While digital engagement is critical to today’s customer-centric business model, the most successful organizations are not solely focused on digital capabilities. Instead, they are concentrating on the integration of digital and nondigital capabilities, as well as the integration of virtual and real-world experiences — all focused on leading through the human experience.

Accomplishing these human-centered objectives predictably requires a retooling of the environment in which strategists create to design their businesses expressly for their consumers and grow. Best Buy’s turnaround story is a perfect illustration of this approach. When Hubert Joly took the helm in 2012, Amazon was expected to destroy Best Buy. Joly rejected this assertion.

Notably, Best Buy’s problems were not all related to the digital experience. In fact, many of them were living out in the physical realm. Upon further examination, Joly found workplace culture was to blame for much of the company’s stalled transformation. Joly shared the following with me in an interview, during which we discussed their seven-year makeover: “Our operations were broken. Our prices were not competitive. The speed of shipping was not great. The customer experience in the stores had really gone down,” he said. “All of these were self-inflicted problems, and the good news with self-inflicted problems is you get to fix them.”

Connective, Customer Centricity: The Prerequisite To Digital Transformation

Joly’s change management plan broke all the rules of traditional strategy implementation. To create a consistent cross-channel experience, the company needed a customer-centered approach. Digitally transformed companies must adapt to customer preferences that can change like the wind. Sustaining customer-centricity requires an intentional discarding of top-down management versus empowered leadership. A regimented, command-and-control, directive style stifles imagination and slows an organization’s ability to leap with technology at the pace consumers expect. Joly knew this.

So, he got to work revamping the culture to be one in which people worked laterally in connective teams. Joly sustained the new culture by articulating a noble, customer-centric purpose. He rallied teams around the idea that Best Buy could become a force for good by serving people well, no matter if they engaged online or in person. The ripples of Joly’s influence are still being felt. In March 2022, Best Buy reported annual enterprise revenue of $51.7 billion for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2022.

Flexing Empathy Muscles To Know The Customer

Best Buy’s story demonstrates that digital transformation includes a reimagining of the in-person experience. Transformers must ask themselves what a store, branch, clinic or some other space makes possible. People with jobs to be done do not travel to a physical space without a reason, especially with so many tools for touchless and remote engagement. Visiting a bank branch or grocery store, for example, is a means to getting a job done. Usually, that job is one that requires either handholding (because it’s complex) or sensory exploration (because it’s tactile). Say a first-time homebuyer is applying for a mortgage. It’s not the cozy chair or free popcorn that brings them to a lender’s office. It’s the lender’s personal attention, paid specifically to the individual borrower, that compels them to come in. Successful transformers leverage digital to emulate — not fully replace — the in-person experience. To do that, they must have a means for gaining empathy with customers to deeply understand their needs and the outcomes they want.

Strategic Rebuilding Of Personal Relationships With Customers

Nike flexed its empathy muscles to reimagine the in-person athletic experience during the pandemic. Customer-centric teams understood that participating in sports was as much about competing as it was about individual success. Nike communicated this understanding through a series of commercials, one of which rallies customers, stuck at home and playing in basements, living rooms and driveways to “play for the world.”

Nike’s Consumer Direct Offense strategy is another initiative that demonstrates a reimagining of the in-person experience. The plan outlines a strategic shift away from retail spaces. It’s a maneuver the company is apparently fast-tracking in 2022, having announced in 2021 it would no longer be selling shoes through several longtime retail partners. Instead, Nike is focusing on building personal relationships with customers through digital apps and high-end retail experiences in their own stores. Numbers suggest the model is working. In 2020, more than 33% of total revenues were from D2C sales. Nike expects D2C sales to account for 50% of its revenue within five years.

Participatory Management And Emotional Safety Creating Space For Reimagination

It’s clear from Best Buy and Nike — and countless successes among lesser-known brands — that to effectively lead, we must embrace management traits once seen as detrimental. The bottom line: We need to lead with our humanity to transform digitally. Here’s the great news: Everyone can become a human-centered leader, even within cultures that don’t yet encourage it. Three different approaches to leadership can affect change within any company:

1. Inclusive Leadership: Teams ingest a wide range of perspectives and synthesize them for a variety of market applications.

2. Intrapreneurial Leadership: Proactive problem solvers earn trust by moving fast and horizontally, creatively mobilizing solutions across functional areas.

3. Viral Leadership: A wildfire of empathetic behaviors spreads through teams from one end of the organization to another, ultimately bringing them more tightly together.

Applauding leaders who insist on toughness, discourage empathy, punish failure and reward rigidity is a surefire way to place a wedge between the company and the customer. These are the wedges that keep legacy firms stuck in place, unable to think about in-person experiences in new ways — ways that serve the customer digitally, yet humanly; remotely, yet closely. Training and rewarding leaders who are unafraid to listen and exercise compassion, on the other hand, is the key to digital transformation. Participatory leadership in an emotionally safe environment nurtures human-first skills and creates space for the reimagination of the customer experience. It’s the only way to successfully transform and integrate the digital and nondigital, virtual and real-world experiences today’s consumers demand and deserve.