How to unite a team, Part 2 w/Angela Ahrendts of Burberry, Apple

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Hi listeners. It's read. Welcome to part two of our episode with Angela Erends. on how to unite a team. If you haven't listened to part one

I highly recommend you go back and do that first. You don't want to miss it. But before we dive back in, let me give you a quick refresher. In part one. Angela shared some secret for uniting a team.

That she learned early. Like this. The foundation of any great relationship. is Looking somebody in the eyes.

and human to human connecting with them. And building this incredible trust. Angela was recruited to become CEO of Burberry. Where she ultimately leads. And

Epic. Turn around. But it started. with a big bold rallying cry to the team. You need to walk out of here one hundred percent believing in everything we're doing, or I don't want you on the team and I will take care of you, right? But we can't afford it.

I would argue at Burberry everybody felt loved, eleven thousand, and that's why we achieved the results that we did. And then Apple came calling. And we flashed forward to Angela's first video memo to her team at Apple. Recorded from her desk.

Using an iPhone. And about one minute in my phone rings. I look down and it's my daughter. I picked it up and I said, Angelina, mommy'll call you back in like Two minutes.

And the next day I must have gotten 500 emails of people thanking me for taking my daughter's call. In part two, we pick up where we left off. Angela. is about to make the move.

From CO Burberry. To Apple's head of retail. And I'm proving this theory. I believe it takes more than a logo to rally the troops. You need an elevated mission.

And Everyday human contact. To United Team. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. Huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing.

There are so many easy ways. So I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a free bedroom apartment. We haven't made just how you do it. This is masters of scale. I'm Reed Hoffman. Co-founder of LinkedIn.

Partner Greylock. And your host. And I believe it takes more than a logo to rally the troops. You need an elevated mission. and everyday human contact to unite a team.

In part one of our talk with Angela Erends. We looked at a rise through the fashion industry, including the epic turnaround. She led a seal of Burberry. Doubling revenue and tripling the stock price in eight years.

But then. Apple CEO Tim Cook came calling. He wanted Angela. to lead Apple's retail operations. He had his work.

Cut out for him. I told him, I said, Trust him, I'm not the right person. You really don't want me. But in the end. Tim convinced Angela she was the right person. And Angela.

Had to break the news. I was over nine years now at Burberry. Then I had to go to the chairman and I said, I need to take an extra week or two this summer. I've been called and I I don't wanna do anything, I don't but I need to meditate. I need to understand if this is

And he just looked at me. And he said It's Apple. It's Apple.

Two words that have meant so many things to so many people. Over so many years. Yeah. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits.

Rebels. Troublemakers. Nineteen eighty four. introduced the Macintosh.

Shah January twenty fourth, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why nineteen eighty four won't be Like nineteen eighty four. In two thousand and one.

We introduced the first iPod. iPod, a thousand songs in your pocket. Today. We're introducing A wide screen iPod with touch controls.

A revolutionary mobile phone. And a breakthrough. Internet communications device. This is one device. And we are calling it

iPhone. What? There is one more thing. I forgot.

There is one more thing. There is one more thing. But there's one more little thing. But there is One more thing. So you get to Apple. What did you find your first

Month to be like. 'Cause you know, Apple is in many ways a Amazing company, inventive, uh, soulful, caring, but also has a bunch of things that are unusual from a Silicon Valley perspective. It's extremely internal. Like nope, you're not allowed to talk to anyone outside the company. Many groups are working on things that nobody knows about and that it doesn't share between the group. Like there's a bunch of also oddities around Apple. What was those first few months Like for you.

I hated it. Yes. Yes. Yes. And the thing you didn't mention was the acronyms. Yes. Right. I mean it's like it's a different language. Yes. And and realize I'm a merchant and a marketer. Yes. It was actually like going to Mars. When I heard Angela say this, my first thought was Yes, that's an authentic answer. Right.

Because the vast majority of people when they make a big jump between companies. They find out. That it's hard. You go from saying, Oh my God, this is going to be magical to

Oh my god. This is so different. And can I even do this? I have confidence in myself. But can I win? At this game.

So before Angela could rally the troops. She had to rally herself. I got so insecure the first three or four months. But then you have a talk with yourself, right? And and uh And and all your meditating and things. And it's like, No, would you stop it? There's no way in the world I could possibly learn everything

And they didn't bring me in to learn all of that. They brought me in because I have gifts and and I'm supposed to focus on applying those. And right. So once you get past that first three to six months insecurity, because again, you come in and you just feel stupid. You know, when you come out of sector like I did. And I'm just wired very, very, very differently than most. Not all, but than most. So there were a handful of like minded people, et cetera, that I knew we could work very closely with and we all agreed on the vision, et cetera. But like we said. The first six months everywhere is is difficult. But then I also realized that I had to do it my way and they brought me in to do it my way.

