Former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly details his new book 'The Heart of Business'

Former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly told Yahoo Finance what he learned while rebuilding Best Buy and how retailers can learn from his experience.

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SEANA SMITH: Consumers are back. We've had retail sales showing a pickup in spending. Let's talk about this and how big retailers are positioned for this bounce back. And for that, we want to bring Hubert Joly. He's a former Best Buy chairman and CEO and also author of the book that's out today, "The Heart of Business-- Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism."

Hubert, it's great to have you on Yahoo Finance. You know how to help struggling businesses. You did the turnaround strategy with Best Buy, proved to be extremely effective. When you take a look at the retail landscape today and the companies that are getting things right, you go into this in your book. But what are they doing?

HUBERT JOLY: I think that as we exit this crisis, we have to think not about restart but more reset. The way I think about it, Seana, is that a bit of planet Earth had been hit by an asteroid, like 66 million years ago. And the dinosaurs died. And new species began to thrive.

So I think the winners-- what do they have in common? And what can we learn from the Best Buy story? They're doing something very unique and special to customers that's really needed in the world, like Best Buy is needed because, you know, many of us need help. And the vendors need help due to a place where to showcase the technology.

Certainly digital technology is playing a huge role. But at the heart of business if I can say is people. It's the ingenuity. And I think companies that have an ability to create an environment that can unleash the human magic of their employees in service of that purpose and be a force for good in the world.

I think that today, employees and customers are demanding that companies be forces for good. And so companies that can reinvent themselves reimagine themselves, refocus, and reconfigure themselves for the new world. I think that-- that will be the winners.

ADAM SHAPIRO: When you talk about these principles in the book, though, for instance, let's use Best Buy. A buddy of mine actually does use the Geek Squad, which I think fulfills one of the missions of Best Buy, enriching people's lives through technology.

How do you get somebody? Because the TV over there came from Best Buy more than 10 years ago. But how do you get somebody who's working at the cash register at a Best Buy retail store to buy into enriching my life through technology? I mean, how do you get them to look at it as more than just a job that pays 15 bucks an hour?

HUBERT JOLY: And getting paid is important, you know, that we all know this. And when I started my first job, I was actually working in a supermarket. But Adam, I think if you and I were walk into a Best Buy store, and we would say to the employees, look, we have great news. We're going to now focus on enriching lives with technology. But [INAUDIBLE] people would say, what do you mean?

So it's not a top-down approach. I think it starts when I say putting people at the center, the question we've asked at Best Buy to every one of the employees is what drives you? There was a store general manager in Boston. He would ask every one of the associates in the store, what is your dream at Best Buy or outside of Best Buy?

OK, write it down in the break room. OK, my job is now to help you achieve your dream. So it's really creating an environment where people can find it in their heart to do great things for customers. Can I give you a quick example of what I mean by this?

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, please.

HUBERT JOLY: Thank you. It was a-- when I joined Best Buy in 2012, quality of service, frankly, had gone down. But fast-forward 2018. There's a mother who comes to one of our stores with her young child.

The young boy had a dinosaur toy, a T-Rex for holiday as a gift. Unfortunately, the toy is broken, meaning the dinosaur is really sick. The head has been dismantled from the body. So they go to the store. At any other store, they would have been sent to the toy island. With some luck, you could get a replacement.

This is not what happened on that day. There's two associates understood what happened, took the T-Rex, went behind a counter, studied to perform a surgical procedure on the toy on the sick dinosaur, walked the boy through the steps in the procedure, substituted the dinosaur, then give back to the child a cured dinosaur. So you can imagine the joy of the child and the mother.

Now, do you believe there was a standard operating procedure at Best Buy on how to deal with cured dinosaur? Or we had told them this is what it means to enrich lives with technology when there's just-- no, of course, not. Or maybe a memo from me.

No. They found it in their heart to create joy for this child and this mother. I think that when we ask ourselves, why do we work? Why do we live? In most people's heart, there's a desire to do something good in the world. Even Darth Vader-- or today's May 4, so Star Wars Day. Even Darth Vader, his son believe there's something good in his heart.

And so I think magic happens when we can enable people to connect what's in their heart with their job and then connect that to the purpose of the company. So it's more bottom-up, very human approach, then, telling people what to do.

SEANA SMITH: And when you talk about building those types of relationships, how does it-- I guess how do you do that effectively now when we see this consumer behavior shift? More and more people are shopping online. You're not necessarily getting those in-store interactions. How does that change the playbook then?

HUBERT JOLY: So this was a big change at Best Buy when we said actually in 2017, Seana, we're actually not a consumer electronics retailer. We're a company that's here to enrich lives with technology. So to your first question, what does it mean to win in this new era?

And when I say reimagine your business, it's around purpose, not around whether you're four walls or a website. You know, it's about the underlying customer needs and finding creative ways-- amazing ways-- unique ways to serve the customer.

So at Best Buy, we serve the customers in the stores, of course, online. We also come to your home. There's the Geek Squad. But we also have this In-Home Advisor Program. So if your need is too complex to be dealt with in a store or online, we'll come to you. So I think it's this creativity of dealing with other human beings and letting the customer choose the channel.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Kevin Roberts-- I think it was from Saatchi and Saatchi years ago-- talked about what you're putting into practice-- love marks that consumers remain loyal to companies they love. And when there's a mistake, forgive the company. Who's doing that, if you could, well? Because it seems like so many companies fail to do that. And it seems so obvious if you look at your turnaround with Best Buy.

HUBERT JOLY: Yeah, because these principles of leading from a place of purpose and with humanity, they're easy to say, right? I've just said it in a few minutes. They're really hard to do, which is why I wanted to offer this guide on how to lead from a place of purpose with great humanity.

I admire a number of companies. I think that, you know, in the retail space, a company like Ralph Lauren-- I sit on their boards. I'm a bit biased. But Ralph has always had this vision of not being an apparel company, but being a company that inspires the dream of a better life.

And he helps us live that life. It's like when you in a movie. And that brings a unique connection. So I think that's a great example. And it's good, you know, from back to your first question, right? I really want to help with that.

As the company exits the crisis, so many of us have not been really buying a lot of apparel. We have our tops but no bottoms, right, in Zoom. So in order to ignite growth in the company, being focused on that purpose, and looking at what are some places where you can unlock that growth?

So for them, it may be the home category, right, because so many of us need to improve our home. We're all learning and working and eating from home. So it's reimagining the business around purpose. It's refocused the business. And it's reconfigure. The key implication-- and I think we should talk about it-- is the implications on how we lead. I think it's a C change for leaders at all levels.

SEANA SMITH: Hubert Joly, it's great to have you on Yahoo Finance. We hope to have you back once again in the future. Former Best Buy chairman and CEO and also author of the book that's out today. "The Heart of Business-- Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism."