How a Former Employee Saved a Dying Company
The CEO Diary with Fexingo: Leadership Lessons, Executive Decisions, and Corner Office Stories · 2026-05-31 · 8 min
Episode notes
When a company is circling the drain, the conventional wisdom says bring in a turnaround specialist from outside. But sometimes the best person for the job is the one who already knows the floor plan. Lucas and Luna explore the story of Best Buy in 2012, when the stock was trading around $11 and analysts had written the company off as 'Amazon's showroom.' Then Hubert Joly, a former consultant who had worked with Best Buy before, took the CEO seat. Joly didn't slash and burn. He did something counterintuitive: he invested in the stores, matched Amazon's prices, and turned employees into problem-solvers instead of order-takers. The result? The stock hit $80 within five years. Lucas and Luna unpack the specific moves — the price-match guarantee, the 'Renew Blue' cost-cutting program, and the shift to an 'in-home advisor' model — that turned a so-called zombie retailer into a comeback story that still holds lessons for any business facing disruption.