So Angela set out. To rally the troops in her own way. You may be wondering at this point. Why did the troops Need rallying anyway.

After all. Apple was dominating. In ten years, they had quadrupled the number of stores worldwide. But with growth. comes growing pains.

Angela's challenge. Maintain the iconic magic of Apple. While managing crowds. That now include Technological late bloomers.

As well as obsessive early adopters. To pull that off. would require a big vision. But it also required Every day.

Hands on coordination among retail teams separated by languages and Time zones. And geography. Angela knew she had to show her far flung team. Through words and actions.

That each person mattered. And that they were part of something bigger. I want you to be aware of what our plan is, where we're going, and it's all for you, because of you. And I want us to connect. I want you to trust me. This brings us to our weekly videos that we discussed back in part one.

Recorded on the fly. Sent from an iPhone directly to every retail employee at the company. These were not. The stylized Carefully crafted.

Apple productions you might expect. I'm going to do a video and I don't want a studio and I don't want hair and makeup. We have a phone. I'm gonna do it like my kids do YouTube videos. It's gonna be three thoughts in three minutes or less. No editing, nothing. She recorded these videos. Every week for four years.

From wherever she was in the world. Then I didn't want it all about me. Then it was every other week then I would have All the senior executives. So we'd rotate. Because it's important that they do it too and that everybody understands who they are and their function in the business. Angela made these weekly messages a top priority.

Because she understood a fundamental truth about team building. You have to be intentional about fostering cohesion. and common purpose. It won't happen. Just because everyone

is wearing the same color t shirt. And a picture of the same partially munched fruit. You need to build in events, rituals, and good old fashioned. Human to human contact. There is nothing more powerful.

In driving a vision. or turning a company around than just clear, consistent communication that drives connection and collaboration, that builds trust. And when you build that kind of trust then, people feel empowered. One innovation Angela encouraged was built specifically to achieve this kind of empowerment across teams. How?

Human to human contact. Between retail stores. We ended up creating all types of apps and things so that they could talk to each other and solve problems together. we created an app called Loop. But

They had to close the loop if there was a problem. Can't just complain about it. How fast can you fix it? How fast can you close that loop. And so while we're in bed, et cetera, problems comes up, they could all talk to each other. One store could say we just do this or do this. Or yeah. So we put a lot of other platforms in place then for them to communicate with each other. And for us to communicate with them. Giving store managers and employees a way to talk to each other. Brought a new level of

human contact Into Apple retail teams. It also empowered them to solve each other's problems. A store manager in Mexico City might have already solved a problem vexing a store manager in Brussels. Solving the language problem was fairly easy once a tool was in place.

The bigger language problem. played out at Apple HQ. And it was funny, I had to learn to talk. Their language, right? 'Cause there really were not any retailers at all in the company.

To be fair. There were plenty of retailers at the company in the literal sense. As we noted earlier, retail actually made up the Seventy percent of Apple's a hundred thousand employees. But not.

on the senior leadership team. the level which a company's driving mission gets set. Apple executives, like most of us in Silicon Valley. Speak. The language of tech.

If Angela was gonna succeed in rallying her troops. She had to speak. The language of the generals. I used to talk about how the architecture was the hardware. And the experience that took place inside was the software. So basically, what was the OS of the store?

And we didn't have one. The OS of the store. I hadn't heard that before. But it doesn't surprise me that Angela came up with it. Because Angela understands that people use metaphors to oranize their thoughts.

And to communicate. As a group. So she came to Apple. And she was like Okay.

What language do they use? They talk in platforms. And apps. So if I use that language to talk about what we're doing in the store. Then all of a sudden they'll say, Oh

We understand that language. We understand that this is a critical thing to invest in. What do you need? How can we help? And this brings us back. to the elevated mission. The one that rallies the troops and the generals too.

And the one. That brought Angela to Apple. Angela Kept asking. What if?

as she sharpened her vision. For Apple retail. And The OS. Of the Apple store.

Tim used to always say Apple retail has always been about so much more than just selling. So then What if I could be a part of reimagining that retail experience?

And if it's not just about selling. Then what's it about? There's educators in every community. There's entrepreneurs in every community. There's people that need help. We're gonna all live longer. There's a a lot of older people who need support. There's a lot of kids where public schools don't teach them to code. Right. And so all of a sudden I thought, oh, maybe I can dream. Uhhuh. And maybe I can help

reimagine what that experience should be, could be. How many lives can we touch and transform by the power of our performance. And I thought, wow Like what if? Angela began thinking How could she offset some of the thorniest problems wrought by technology? With.

