Women’s Leadership Forum (WOLF) in Action
Wondering what the Women’s Leadership Forum (WOLF) has been up to recently? Read below for the latest updates, including:
- Did you know?
- Spotlighting You!
- WOLF Packs Focus on Innovation
- Talent Readiness Program Update
- Connecting with Female Consumers
- WOLF at BlogHer
Did you know?
Blogs are an increasingly important way to connect with female consumers. According to BlogHer.com, of the women who read their blogs:
* 85% bought the product based on a blogger’s recommendation. Women report they are more likely to make a purchasing decision based on another customer’s blogged experience.
* 78% turn to blogs more often than weekly for info (only search is used more often)
* Find blog information more “useful” and “relevant” than TV, print, ads, social networks or online review sites. Women report using blogs to stay informed on topics of interest, to seek advice and recommendations.
Spotlighting You!
This month we’d like to thank Tammy Brophy, Amy Genevie and Katlyn Holcomb for quickly stepping up to help us with our BBYM Omega launch in Tampa. When the core team couldn’t travel to make this meeting, Amy and Katlyn stepped up to represent WOLF and Best Buy and invited a great group of female consumers to participate. If that wasn’t enough, hours before the event, the hotel had a water main break! They had to find a quick solution and set up at a new location and contact all of the attendees! We couldn’t have done it without you ladies! Thank you for your hard work and commitment to making Best Buy a better place for women to shop!
We’d also like to thank Shelly Gove for her many years of service on the WOLF Core Team. As many in the WOLF network know, Shelly hands and heart are all over WOLF’s history. She has connected with so many on a personal level and has worked diligently to make sure all voices are heard. We celebrate her promotion to the Diversity & Inclusion team and look forward to seeing her impact in that important work.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the WOLF work this month!
WOLF Packs Focus on Innovation
In July the Pack meetings focused on:
- Financial Acumen: How Best Buy Makes Money
- Increasing Your Personal Power Through Communication Skills: Toastmaster’s Exercise
- Implementing their Innovation projects
- Continuing the work on their Affirmative Action and Good Faith Efforts
- Increasing knowledge around the latest and greatest within Best Buy’s Appliance business
In markets across the U.S. and Mexico, packs drive innovation work geared towards employee development and key business categories including: appliances, BBYM, connections, gaming, services, and even tablets!
To learn more about all of the great Pack innovation work, go to the Knowledge Marketplace and type WOLF in the search field!
Here is what some Pack members across the country have to say:
“Being a part of WOLF keeps me engaged at a district level and allows me to get best practices from other stores!”
“I also enjoy the educational piece around where my different career paths in Best Buy can take me.”
“I was a supervisor in Geek Squad when I initially joined the pack, now I am a GM. Four years ago I never saw myself here!”
“Networking!!! I recently accepted a job as a transfer from Iowa to Texas, thanks in large part to networks I have built through WOLF.”
“I feel since becoming part of this pack I have more insight as to what is going on around the company as well as what is happening in my district. I also know I can make a greater impact in my store with this knowledge.”
“As a male manager it really helps me understand a different thought process and perception. I truly have learned a lot from being a part of WOLF.”
“For me, my position at Best Buy was just a part time job, and a way for me to earn some extra income. Over the past four years, it has become my full time career. Programs like WOLF are what make me proud to work for Best Buy.”
Talent Readiness Program Update
WOLF’s Talent Readiness Program (TRP) is about the impact of both current and former program participants. Three key elements make this program a decidedly different approach to big company leadership development programs:
- Through the use of connected-world technologies, participants are learning leadership differently. Instead of a workshop-only format, participants are learning daily/weekly while working on their own work and leadership challenges. They practice and grow their personal brand of leadership against performance outcomes that matter most to them and to the company.
- Participants are learning how to learn and how to develop themselves continuously to ensure that this investment pays off in career development and resilience in years to come.
- The program is centered on leadership competencies that are essential in a connected, relationship-based world, where all of our work is achieved with and through other people. Broadly referred to as Social and Emotional Intelligence (S/EQ), these skills enable leaders to unleash the best in themselves and others with a purposeful focus on how they ARE in addition to what they DO to effectively lead performance.
