Name: Macy's CEO Says the Secret to His Success: 'I'm an Avid Learner'
Uploaded: 2018-07-27
Duration: 5 min 49 s
Description: Innovation is coming from acquisitions, new Silicon Valley executive hires, and leaner organization.

[ MUSIC ] Jeff, you started working at Macy's as a trainee 35 years ago. And now you're the CEO. You know people dream about Being the boss in charge of this iconic store. What's the key to your success? You know I'm a good listener and I'm an avid learner. So just being a constant perpetual learner and exposing myself to the brand the way the customer does is one of the secrets to my success. I understand that when you became CEO, your goal and the challenge were that you wanted to Meet or at least reach every single Macy's employee. Yeah. And you did it, all of them, 130, 000 of them and you still have this regular townhalls, coffee chats, you visit the stores frequently. Why is This is so important to you, what do you wanna know? Wherever I'm going, my head is up. I'm looking at pop culture. What can I learn? What is the consumer digesting? What website should I be going to? I have a reverse mentor that is helping me learn about what the GenZ customer is doing. So being out there and telling the Macy story both externally internally is incredibly important. I do hear that you're very curious and that you ask lots of questions is there one question that you just keep asking over and over again everywhere you go? What does the customer think? What's the customer reaction? She'll tell you. When I walk a store, I go to those associates, those colleagues who have been with us for 30, 40 years, 6 months, wherever it is, and you just ask them, what is the customer saying, and they will tell you. And you learn so much behind the strategy. Where it came apart, where you didn't execute it right, what the need is. And our entire team of executives really are more focused on that frontline colleague than ever. So, when you come back with that new information, what do you do with it? We put it work, I think that's the, the customer is king on this. And we got that frontline colleague that understands a customer better than any of us. So, when she tells us what she needs and what she wants, those are matching orders. So, when I bring that for the store. I plug it in, and the organization response. You talk a lot about changing thee culture at [ UNKNOWN ], and people describe the culture as slow, and bureaucratic, and traditional. What do you have to do to change that? The first thing you have to do, you have to leave the culture, you gotta know what the culture is, and make changes if necessary so we spend a lot of time on that my first month as CEO. THe other thing that we did to change culture, we wanted to make sure everybody had skin in the game. So everybody is on an incentive program. Every full time part time seasonal associate has got skin in the game In the game so, if the company makes it's plan in the quarter they get extra money as a result of that and it was a proud moment on June first that after our results from the first quarter we we're able to get 70 % at everyone of our 130 thousand You know colleagues an extra paycheck as a result of the effort. In this fast changing retail landscape product innovation and speed are very important and so is data. What do you need to do as a CEO to make that part of the Macy's culture? You know when I came in as CEO we had some gaps in technology And so when I wanted to replace myself as president, I looked around. What were competencies that we needed in the company and that would change the overall senior culture of the company? And we brought in Hal Lawton, who basically came out of technology but knows how to scale at retail. And that was a huge game changer for our company to be able to get into what do we need to do with technology? What do we need to do with data? And we're on the path now to be very competitive there. So, how [ UNKNOWN ] came from Silicon Valley? He did. And you've brought in some other executives and other entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. I mean, how does that help? The culture shift. We basically collapse the complexity of our organization into a much leaner organization. We took all three of our merchandise organizatons and made it into one. And we took out layers. And we put great veterans in the new jobs. If you where to talk vendors today They would say that Macy's is operating with more speed than they ever thought we could. Based on what we did with structure and what we did with talent. And that talent is totally empowered to make decisions themselves. There's no longer the kind of bureaucratic, you know, checks and balance that we used to have as a company. These people, they're armed with checkbooks. They can make independent decisions and we're going faster than ever. You've been described as a pragmatic innovator. What does that mean? I think what's important about innovation is it's not a shiny penny. You've got to find something that actually can be bolted into the business that is serving the strategy that you've decided on. So I wanna make sure that technology is great, but how does it help and enable the strategy and ultimately is it added to the customer experience. So thats probably when you thing about innovation and practicality, I wanna make sure at the end of the day, does the customer value this? Is gonna drive shareholder value? Is it the right investment for us to make. You've said you've had many mentors along the way. Can you single out one who gave you the best leadership advice ever? Bob Jagger. I was an electronics buyer at Macy's California, and I was going for the jugular with every one of my vendors in every negotiation that I was making. Okay and I was putting wins on the board. and he pulled me by the ear out of a meeting one day, and he basically told me you will win every battle, but you're gonna lose this war. You've got to create win, win partnerships, or you're never gonna be successful in this business. And that was a game changer for me, and I started to say okay, I'm gonna put myself in the partner shoes in every single negotiation and that has shaped My win- win business partnership strategy ever since. So what I'm known for is collaboration, and I will tell you that was a seminal moment in my career that he taught me. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Macy's CEO Says the Secret to His Success: "I'm an Avid Learner"

Leadership

Innovation is coming from acquisitions, new Silicon Valley executive hires, and leaner organization.