Lessons in Leadership

The lesson Saks Fifth Avenue missed from Best Buy is the one Geoffroy van Raemdonck can still use.

When Hubert Joly took over Best Buy, the stores were treated as the liability.

Too many, too big, too expensive, and the customer was already moving online, often using stores to test and then buying elsewhere.

He flipped the premise.

The store was not the problem.
The footprint was the underused assets.

Best Buy stopped treating square footage as storage and started treating it as a trust engine. Advice. Service. Installation. Repair. Education. The store became the moment of conviction, not the end of the funnel.

And the real lever was people.

Joly optimized retail by investing in the workforce. He raised frontline capability and made it the strategy. Expertise on the floor. Authority in the moment. Standards that held. Tech that amplified humans instead of replacing them. He rebuilt Best Buy around trust and advice, not just transactions and showrooming.

Saks Global is now in Chapter 11, and van Raemdonck is stepping into the role inside a hard reset. The instinct in this moment is to cut, shrink, and defend.

Best Buy’s turnaround says something cleaner.

When consumers have more choice, access stops being the value. Clarity becomes the value.

A flagship becomes an albatross when it is decorative.
It becomes an opportunity when the people inside it are empowered to do real work.

Good leadership takes the greatest liability and recognizes it as its greatest asset.

A lesson I think of often.