9/11/07  Julie Gilbert

How to Get There From Here

The Senior Vice President responsible for sweeping changes at Best Buy tells why she's doing it, how she's doing it, what's next, and what it all means for you.

Julie Gilbert has been at Best Buy for seven years, but her impact has already transformed the company in profound, enduring ways, and there's no end in sight to what she's likely to accomplish.

She's now Senior Vice President, in charge of all retail training, leadership development, and employee innovation. She's also responsible for Best Buy's strategy to increase its market share among women. How big of a deal is that? Well, Best Buy says that women influence 90 percent of all purchases in the $140 billion consumer electronics marketplace, and company CEO Brad Anderson has acknowledged, "Our stores used to have one primary customer in mind … that was the young, techno-savvy male. Today we know there are more than just young men in our stores."

It's a big transition for Best Buy, which intends among other things to revamp all of its nearly 750 stores in the U.S. not just to look different but to feel different to customers, and Gilbert is right in the middle of that effort.

She's been right in the middle of change since she went to work, straight out of college, for Deloitte and Touche. There she quickly achieved a senior management position and conceived two new businesses, one of which -- a business that merged tax law with consulting to proactively and retroactively identify opportunities for companies to save significant tax monies in their strategic efforts -- she scaled nationally.

Since joining Best Buy she has created one innovative program after another. She guided the design and installation of the company's Magnolia Home Theaters -- now the largest high-end home theatre in the world. She co-led the launch of Virgin Mobile in Best Buy stores. Perhaps most significantly, she created the company's Women's Leadership Forum - the WOLF program - that is reshaping Best Buy's innovation culture and processes, new products and services, practices in its stores, in its personnel practices, in its development of leaders, and communities.

More than 15,000 Best Buy employees are involved in its WOLF movement, which includes some men in addition to women. Ideas for improvements pour from them and are implemented throughout the company to make its stores and services more welcoming to women. Women have been added to Best Buy's famous "Geek Squads," and as Gilbert says, "They have turned up more business simply by being… well… women." The number of women applying for all jobs at Best Buy has increased by 37 percent and turnover among women has been decreased by close to six percent. "Community Give Backs," a core pillar of the WOLF program, affects many thousands of people throughout the U.S. And, she now has international partnerships and plans in action to have global impact on people, specifically women and kids.

Gilbert grew up in a small South Dakota town where she often heard the howls of coyotes or wolves at night. She says the WOLF idea came to her in a dream, in which she heard the same kinds of howls but they were coming from women just trying to "fit in". She says, "Inspiration struck me and I realized that each of us feels alone like a stray wolf but if we are loyal like wolves are loyal to each other, and we bond together with males, we can reinvent the company, the industry, and ultimately the lives of people throughout the world, and I am not stopping until I get it accomplished."

She will offer advice, backed up by her experiences and conveyed through business and personal examples, on subjects that include the following:

• For leaders: Your job is to inspire others to believe in themselves and become someone they never dreamed possible.
• For individuals: Uniqueness is your edge. See it as a strategic benefit. Stop trying to fit in.
• For innovation: The best ideas happen when people are allowed to think freely - and howl once in awhile.
• For enduring success: The strongest organizational foundations are created from commitment, networking, and giving back.

One writer, after interviewing Gilbert, concluded her story by writing, "I have to go now and load up on Best Buy stock." We can't recommend that, but you might want to consider keeping some disposable funds in cash in case Julie Gilbert inspires that same confidence in you.