After a few years in management, there comes a moment when the time spent facing people starts to feel heavy.
You'd rather look at numbers than have a 1-on-1. You'd rather do a project review than small talk. You'd rather push for KPIs than listen to a member's anxieties.
You know it deep down. Without realizing it, you've started seeing facing people as a cost.
But from that moment on, management weakens.
I've spent over 20 years in the foreign tech industry as a manager, and I've been hit by this feeling many times. If I let my guard down, I immediately slip back into this state.
And there is a leader who did exactly the opposite and revived a retail company that was about to be crushed by Amazon.
A Frenchman, Hubert Joly. The former CEO of Best Buy.
He didn't start with numbers; he started with people. As a result, he achieved a turnaround that no one believed possible: a 270% stock price increase and cost reductions without mass layoffs.
He wore a "CEO in Training" polo shirt and asked the frontline three questions
When Hubert Joly became CEO of Best Buy in 2012, the company was considered "finished."
Amazon had already disrupted the consumer electronics retail market. Competitors like Circuit City, CompUSA, and RadioShack had already disappeared. Wall Street and the media had no doubt that Best Buy was next.
Joly's fellow executive friends even tried to stop him, saying, "It's crazy. That company will go bankrupt. It'll be the end of your career."
For an ordinary CEO, the scenario from there is set. Have strategy consultants write reports, start investor tours, and hold board meetings every day. Grip the urgent numbers and fire off urgent decisions.
Joly did something completely different.
He went undercover at Best Buy stores.
Wearing a blue polo shirt that said "CEO in Training," he stood in stores as a mere new trainee. A man in his 50s, a former McKinsey consultant and former CEO of Carlson, blended into the frontline pretending to be a trainee at an electronics store.
There, he repeatedly asked the frontline sales staff three questions:
"What is working well here?" "What do you want to change?" "How can I help you?"
When I first heard this episode, I was struck by the third question.
The first two are the same as the frontline interviews consultants do. Questions for problem discovery. But the third one is different.
"How can I help you?"
A CEO saying these words to a frontline salesperson. This is the essence of people management.
When I became a manager in foreign tech, I once expanded a team from 20 to 80 people. What I realized many times over those three years was the fact that a manager's job is to remove obstacles for the frontline.
It's not about thinking of new strategies. It's not about setting new KPIs. When the frontline is trying to move, you remove the things that are hindering that movement. This is the real job of a manager.
But this cannot begin unless you can ask the question, "How can I help you?"
Many managers cannot ask this question. Why? Because they think they know better. They are the manager, and the other person is the frontline. They think they have the answer, and the other person doesn't. So, "I will instruct" and "I will decide" become the norm.
Joly, while in the position of CEO—the position most likely to make one think "I know better"—bowed his head to the frontline sales staff and said, "Let me help you."
Everything at Best Buy started from here.
And this isn't just a beautiful story about a big company CEO. It's a management template you can use exactly as it is in tomorrow's 1-on-1.
Many managers ask in 1-on-1s: "How's progress?" "Will the numbers be on time?" "What are the issues?" These are all progress-checking questions. The manager's stance is someone who manages progress from above.
But Joly's question was different. "How can I help you?"
With this one sentence, the manager's stance changes. You go from being a person who manages to a person who removes obstacles.
He showed the "Renew Blue" plan to 150 frontline managers before investors
Just eight weeks after taking office, Joly announced the turnaround plan, "Renew Blue."
The name itself is symbolic. "Blue" refers to Best Buy's blue polo shirts—the frontline sales staff. It was named to mean reviving the people on the frontline, not the headquarters executives or shareholders.
However, what really shocked me was the announcement process of this plan.
Normally, announcing a turnaround plan to investors is the top priority because it directly affects the stock price. Before the announcement, information control is strict, and only management knows about it within the company. It's common sense that general employees finally find out on the day of the announcement.
Joly turned this common sense upside down.
He showed the draft of Renew Blue to 150 internal managers before announcing it to investors. This was to seek feedback.
As the CEO of a public company, this was a very risky decision. If you show an undisclosed turnaround plan to 150 people, there is a risk of information leakage. Normally, you'd keep it to a tiny group until the investor announcement.
But Joly trusted the frontline managers first. And no one leaked it.
What does this mean?
Because Joly trusted the 150 people, the 150 people trusted Joly.
Trust can only be built through this kind of structure. It's not "delegate after winning trust." Delegate first. Trust first. That's when the other person returns the trust for the first time.
There's a sentence I wrote in a previous article about Isami Kondo: "Ability moves work. Trust moves people."
What Joly did was exactly the implementation of this. The essence of people management is the prepayment of trust. Isami Kondo proved it 150 years ago, and Joly proved it 10 years ago in a different place.
Human Magic—Connecting Individual Dreams with Collective Purpose
After stepping down, Joly taught at Harvard Business School and published the book The Heart of Business.
In it, he sums up his leadership philosophy with one keyword:
"Unleashing Human Magic by Aligning Individual Dreams with Collective Purpose"
When I first read this sentence, I was convinced that this is the most important keyword in modern management.
