The heart of business Leadership principles for the next era of capitalism

Entrepreneur Joly sets out a novel framework for leadership and management in this book. The CEO who turned around Best Buy explains the lessons he learned from years of managerial experience and describes a new model for running successful businesses. The narrative explains how focusing on a wide swath of shareholders and not just stockholders is key to maintaining success in the long term. Part biography and part instruction manual, The Heart of Business wants to be the next beloved leadership tome. It succeeds fairly well as it describes how Joly put his years of accumulated knowledge to work in finding the core truths of Best Buy to achieve success without engaging the standard playbook of cutting stores and positions. However, the text does beg the question of whether even Joly's new model for business could withstand the systemic shocks that have leveled so many other businesses in the wake of the global pandemic. Though he mentions the current sociopolitical climate, it is worth pondering whether there's enough resilience baked into the overall message to contend with the supply chain shocks that businesses must navigate at present. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Students in two-year technical programs. General readers. --Alvin Dantes, Oak Lawn Public Library

Joly, former CEO of Best Buy, debuts with a striking call to action for managers of companies large and small to "make business and the world better places." Joly was at the helm of Best Buy from 2012 to 2020, a time when "Amazon was supposed to kill" the company. Using lessons he learned during his successful turnaround of the then-ailing electronics retailer, Joly posits that most businesses focus on profits at the cost of all else (a fault he admits he had while a McKinsey consultant in the 1980s). Instead, he demonstrates how he learned that engaging people in a shared mission was a more powerful way to lead. He proves that investing in dreams and empowering great customer service pays off in what Joly calls "human magic," and to accomplish that, he exhorts leaders to follow five "be" rules: be purposeful, be clear about whom they serve, be conscious of what their true role is, be driven by values, and be authentic. Thoughtful questions conclude each chapter, encouraging leaders to examine their own beliefs, and there's no shortage of heartfelt, personal anecdotes. This smart, practical guide is a perfect resource for any business leader. Agent: Raphael Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn. (May)