Big Change at Best Buy: Working Through Hypergrowth to Sustained Excellence

Rating:
Summary: Understated Excellence
Review: ...Elizabeth & Andy understate the influence they & their change management leadership wrought on Best Buy. It was their process, as brilliantly outlined in their book, that took entrepreneurial potential and realized its promise into profit by organizing a company culture around the change management principles laid out in this book. Without "Head, Heart & Hands," Best Buy may have been just another company that squandered that potential.

What this book is not, is a history of Best Buy from it's founding through it's world class success...two years ago topping the S&P list of best ROI comapnies over a five year period.

What this book is, is an easy read of simple but involved change management principles on transforming a company from potential to world class success...that two years ago topped the S&P list of best ROI companies over a five year period.

When I came across this book I could not put it down. It was as if I were reliving Elizabeth and Andy's presentations. The book does not communicate as well as Elizabeth & Andy do in person, on a podium, but it's language and it's points are eminently digestible, if not delectable.

If you are interested in a well written read about a company's transformation into a leader in its industry....this book is for you. If you are interested in a company's cultural revolution that unlocks a company's potential into streams of profit...this book is for you.

Elizabeth & Andy congratulations on what you did at Best Buy, and congratulations on being able to translate this process into an easily understandable book for all cultural revolutionists and change agents.

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately this is not the whole story....
Review: During my years with Best Buy, at the store and district level, the company did a lot of things right. And the turn around from a company on the edge of being bought out in 1997 to king of the consumer electronics mountain a short time later is an extraordinary one. However, the disconnect between the culture the executives wanted to build and what actually took place at the store level was significant. The management turnover at the store level was unbelievable. It was nothing for a store to go through 10 - 15 managers (assistants included) in the course of a year. I worked in different parts of the country over the years and, unfortunately, this was the case nationwide.
Much is made of the fact that BB is a non-commission environment. However, the constant and fierce push to motivate sales people (usually kids) to sell (extended warranties, especially) definitely created a pressure environment that rivaled commission companies. So, as previously stated, Best Buy did many things right while I was employed there. However, the insane turnover produced ex-employees who absolutely hate the company. A current website (bestbuysux.org) has become a kind of meeting place for these folks (and current employees, also) where they unleash their venom regarding what they feel was(is) a hostile work environment. This side of the equation, and it is not a nominal side, is not addressed in this book. And for all of BB's successes, their unwillingness - from Brad Anderson down - to address the turnover and work environment still poses the greatest threat to this retail giant.

Rating:
Summary: Phil Ruffner, Sundyne
Review: I found the book to be interesting and challenging enough to order a copy for each member of my management team. My take on this book is that it provides a great deal of insight into managing the evolution process. As with most management texts, the most interesting and exciting parts of that insight show up in the latter third of the book. I suppose you could skip the first 175 pages and still get the flavor of what RHR and Best Buy did, but I encourage you to read it all. The last 100 pages will be your reward for getting through the first 175.

Things I noted in particular:

1) Early in the book, the authors set up the concept of the Head, Heart and Hands. The Head talks about getting the concept. The Heart talks about motivation, the desire to apply what was learned. The Hands is about putting the concepts into action and producing results.

2) There is a lot of discussion about the role of the Senior Managers in this process, I suggest you test yourself against the model that develops and see if you meet the authors' expectations.

3) If you don't read any other part of the book, I ask you to read pages 216 and study the table on page 234.

4) On page 216 you will see "When people set out to measure the effects of change on business results such as productivity, sales, profit, and employee turnover, they are measuring the outcomes of a process. Measuring results does not provide much information on how the change is proceeding or what issues might be impeding or furthering the change process." We all certainly focus on a couple of the measures cited - to what extent do we sacrifice the longer view in doing so?

The authors got me with the following: "Knowing the score at the end of a game gives you limited information about how the individuals played, where they need to improve, or what's getting in the way of their achieving a better score."

Sound familiar?

Rating:
Summary: Phil Ruffner, Sundyne
Review: I found the book to be interesting and challenging enough to order a copy for each member of my management team. My take on this book is that it provides a great deal of insight into managing the evolution process. As with most management texts, the most interesting and exciting parts of that insight show up in the latter third of the book. I suppose you could skip the first 175 pages and still get the flavor of what RHR and Best Buy did, but I encourage you to read it all. The last 100 pages will be your reward for getting through the first 175.

Things I noted in particular:

1) Early in the book, the authors set up the concept of the Head, Heart and Hands. The Head talks about getting the concept. The Heart talks about motivation, the desire to apply what was learned. The Hands is about putting the concepts into action and producing results.

2)There is a lot of discussion about the role of the Senior Managers in this process, I suggest you test yourself against the model that develops and see if you meet the authors' expectations.

