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Reinventing Business Through Purpose and Human Connection
In a world where business often seems driven solely by profit, Hubert Joly's journey stands as a powerful counternarrative. When he took the helm at Best Buy in 2012, the company was in free fall, with many analysts predicting its imminent demise. Yet within a few years, Joly orchestrated one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in recent history. The stock price soared from $11 to over $110, and Best Buy transformed from a struggling retailer into a thriving, purpose-driven organization. What makes Joly's approach revolutionary isn't just its effectiveness but its humanity. His philosophy has attracted attention from business leaders worldwide, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, who called the book "a compelling guide for anyone eager to lead with purpose and humanity." Even Amazon's Jeff Bezos, once considered Best Buy's existential threat, eventually formed a partnership with the company, recognizing the value of Joly's people-first approach. The Heart of Business isn't just another business book-it's a roadmap for reimagining capitalism itself.
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The Transformative Power of Meaningful Work
Work has traditionally been viewed as a burden-something we endure to support our "real lives" outside working hours. This perspective dates back millennia, from Greek mythology's Sisyphus pushing his eternal boulder to Christianity's "Adam's curse" to the dehumanizing conditions of the Industrial Revolution. Even the French word "travail" derives from a Latin term for torture. This negative perception persists despite today's evolving workplace where physical demands are decreasing and creative work is increasing.
The consequences are devastating. Workplace disengagement represents both a tragedy of unfulfilled human potential and massive economic waste. Joly experienced this firsthand in his early jobs-first as a disengaged mechanic's assistant who welcomed being fired, then as a grocery store worker mindlessly tagging cans who actually hoped to be hit by a forklift because it meant paid leave.
But what if we've fundamentally misunderstood work's role in human life? Joly discovered through biblical research that work wasn't Adam's punishment-pain was. Even in paradise, Adam worked "to cultivate and care for it." Work, properly understood, can be a path to meaning and fulfillment-what Khalil Gibran called "love made visible."
Finding purpose isn't a sudden revelation but a journey. After reaching what felt like the "top of his first mountain" in 2004 with professional success but feeling empty inside, Joly embarked on a two-year spiritual exploration that helped him crystallize his calling: making a positive difference for people around him. Purpose doesn't require grand ambitions-it starts with understanding what gives you energy. Even simple work can have profound meaning, as shown by the contrast between two medieval masons-one "cutting stones" while the other was "building a cathedral."
At Best Buy, connecting work to purpose became central to their sustained success. A real story exemplifies this: when two associates performed "surgery" on a child's broken dinosaur toy, they weren't just collecting a paycheck but putting a smile on a little boy's face. While purpose doesn't make work always easy or fun, connecting daily tasks to a bigger "why" infuses us with energy, drive, and direction-whether you're a mason, zookeeper, Blue Shirt, or CEO.
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Embracing Imperfection as a Leadership Strength
The quest for perfection can be deeply counterproductive. When Father Samuel told Joly that "the quest for perfection can be evil," it challenged everything he had been taught. His entire life had been driven by excellence, with his mother, school, and early career all reinforcing that perfection was the ideal.
Throughout his career, Joly dismissed feedback suggesting he had areas to improve. At McKinsey, despite becoming partner at just 30, he was devastated by below-average ratings from his team and did nothing with that feedback. As CEO of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, despite the company's financial success, he believed he had all the answers and treated colleagues as obstacles rather than partners. An employee survey revealed that people reporting directly to him weren't very invested in their work, yet he reconciled this cognitive dissonance by blaming them rather than examining his own behavior.
Joly's breakthrough came when he began working with executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. He learned to reframe feedback as "feedforward"-not fixing problems but identifying areas to improve. Research shows perfectionism links to depression, anxiety, and even suicide, while vulnerability builds genuine connection.
Alan Mulally's Ford turnaround illustrates how perfectionism hinders progress. When he implemented a "traffic lights" system for reporting problems, initially everything was marked green despite the company losing billions. Only when executives felt safe admitting problems (marking items "red") could collaborative solutions emerge. Similarly, Jeff Bezos emphasizes that perfectionism impedes innovation by making people afraid to fail.
For Best Buy's transformation, Joly had to shift from a perfectionist "fixed mindset" toward Carol Dweck's "growth mindset"-the understanding that abilities develop through effort and learning, with mistakes being essential to growth. The "CEO disease" of wanting to appear perfect prevents leaders from taking on challenging tasks where they might fail.
At Best Buy, Joly learned to let go of control, particularly when his team told him their strategy wasn't clear enough. Rather than fixing it himself, he recognized they needed ownership of the solution. Using the RASCI model to clarify decision-making responsibilities was liberating for both Joly and the organization. He realized that while making quick decisions was necessary during crisis, with a strong team in place, not every decision needed his involvement.
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Beyond Shareholder Value: The Purpose of Business
The traditional view that business exists primarily to maximize shareholder value is both flawed and dangerous. Milton Friedman's influential 1970 doctrine that business's sole responsibility is maximizing shareholder profits became gospel for decades, even endorsed by the Business Roundtable in 1997. Drawing from his experience at McKinsey, Vivendi, and Best Buy, Joly argues that shareholder primacy is fundamentally flawed for several reasons.
First, profit is not a good measure of economic performance. It fails to account for a business's broader societal impact, like environmental costs from plastic waste or carbon emissions. Even within a company's operations, accounting norms can distort economic reality. Additionally, accounting systems can't properly value a company's most important asset-its people. Investments in employees depress short-term profits while investments in tangible assets are amortized over years, creating perverse incentives against developing human capital.
Second, a singular focus on profit is dangerous. Joly compares profit to a patient's temperature-it's a symptom of underlying conditions, not the condition itself. Companies can artificially boost profits by underinvesting in people, stores, and customer experience, which works briefly but undermines long-term health. This happened at Best Buy before Joly's arrival, when the company cut spending on stores and e-commerce while raising prices.
Third, profit-obsession antagonizes customers and employees. Today's consumers demand more than just products-they want to do business with companies they respect and trust to be competent, ethical, and socially responsible. Employees are also demanding change, as evidenced by Amazon workers walking out to pressure their employer on climate issues. Even shareholders-supposedly the beneficiaries of profit-first thinking-are looking beyond short-term gains, with BlackRock making sustainability its new investment standard.
Finally, an exclusive focus on profit harms the soul. In 1999, while at EDS France, Joly felt deeply uninspired by a new CEO's profit-obsessed strategy. He reflects that if he had told Best Buy employees their purpose was simply to double earnings per share, it would have failed to motivate them. No one jumps out of bed for "shareholder value."
Joly clarifies that companies must make money to survive, and focusing on the bottom line is necessary when a business is hemorrhaging cash. However, profit should be viewed as a vital outcome, not the purpose itself.
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Building Cathedrals: Purpose as the Foundation of Business
In 1993, during a dinner with Jean-Marie Descarpentries, the newly appointed CEO of Honeywell Bull, Joly encountered a revolutionary idea that challenged his business education: "The purpose of a corporation is not to make money!" Descarpentries explained that companies have three linked imperatives-people, business, and finance-with excellence in employee development leading to loyal customers, which then produces financial success. The company's true purpose, he argued, is the development and fulfillment of its people, similar to how medieval cathedral builders saw their work not just as laying stones, but as building a house of worship that would serve generations.
This approach fundamentally shifts focus from profit to purpose, viewing business as a web of human relationships and shared aspirations. Companies are human organizations where individuals work toward a common purpose that, when aligned with personal meaning, unleashes "human magic" resulting in outstanding performance. This alignment creates what psychologists call "flow states," where employees find themselves fully engaged and performing at their highest levels.
