Hubert Joly: Business Leadership

  • Highlights:
    • Former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy; Author, The Heart of Business - Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism; Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School
    • Acclaimed for his ability to put people and purpose at the heart of business, Hubert Joly rebuilt Best Buy into one of the nation’s favorite employers while dramatically growing the company’s stock price.
Reading time: 2 min
Reviews: (0 reviews)
  • Travels from: New York, NY
  • **Fee range: $100,000 - $250,000

Keynote Topics

Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism

Back in 2012, “Everyone thought we were going to die,” says Hubert Joly. As the newly appointed Chairman and CEO of Best Buy, Joly transformed the retail giant into one of the nation’s favorite employers, a leader in sustainability and innovation, vastly increased customer satisfaction, and dramatically grew its stock price.

Joly discusses the philosophy behind the resurgence of Best Buy: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center of the business, create an environment where every employee can blossom, and treat profit as an outcome, not the goal.

While this approach is easy to understand, putting it into practice is not so easy. It requires radically rethinking how we view work, how we define companies, how we motivate, and how we lead.

Joly shares memorable stories, lessons, and practical advice drawn from his own personal transformation from a hard-charging McKinsey consultant to a leader who believes in human magic.

He provides a timely guide for leaders ready to abandon old paradigms and lead with purpose and humanity. He shows how we can reinvent capitalism so that it contributes to a sustainable future.

Hubert Joly has been recognized as one of the top 100 CEOs in the world by the Harvard Business Review, one of the top 30 CEOs in the world by Barron’s and one of the top 10 CEOs in the U.S. by Glassdoor.

He has also been recognized as one the top 50 management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 and received the organization’s 2021 Leadership Award. Joly’s leadership as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Best Buy has been praised by his colleagues, consumers, and investors alike.

Hubert Joly | Leadership

In 2012, the retail industry was suffering, and Best Buy was no exception. However, under the direction of Hubert Joly, the retail giant not only survived, it thrived, to the benefit of all of the company’s stakeholders.

To accomplish this, he employed a powerful philosophy: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center of the business, create an environment where every employee can succeed, and treat profit as an outcome, not the goal.

His greatest achievement, however, may have been to make himself dispensable: he decided to step down as CEO in 2019 and as executive chairman in 2020, and passed the baton to a diverse, new generation of leaders, which included appointing Corie Barry as CEO, and building a board of directors that had a majority of woman directors and three black directors.

Hubert Joly currently serves as a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. He is also a member of the board of directors of Johnson & Johnson and Ralph Lauren Corporation, a member of the International Advisory Board of HEC Paris, and a Trustee of the New York Public Library and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He is the author of the best-selling and highly acclaimed book “The Heart of Business – Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism.”

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