In 2006, when Angela Ahrendts was named CEO role of Burberry, outgoing CEO Rose Marie Bravo explained what she expected from Ahrendts: someone who could shock the culture. “I think it will be really stimulating for the company to have a new talent, and for Angela to offer a new take on Burberry.”
No one expected the kind of charge Ahrendts delivered. A former senior executive at Liz Claiborne, Henri Bendel and Donna Karan, Ahrendts drastically remade the company, aiming it at millennials and consolidating the widespread licensing that had made Burberry’s iconic plaid both omnipresent and easy to ignore. She pushed hard into China — the company now has 72 stores, up from 50 in 2010 — and online, embracing digital in a way that stunned the fashion world. Other luxury manufacturers worried that online exposure would drain the exclusivity from their products. Ahrendts chose to livestream her seasonal shows, allowing consumers to watch and pre-order.
The once dowdy Burberry is now a fashion leader, with over $3 billion in sales (more than double from when Ahrendts took over) and with a workforce in which 70% of the employees are under 30 and come from 40 different countries.
In other words, Ahrendts has plenty she can talk about when she talks about her career and what she's accomplished. That’s what makes her first Influencer post particularly intriguing. Instead of talking about trends in the industry or doing business in China, she focused on energy: the kind that gets people motivated, not machinery moving.
We discussed her passion for the human touch and for intuition (while minding the data) in advance of her first Influencer post, which can be found here.
Q: Of all the topics you could cover, why energy?
We talk a lot about energy in the company, from the moment you walk in the door to everyone you meet. By year four or five at Burberry, all of a sudden I realized how vital my energy was to connecting and uniting people and how they fed off my energy. And how they fed off of Christopher’s energy [Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey]. In groups, I became cognizant of the power of using energy to unite, to align, to inspire, to empower.
Maybe I was a late bloomer, but I became so aware of this force that I had never really studied, never really leveraged. Once I became so cognizant of it, I realized it’s a huge strategic asset at Burberry today. Huge in terms of the energy of the company and the energy of individuals we hire. [But] you can’t create that energy unless you have a rock solid platform.
Q: But you’re the CEO, doesn’t this energy dissipate as soon as you leave the meetings with you executive staff? How does it continue down the pyramid?
Let me burst the fallacy bubble that I’m just with 14 direct reports. Take yesterday alone: I was in 12 meetings with an average of 40 people in each meeting, from managers to directors. We do regional off-sites — we’re doing a big one next week for a couple hundred people. In October, I’ll hit every region in the world and touch another couple hundred people. And I think that’s the difference in how a modern CEO manages.
Physically, you make sure you are touching thousands. You are physically looking them in the eye — feeling them, having them feel you — every week. Then, there’s constant communication socially, digitally. I just shot two different webcasts this morning. Constant communication.
I don’t use a script for any of this stuff. It has to come from the heart. I have to know what I’m going to say. And the more authentic and the more that they can feel me — whether in a video or in person — the more energy that will be created.
You’ve remade the company into one that doesn’t just sell to, but hires younger, globally diverse workers. How does your leadership philosophy mesh or clash with those those groups?
It specifically works with the millennial generation. They expect it. They don’t relate to the old traditional leadership style. These kids were born connected. If anything, it impacts them more than the traditional guys who have been sold to their whole lives. So we’re doing it because that’s their language. And other thing: I have three teens. Every time I’m talking to our associates, I think of my son or my daughters sitting in the audience. Will they tune into what I’m saying? I know how fast they tune out on everything. So I think that the next generation want greater authenticity, greater connectivity. They want it sharper. They want it fast and thoughtful, fast and funny. That’s all part of creating the energy.
How do you get across borders? I’ve been to China 3 times in the last 4 months. We employ thousands in the market. We have 72 stores. And I had lunch with our partner who, by the way, doesn’t speak a word of English and I speak no Mandarin. But I will tell you: It’s one of the highest energy relationships I have in the world. Of course there are interpreters, but through his body language — when he grabs my arm, right? — and through his eyes and his smile, I’m telling you he’s one of the best guys in the world. And the same holds for the team there.
So while I can’t talk directly to the team, I can walk into a store with my head high and I can touch them. I can look them in the eye, I can smile, I can thank them. There’s always interpreters — but [the employees] can feel me, they can feel my energy and I know that. I’m conscious of it. It doesn’t matter what the language is.
In an era where big data increasingly helps businesses make decisions, is this human touch philosophy one that’s still relevant?
It’s always a combination of both. I talk a lot about how we build a very balanced organization. And I don’t care if it’s in a store, a local office, a regional office, or every department in the headquarters. I even say that in the technology department we need enough balance between right brain creative and left brain analytical executives. In every leadership talent thing we do, we talk about right brain, left brain, having the balance.
However, we always tell them as a design/marketing/retail organization, we are going to be intuitively led and then we will look a the data. The data tells you what happened, the data doesn’t give you the foresight of what’s coming.
And so you need to be informed, you need to be aware. But if you want to stay ahead and if you want to stay a little bit disruptive and on the forefront, that only comes from the power of great minds working together: feeling, reading the data and understanding it. And then feeling and being able to anticipate where the consumer or where technology is going to go next.
Executive Editor at LinkedIn.com
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