needs to come to me.

But otherwise, you know, he's good.

He can just run with it.

Did you literally give them a card? Oh, yeah.

Oh,

yeah, of course.

I love this.

And I want to get into the mechanics of empowerment because in our experience, people often discover that it's it's harder than it sounds in some ways.

So in this in this pivot, how did you prepare the people around you to receive power and to start taking up more space?

We worked on clarity of decision-making.

The team first asked me, Hubert, what decisions are you responsible for? Well, I said, well, you know, clearly who's on the team, the strategy, of course, in consultation with the board, the culture.

And major capital allocation decisions.

These are the four main decisions I'm responsible for.

So I'd say, okay, you get to keep those.

They were kind.

But let's talk about the other decisions.

Because there was a tendency, sometimes in organization, there's a tendency for everything to percolate to the top.

And we said, no.

So let's take an example, the mobile phone strategy, right? Best Buy sells mobile phones.

So Jason, who is the merchant at the time for mobile phones, he is the decision, should be the decision maker.

And then we worked on what's going to be the decision-making process, right? Is it going to be autocratic where Jason gets to decide on his own? Is it going to be a democracy where everybody gets a vote? Is it going to need to be unanimous? Or is it going to be more a consultative process where Jason gets to think about who he'd like to involve in the decision-making process? I can still provide input.

Anybody can provide input.

By the way, as a senior leader, if you're going to provide input, make sure you underscore its input, not directive, and provide that input early rather than late.

Because if you provide late, it derails things.

And then once you've created that input, let go.

Now, of course, Jason, if he needs to spend $500 million back to capital allocation, he needs to come to me.

But otherwise, you know, he's good.

He can just run with it.