3)If you don't read any other part of the book, I ask you to read pages 216 and study the table on page 234.

4) On page 216 you will see "When people set out to measure the effects of change on business results such as productivity, sales, profit, and employee turnover, they are measuring the outcomes of a process. Measuring results does not provide much information on how the change is proceeding or what issues might be impeding or furthering the change process." We all certainly focus on a couple of the measures cited - to what extent do we sacrifice the longer view in doing so?

The authors got me with the following: "Knowing the score at the end of a game gives you limited information about how the individuals played, where they need to improve, or what's getting in the way of their achieving a better score."

Sound familiar?

Rating:
Summary: Big Change at Best Buy is a Must Buy
Review: I have been teaching in the public schools for 30 years. One of the things that I have done since Tom Peter's came out with his "In Search of Excellence" is keep a close eye on what is being done in the economic sector and applying those principles in my classroom. "Big Change . . ." caught my attention immediately after I read the first chapter. It was not only an interesting read, but I knew it was going to make me change my way of doing business in the classroom.

As a teacher who has always held the ancient Greeks in esteem, I have always thought the best products were ones that employed the head, heart, and hands, but I had never thought of it in quite the same way as presented in "Big Change". While I have always "soap boxed" the idea, I have never tried to make it a mindset, to actually change the culture. Next year I will try to do just that in my classroom using the tools that are presented in this excellent book. Because the process is so well laid out, I expect to succeed in changing the culture of education in my classroom.

I also teach a class at Western Washington University on how to create change. This book will be required reading because when you are finished with this book, you have the tools to implement change that lasts and makes a difference. "Big Change" is a best buy!

Rating:
Summary: It's not just for CEO's
Review: I have been teaching in the public schools for 30 years. One of the things that I have done since Tom Peter's came out with his "In Search of Excellence" is keep a close eye on what is being done in the economic sector and applying those principles in my classroom. "Big Change . . ." caught my attention immediately after I read the first chapter. It was not only an interesting read, but I knew it was going to make me change my way of doing business in the classroom.

As a teacher who has always held the ancient Greeks in esteem, I have always thought the best products were ones that employed the head, heart, and hands, but I had never thought of it in quite the same way as presented in "Big Change". While I have always "soap boxed" the idea, I have never tried to make it a mindset, to actually change the culture. Next year I will try to do just that in my classroom using the tools that are presented in this excellent book. Because the process is so well laid out, I expect to succeed in changing the culture of education in my classroom.

I also teach a class at Western Washington University on how to create change. This book will be required reading because when you are finished with this book, you have the tools to implement change that lasts and makes a difference. "Big Change" is a best buy!

Rating:
Summary: Big help in do-how
Review: There are lots of books on change but this one gives practical information that you can use tomorrow without losing theoretical sophistication. It is the only model that I know of that deals well with all three arenas: head, heart and hands. I particularly liked ithe "what to do to fail" lists. The book is realistic in that it does not present the consultants and the company as all-knowing. The examples of mistakes and corrections give a realistic picture of the what a real change project feels like. If a company is going through (or planning) a change process, this would be a great book to read and discuss as a group.

Rating:
Summary: Big Change at Best Buy is a Must Buy
Review: Therer are lots of books on transformational change out there. Few if any compare to Big Change at Best Buy for its candor, its practicality or its thoroughness. The authors take the reader on a no holds barred 5 year journey. The guts of the company are laid bare for better or for worse as senior executives share their struggles, their doubts, their hard won successes on the road to true breakthroughs in perfomance.

This is fundamentally a book about how to improve your financial results by changing your formulas for success. The authors prescribe a "head, heart and hands" change methodology which not only makes sense intuitively, but seems to work when applied with care by a team of consultants and insiders working closely side by side.

This is no oversimplified cookbook. The ins and outs of change are detailed in a very practical straightforward manner, leaving few stones unturned. Metaphors and analogies are used liberally to help readers get a 3D color picture and to enable them to generalize the issues faced at Best Buy to their own organizations.

Tips on how to fail at each stage of the process are very instructive in what not to do....as are the many colorful quotes from menmbers of the internal change implementation team.

This book feels real...lots of conflicts, values needing to be clarified, lessons learned about change. No sugar coating, but a happy ending nonetheless.

True change seems like it never comes without a struggle. Big Change at Best Buy chronicles both the struggles and the victories won, leaving little for the reader to imagine or reconstruct. It's all there, all the tools and the instructions for how to use 'em to fundamentally transform people, systems and culture for superior financial results.

Rating:
Summary: BIG Change at YOUR Company
Review: Three interesting observations...
1) I'm surprised Best Buy management would allow these details to become public
2) I liked the way the consultants admitted they learned something, too
3) There are many paragraphs where one could change the name of the company from "Best Buy" to your company's name, and the text would apply to YOU.