The Best Buy turnaround provides a compelling example of how a purposeful, human organization creates exceptional outcomes. After stabilizing the company in 2015, leadership invested two years in defining their noble purpose: "to enrich our customers' lives through technology" by addressing fundamental human needs in areas like entertainment, productivity, communication, and health. This process involved hundreds of employees at all levels, ensuring the purpose resonated throughout the organization.
This purpose-driven approach delivers on multiple fronts. First, it expands horizons beyond selling electronics to addressing enduring human needs through technology, creating an expansive vision that remains relevant regardless of how technology evolves. For instance, Best Buy's Geek Squad evolved from simple tech repair to becoming "personal technology advisors," helping customers integrate technology into their lives meaningfully. Second, it inspires employees like Anthony Wu, who don't just sell headphones but solve customers' problems and improve their lives, leading to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover rates.
Third, it ensures sustainability by recognizing that businesses need healthy communities and a healthy planet to thrive. Best Buy demonstrated this through initiatives like their electronic recycling program, which has recycled over two billion pounds of electronics, and their commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 75% by 2030. Finally, it produces superior financial results, as demonstrated by "firms of endearment" that have outperformed the S&P 500 by 14 times over 15 years. Companies like Patagonia, Costco, and Trader Joe's exemplify how purpose-driven business models create lasting value.
The concept of stakeholder capitalism has gained significant momentum in the past decade, particularly as global challenges like climate change and inequality have become more urgent. In 2019, the Business Roundtable, representing America's leading CEOs, declared corporations should deliver value to all stakeholders-customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders-marking a dramatic shift from their 1997 shareholder-primacy position. With 69 of the world's 100 richest entities being corporations rather than governments, business has unprecedented power and responsibility to address global challenges. This shift represents a return to the original concept of the corporation as a public-benefit entity, granted special privileges by society in exchange for serving the common good.
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Putting Purpose into Action
Purpose must translate into practical action to avoid becoming mere window dressing. Making purpose work requires making it the keystone of strategy, embracing all stakeholders, and aligning management practices-a fundamental rethink of business operations that touches every aspect of the organization. This transformation demands sustained commitment and systematic implementation across all levels.
Best Buy's noble purpose fundamentally transformed its strategy from selling products to developing solutions addressing human needs in entertainment, productivity, communications, food, security, and health. This shift enabled innovations like their senior health service, which passed their four-question test: it fit the company purpose, benefited customers, could be delivered effectively, and was profitable. The senior service program included emergency response systems, remote health monitoring, and specialized tech support designed specifically for older adults, demonstrating how purpose can drive innovation in unexpected directions.
Joly rejects the binary thinking that forces choices between stakeholders, arguing that maximum performance comes from embracing all of them simultaneously-employees, customers, shareholders, and communities. This requires reframing supposed zero-sum games into collaborative opportunities. For example, investing in employee training and well-being initially appears as a cost but ultimately drives customer satisfaction and sales growth. Similarly, environmental initiatives often generate both cost savings and community goodwill.
To make Best Buy's purpose meaningful to employees, leadership workshops identified the company's ideal persona as an "inspiring friend" who helps customers imagine how technology can enhance their lives. This persona guided everything from hiring practices to customer service training and store design. Store employees were empowered to spend more time with customers, focusing on understanding their needs rather than pushing products. Best Buy transformed potential competitive threats into partnerships by reimagining relationships with vendors. After mentioning partnership possibilities to the press, Samsung's co-CEO flew to Minneapolis, resulting in the creation of Samsung Experience mini-stores within Best Buy locations. This store-within-a-store model expanded to Microsoft, Sony, LG, and even Amazon-Best Buy's supposed existential threat. These partnerships created immersive product experiences while sharing operational costs and expertise.
Best Buy aligns its community involvement with its noble purpose, making social responsibility part of its strategy rather than random afterthoughts. The company reduced its carbon footprint by 55% over ten years through initiatives that both helped the environment and saved money, including LED lighting retrofits, HVAC optimization, and renewable energy investments. Best Buy also addresses inequality through nearly 40 Teen Tech Centers offering technology training to underserved youth, providing hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology and mentorship from industry professionals. These centers serve as both community resources and potential talent pipelines.
