Good Advice from Bad People by Zac Bissonnette

Author:Zac Bissonnette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

When you let your imagination win, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish.

—Ron Johnson in a 2012 speech at the Stanford University School of Medicine

Ron Johnson built a sterling reputation as vice president of merchandising at Target before he left to run Apple’s retail stores. During his seven and a half years at Apple, he earned four hundred million dollars and then left in November 2011 to serve as CEO of JCPenney, a failing retail chain desperate for new ideas.

He might have done better paying attention to Warren Buffett’s words of wisdom: “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”

Upon Johnson taking over as CEO, JCPenney announced bold plans to revitalize its flagging stores. He got rid of coupons and unveiled a new store-within-a-store concept where each JCPenney would be turned into a mall within a mall with well-curated boutiques for each brand. He did no consumer testing—most likely inspired by his former boss Steve Jobs’s hatred of focus groups—but promised he could, once again, revolutionize retailing. Meanwhile, he was criticized for a detached management style after opting to commute several days a week by private jet to the company’s headquarters in Texas instead of permanently relocating from his home in California.

Sales plunged, the company chalked up a nine-digit loss in a single quarter, and Johnson was ousted after a year and a half on the job as analysts fretted that the losses born of an overactive imagination could be driving the company toward bankruptcy.

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