An Uncompromising Focus on People: Interview with Brad Anderson

Brad Anderson is the vice chairman and CEO of Best Buy.

- I went to seminary because my dad was a pastor and I was trying to honor my father's dream, and discovered that was not my dream.

- I didn't think I was attracted to being a leader. I got the chance to watch a lot of other people lead.

- I can't predict [the stories of the people who work with us] but I can influence them.

- I can't believe how lucky I am to be leading and alive at this particular moment in history.

- The [stat/metric] I care most about: If our employees are engaged in what they do, the customer is bound to have a good experience.

Question: How do you raise the level of engagement of employees?
- It takes someone leading who authentically cares about the people they are leading.

- One of the things that exists is that we have an image of what the leader is, and people are drawn to leadership because they're looking for affirmations of themselves. But a real leader gets that through a circuitous route through the joy they receive out of the empowerment of people.

- We (even as a church) separate things that aren't separated. If I have a leader that is going through a crisis, I have a number of problems. Long before I see sales disappating, I'm going to see it in someone's eyes.

- I don't think I've ever thought I was born to do this... I do think I am called to do the job.

How do you motivate someone who is under-performing?
- The first thing you have to go to is the base of what somebody leads from. If someone doesn't really believe in the core of the work. How are they coding what they're doing?

- Financial inscentives are powerful, but thin. They are not complete.

Bill: one of the challenges of pastoral leadership is that we are forced to be better leaders since we don't have financial incentives to use "willy nilly." It isn't looked well-upon.

Brad: (paraphrase) You are doing the most important work - more important than ours. You affect the underpinnings of the things that everyone uses in our company. If it's available and would help you to use it, you are morally obligated to use it, whether or not it's frowned upon.

Bill: Being a Christian and having such enourmous wealth come your way... any dissonance in that?

Brad: It's not such a good thing. You now have accountability for the wealth that came your way. It has its temptations and its responsibility...

Bill: Does everybody at Best Buy know that Brad is a Christ-Follower? If so, how would they know. If not, how would you be talk about that?

Brad: I'm running a secular company representing people of a broad range. I think people can tell I'm a Christian based on what they see. The toughest time I've had is when the person I'm working with is frustrated and struggling, and I know the answer, and I can't tell them... it's based on permission. Only when I sense the person wants to open up that dialogue to me. In my lens that is a green light. The last thing I want to do is let power [that comes from my position] enter the dialogue.

Bill: What do you want your legacy to be?

Brad: 4 Values at best buy - having fun while being the best, unquestioned integrity, learning through change, unleashing the power to lead.

- Treasure how much the people in the congregation's faith is being enriched by the things around them every day and that they get to take their faith into interesting places every day.