Implementing a purpose-driven approach requires changing key management practices. At Best Buy, Joly started monthly business reviews by discussing employees first, then customers, before addressing financials-even during the company's survival crisis. This sequence reinforced the idea that financial results flow from employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Management metrics were also transformed beyond financial indicators to include employee surveys, customer experience measures, carbon footprints, and diversity achievements. The company developed detailed scorecards tracking progress across all stakeholder dimensions, with leaders' compensation tied to both financial and non-financial metrics. Regular town halls and feedback sessions ensure continuous alignment between purpose and practice.
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A Revolutionary Approach to Business Turnarounds
Joly challenges the conventional approach to business turnarounds, rejecting the "blood sport" mentality of slashing headcount and customer service. Instead, he presents his alternative turnaround manual built on purpose and people, developed through multiple corporate rescues including Best Buy.
Rather than beginning his CEO role at headquarters, Joly spent his first three days working at a Best Buy store in St. Cloud, Minnesota. By listening to frontline employees and observing operations firsthand, he gained invaluable insights about the business that spreadsheets could never reveal-from website search problems to employee discount grievances to ineffective store layouts.
While holding top management accountable for Best Buy's struggles, Joly didn't immediately replace his executive team. Instead, he gave everyone a clean slate, telling them "everyone started with an 'A'" and it was up to them to maintain it. He also prioritized mending the relationship with founder Dick Schulze, who had stepped down as chairman and was attempting to take the company private.
Contrary to analyst demands for massive cuts, Joly followed Jean-Marie Descarpentries' wisdom that in turnarounds, reducing headcount should come last, not first. The priority sequence should be: (1) grow revenue, (2) cut non-salary expenses, (3) optimize employee benefits, and only then (4) consider job cuts if necessary.
To boost revenue, Best Buy boldly announced price-matching with online retailers, including Amazon. They also revamped their website search functionality and enabled stores to ship online orders directly, leveraging their proximity to 70% of Americans. Under CFO Sharon McCollam's leadership, Best Buy eliminated wasteful practices and cut extravagant expenses like executive private planes. One of Best Buy's first turnaround decisions was restoring the employee discount that had been scrapped, addressing a key morale issue.
While Best Buy did eliminate some positions during their "Renew Blue" turnaround-removing unnecessary management layers and closing nonstrategic initiatives-they prioritized keeping people employed. When closing Best Buy mobile stores in 2018, rather than immediate layoffs, they offered assistance finding other roles within the company.
Creating energy became crucial to saving the dying business through developing a quick plan, establishing clear priorities, and creating an intense but safe environment with urgency balanced by optimism. Given just 57 days to develop a turnaround plan, Joly rejected the traditional top-down strategic planning approach. Instead, about 30 people from across the business participated in intense workshops. The resulting "Renew Blue" plan wasn't perfect but was good enough to create momentum and hope.
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Unleashing Human Magic: The Five Key Ingredients
Joly identifies five key ingredients for unleashing what he calls "human magic"-the extraordinary performance that emerges when people are fully engaged in meaningful work.
The first ingredient is connecting individual dreams with company purpose. At Boston's South Bay Best Buy store, manager Jason Luciano asked every team member, "What is your dream?" and wrote their answers on a break room whiteboard, promising to help each person achieve their goal. This approach created extraordinary energy and performance. Understanding personal motivation creates powerful connections. During an executive team retreat, sharing formative life stories and motivations deepened their understanding of each other and their connection to the company's mission.
The second ingredient is developing human connections. When Best Buy's HR head Kamy Scarlett openly shared her struggle with depression following her parents' deaths from brain cancer, she unleashed a flood of support from employees. This powerful example demonstrates how human connections drive engagement and performance. To create human magic, everyone must feel valued as an individual. As colleague Shari Ballard said, "Make people feel they are big." Building trust requires four elements: time, following through on commitments, being approachable, and transparency.