In many organizations, this is what happens:
The organization talks about the organization's purpose. "100 billion in sales," "30% market share," "industry top."
Members have their own individual dreams. "I want to spend more time with my family," "I want to contribute more to society with my skills," "I want to be independent someday."
In most organizations, these two are not connected. The organization's purpose exists for the organization's convenience, and the individual's dream exists for the individual's convenience, separately.
What Joly calls "Human Magic" is the job of building a bridge here. The manager connects individual dreams with the organization's purpose.
When I was leading a team of 20 to 80 people in foreign tech, there was a question I always asked in 1-on-1s: "Where do you want to be in three years?"
However, not everyone answers right away.
One member initially answered, "Nothing in particular." He had a face that said he had never thought about himself three years from now.
But as I continued the same question in monthly 1-on-1s, six months later he told me, "In the future, I want to be someone who can handle overseas projects."
From there, I gradually gave him work. Reviewing English documents, attending meetings with overseas teams, taking charge of part of a global project. It wasn't a huge delegation of authority. But for him, the meaning of the work in front of him changed. It wasn't just creating documents; it became training to get closer to overseas projects.
From that moment, the way he moved changed. He started moving for himself, not because he was instructed. His overtime hours decreased, yet his output increased.
Six months later, in a regular meeting with the overseas team, he started organizing points and speaking up on his own. In situations where he would have previously stepped back saying "I'm worried about my English," he stepped forward. It's not that his ability suddenly changed. Because the meaning of the work changed, his behavior changed.
People start running on their own the moment their future and their current work connect.
This is the implementation of Human Magic.
Joly's numbers prove the same thing. Best Buy's employee engagement was in the bottom quartile of the industry before Joly took office. By the time he stepped down, it had risen to the top quartile.
Do you create numbers by cutting people, or do you create numbers by empowering people?
The essence of what Joly did can be summarized here.
He achieved cost reductions of $1.9 billion.
However, he did not put mass layoffs at the center of it. He protected the frontline sales staff and drew out their power while cutting logistics, contracts, and operational inefficiencies.
In other words, he didn't choose the path of "creating numbers by cutting people," but rather "creating numbers by empowering people."
This difference might look small on the surface. But within an organization, it's a decisive difference.
Under management that "creates numbers by cutting people," members are always afraid. They work while thinking they might be the next to be cut. Therefore, they don't take risks. They don't take on new challenges. They follow superficially and do the bare minimum.
Under management that "creates numbers by empowering people," members move differently. If they feel protected and that their power is needed, people start moving on their own. Even if no one tells them, they find waste on the frontline. Even if no one asks them, they help the colleague next to them.
The reason Joly was able to reduce $1.9 billion was that the frontline sales staff started thinking for themselves about "how to cut costs." The frontline sees waste every day that the headquarters' cost-reduction team can't find. When that frontline starts moving with a sense of ownership, the speed of improvement jumps at once.
This is what it means that people management is the "strongest efficiency."
30 minutes of a 1-on-1 is 30 minutes for KPI achievement
I don't want you to misunderstand after reading this far.
I'm not saying "don't look at numbers" or "don't reduce costs." Joly looked at numbers too. He was the one who achieved the $1.9 billion cost reduction. Managers naturally need a certain level of numerical sense.
I believe that "30 minutes of a 1-on-1 is 30 minutes for KPI achievement."
Modern managers tend to perceive "time to face people" and "time to increase numbers" as two conflicting times. They think if they cut 30 minutes of a 1-on-1, they can use that time for KPIs.
But this is a thinking trap.
In a 1-on-1, if a member confesses, "Actually, I'm stuck here in this work," the bottleneck is resolved at that moment.
In a 1-on-1, if you can learn a member's dream for three years from now, the assignment of that work is optimized at once.
In a 1-on-1, if you can convey "I trust you," the member will move three times more than instructed.
A manager who cuts 30 minutes of a 1-on-1 to look at KPIs is missing the real bottleneck behind the numbers.
Joly also listened thoroughly to the voices of employees on the frontline.
In the AI era, this fact becomes even more important.
With AI, tasks like collecting numbers, organizing them, finding outliers, and creating reports will become lighter and lighter. At that time, a manager's value will no longer be "having the numbers."
It will shift to whether you can move the people behind the numbers.
The value of a manager who only looks at numbers will decrease in the AI era.
But the value of a manager who can see the dreams, anxieties, clogs, and potential of the people behind the numbers and connect them with the organization's purpose will increase.
What remains in the AI era are managers who start with people.
In fact, I am re-recognizing the importance of people management at the forefront of foreign tech and have already started moving. In the AI era, people are what allow companies to differentiate themselves.
What Hubert Joly proved in 2012 was exactly this. Against Amazon, an opponent that changed retail with efficiency and scale, he fought back with the analog weapon of "starting with people."
Are you currently seeing the time spent facing people as a cost?
In tomorrow's 1-on-1, try asking your members these three questions:
"What is working well here?" "What do you want to change?" "How can I help you?"
You don't have to ask them all at once. Just the last one is fine for a start.
"How can I help you?"
Whether you can ask this question seriously changes the manager's stance.
That is the first step of management that starts with people.