Best Buy is in a minority of companies bringing self-driven, practice-based, technology-enabled social/emotional leadership development (phew...that’s a mouthful!) inside an organization. We all know that relationships are essential to getting things done. Not many people have the luxury of working in isolation and making a significant impact on the business without interacting, collaborating and influencing others to reach a common goal. So it should be no surprise that social and emotional intelligence (working successfully with others through a deep understanding of yourself and purposeful focus on how you show up) differentiates star leaders – those who inspire and enable the best in others – from average performers. S/EQ is important at all levels of any organization. An expansive study by international executive recruiting firm, Egon Zender (see the book: Great People Decisions), examined the question of what makes a successful and sustainable executive hire. They found that when executives were hired for a combination of S/EQ and Experience they had an astonishingly small (3%) failure rate (“failure” being the hired executive flared out one way or another and the effort was wasted) whereas, when executives were hired for IQ/Skills & Experience they experienced a much higher (25%) failure rate.
More importantly, TRP Participants are gathering their own evidence of how these skills help them with their leadership challenges. A GM in the program provided this recent learning, “I have learned from [examining] some of my habits that, at time, my lack of tolerance for unmet timelines and deadlines and speed to execution shut down my team. My behavior and disappointment clearly came across and instead of great conversation to tackle the issue I would shut them down or they might avoid me. I started paying attention and took advantage of my leadership meetings to start discovering how I could impact differently, leading off with positive results versus leading with opportunity areas. Even though this is a small change, it has made a big impact for our meetings and my team. We get to the gaps, but I don’t lose their attention because I have recognized the great outcomes.”
Participants in the TRP are engaging in daily self work through Quarterly session and e-instruction, personal observation and experimentation to increase their outcomes and build effective relationships with peers, direct reports, managers and customers to be the highly effective leaders. The current program cohort of 135 female leaders from corporate and the field will run through the remainder of FY12, with Q3 and Q4 Sessions, in September 2011 and January 2012 respectively, remaining this year.
Connecting with Female Consumers
This summer we’ve been incredibly busy connecting with female consumers in our Omega program. During the last month we’ve launched chapters in Nashville, San Diego and Tampa and concluded one in Des Moines, IA. We are well on our way in acquiring more female customers through our Omega program and sharing their insights with our local markets and corporate business teams. With women influencing the vast majority of all purchases and purchasing at least $90 Billion a year in consumer electronics, it is important we include their insights as we develop our business and operational strategies.
Some of the categories our Omegas will be focusing on this year are: Tablets, Gaming, Best Buy Mobile, Appliances and the female shopping experience at Best Buy. In each city, our Omegas work on these topics for 90 days, innovating around ways we can impact these categories to elevate our market share with female consumers. In addition to providing us with their insights, the Omegas learn more about Best Buy and the products and services we offer. In turn, they become loyal Best Buy customers and brand ambassadors, sharing their excitement and emotional connection to our brand with their friends and family and even on their Facebook pages. As one Des Moines Omega recently said, “I didn’t even realize I needed a tablet until becoming an Omega and learning about all they can do! I plan on buying one right after this is over. And I want a green cover to go with it!”
Check back next month to hear some of the ideas from our Omegas in these cities.
If you’d like to learn more about the Omega program, please contact Heather.Petri@bestbuy.com
WOLF Connects with Female Bloggers at BlogHer ‘11
Earlier this month the Best Buy Women’s Leadership Forum (WOLF) connected with many of the 4,000 female bloggers the 2011 BlogHer conference. Best Buy for Business partnered with WOLF in this opportunity.
Why focus on this audience? Female bloggers and their readers – over 25 million strong – make up an influential and close-knit audience. According to the 2011 BlogHer Social Media Matters survey:
- Over 88 percent of active blog readers in the U.S. trust the information they get from familiar blogs.
- Over 50 percent of active blog readers in the U.S. have made a purchase based on a blog recommendation. This figure jumps to 80 percent in the female blogging community.
- CONSUMER ELECTRONICS is the top category in which the online population turns to blog reviews for trusted product information.
WOLF returned from BlogHer with a list of female bloggers interested in helping us test and evaluate Best Buy products, and get the word out to their readers. As the survey noted, bloggers are important influencers in their readers’ purchasing decisions.
WOLF is identifying products for bloggers to test and write about – with an eye toward drawing more female customers to Best Buy.
WOLF’s efforts to develop Best Buy’s relationship with female bloggers are part of our strategy to help grow female market share for Best Buy. WOLF is currently expanding the Omega program, which strengthens Best Buy’s relationship with female customers by listening to – and acting upon – their feedback about the shopping experience.
About the Women's Leadership Forum
Best Buy's Women's Leadership Forum (WOLF) is an engaged network of women and men, employees and consumers, and non-profit partners working to make Best Buy a great place for women to work and shop. For more information or to join the network visit www.BestBuy.com/WOLF.