The third ingredient is fostering autonomy. Autonomy-the ability to control what you do, when you do it, and with whom-is fundamental to human motivation and performance. Joly learned this lesson early in his career from Maurice Grange at Honeywell Bull, who shared his "theory of the mare": just as a veterinarian can't support a horse's full weight while treating its hoof, managers who try to carry their teams and fix all problems will eventually be crushed. Autonomy breeds creative thinking and innovation, which can't happen without the freedom to try new ideas.
The fourth ingredient is achieving mastery. Mastery-becoming skilled through instruction and practice in something that gives you joy-is essential to human performance and fulfillment. The fulfillment that mastery delivers lies in consistent practice for its own sake rather than outcomes. Like playing tennis, obsessing about winning makes you tense and more likely to miss; your best game happens when you relax and focus on the ball. Traditional training programs are largely ineffective-people forget 80% of classroom content within a month unless practiced on the job. At Best Buy, managers provided tailored weekly coaching with daily check-ins, focusing on specific metrics where each associate needed improvement.
The fifth ingredient is nurturing a growth environment. This includes thinking possibilities, turning challenges to your advantage, and keeping purpose front and center. In 2017, Best Buy's strategic growth unit proposed redefining their market beyond just retail hardware sales to include the total consumer technology spend, expanding their potential market from $250 billion to over $1 trillion. Purpose creates an expansive mindset and sense of possibility, particularly during tough times. When Best Buy redefined itself from "a chain selling electronics" to "enriching lives through technology," it opened new markets and opportunities.
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The Purposeful Leader
In 2013, when Best Buy was in critical condition, Shari Ballard urged Joly to articulate what makes a great leader, but he felt they needed to focus on action. Years later, after saving the company and embarking on growth, he distilled his thoughts on purposeful leadership into five "Be's."
First, be clear about your purpose, the purpose of people around you, and how it connects with the purpose of the company. Joly evolved from asking candidates about experience and skills to understanding their dreams and purpose. "What gives you energy?" he asks. "What drives you?" Understanding what drives team members helps connect their purposes with the organization's, creating a common pull.
Second, be clear about your role as a leader. In 2014, facing a potential data breach two weeks before Black Friday, Joly reminded himself to be a thermostat, not a thermometer-setting the temperature to positive. Creating energy, inspiration and hope is essential to purposeful leadership. Your mindset determines whether you generate hope or bring everyone down.
Third, be clear about whom you serve. Serving yourself has no place in purposeful leadership. The best leaders don't climb to the top-they're carried there by serving others. This means serving frontline employees, colleagues, board members, and understanding what everyone needs to perform their best.
Fourth, be driven by values. Values like honesty, respect, and compassion must move beyond paper to practice. Clayton Christensen notes it's easier to stick to principles 100% of the time than 98%-the "just this once" exception creates a slippery slope. Values prove most critical during crises, as demonstrated when Best Buy closed stores during COVID-19 despite soaring demand, prioritizing employee and customer safety over profits.
Fifth, be authentic. When leaving Best Buy as executive chairman in 2020, Joly titled his farewell email "I love you!"-something unthinkable earlier in his career. The journey from head to heart is indeed the longest 18 inches you'll ever travel. Today's employees expect leaders who understand, respect and include them, which requires opening ourselves to vulnerability.
Where do we go from here? How can we put purpose and people at the heart of business, unleash human magic, and refound business around purposeful leadership? While purpose and stakeholder capitalism have gained traction, a gap remains between understanding and doing. This refoundation requires change from everyone. As Joly likes to say, "the way you change behaviors is by changing behavior."
Like the man who wanted to change the world but ultimately realized he needed to change himself first, leaders must begin with introspection. We cannot authentically connect with others without deeply connecting with ourselves. To help those around us succeed, we must strive to be our best selves daily. Start with yourself. Be the leader you're meant to be. Be the change you want to see.