А технологічні сторо I was a woman on a mission. And in the first six months, I'm a big five year plan person. And so very early on, we put that five year plan together. And like I said, dreamed of everything that we wanted to do from a business side, you know, where are we gonna put these stores and why and you know, so brought in all the data in terms of what would be the top two hundred markets in the next twenty years and So we understood where to invest, et cetera, but then by the same token, what are gonna be the biggest things impacting society that we could possibly help offset? I'm telling you, Reed, I didn't know.

I didn't know the problem of isolation. I knew I'd read enough about automation. I did not know a third of the jobs would be disrupted in the next Three years now. I knew it would be disruptive, but when you get facts at your fingertips and you understand the amount of people that maybe need to be inspired to learn something new. When you put a strategy together and you pause and you read and you get some intense outside counsel, again, a third of the white collar jobs, right?

Lawyers, researchers, anything with rope memorization is going away. You can't, you're one company, you got X number of stores, but I still think that every company has a greater responsibility. Every company needs to do what they can do using their resources. There were a couple of different programs that were created by you and your whole team while you were there. What was the

program that you most like ah this felt like a great step forward. Yeah. Tim said he thinks it's one of the greatest launches. Um, the program's called today at Apple. Today at Apple. It was Angela's OS for the store. A program of free daily lessons offered in all Apple stores worldwide.

It's a way to bring Apple products to To life. by unlocking the creative potential. It's also something Bigger.

It's not a coincidence that today at Apple's number one mission is to encourage connection just with people in communities. Today at Apple is really Just think of it as the operating system. In a store. We used to say that you know if you go to Apple dot com, you get this incredible two D experience. And it's deep product knowledge, deep learning, et cetera, right?

And if you go into a store Should have the most incredible three D experience. And that's about humans. This is about human interaction because you can buy it faster, cheaper anywhere else. You can go to Apple support and get

Great service. So what is the purpose of this box that five hundred million people walk into every single right? When Angela asked What is the purpose of this box? What she really meant was What is the elevated mission that every store manager Can get behind.

Today at Apple. Gave the stores that sense of purpose. And it also gave store managers a lot of autonomy to decide what Today at Apple.

in their store. We told the teams that You are the beating heart in your community. More people are walking into you than walking into any other establishment in your community. So I used to tell the store managers,

whether you like it or not, you're the de facto mayor of your community. And so with today at Apple, with all of the programming we were creating, it wasn't just for individuals. We had teachers Tuesdays where educators could come in and also learn about great apps they could use. We were starting to build boardrooms and all the new stores so that entrepreneurs had a place to gather and that our business leaders could teach them what they needed to know. So when I said the mayor of your community, you need to know your entrepreneurs, you need to know your educators, but you also have kids. Right. And so we would encourage them, instead of kids watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, bring them into the stores and do Power of code.

Angela. Was re envisioning the Apple store as town square. At a moment. When town squares are disappearing. Just as she had been working to bring the Apple retail family together.

She wanted to invite the customers into that experience too. She wanted the town square of your local Apple store. to be a place for human to human contact. And it started with naming the store managers. As de facto mayors.

Responsible not only for implementing Today at Apple but helping to create it. for their local community. I asked her. How she brought that about.

But say now you're gonna be the mayor. of a aspect of your community. You're gonna not just learn to say, Hey, this is why these products Bring delight and joy. to you but also

You're gonna help integrate them into various aspects of their lives. You have a greater responsibility. That's a new set of thinking. That's a new set of skills. How did you Help. Them get there. The tenure. of Apple employees.

specifically management is strong. I mean over five years. I think that they were longing to take on something else. We would then get together fifteen hundred of these senior leaders across the world. And I would stand on stage and talk to them and then we'd interact. What does this mean and how are we going to do it? The significance of that face to face human interaction.

Amongst fifteen hundred senior leaders cannot be overstated. It takes the far flung. global nature of Apple. And makes it immediate. Tangible.

And concrete. It creates a sense of being connected. To a home. Almost like a family reunion. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position.

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I hope to see you there. We're back. And we were just talking about how important it is to meet in person when you're trying to unite. A global team. The All Hands Meeting.

The team retreat. the annual company picnic. These are not new concepts in business. But if you do them well. you can use them as more than just an opportunity to swap business cards.

A practice, by the way. Angela doesn't even like I never handed out business cards. Yeah. Because I always find that on a plane If you handed out a business card.

It totally changed the conversation. Yep. I've met so many amazing people on planes and I had no idea who they were and they had no idea. I had to Google them afterwards. I mean one time I called my husband, I said, I just sat next to the guy who th who who threw the Super Bowl touchdown. I had no idea. No idea. Right? Till long after. Yes. But it would have changed the conversation. I prefer just to Keep it basic. Be human. You bet.

Be human. B Uh It's the overriding lesson of Angela's work uniting teams. Whether your team is seventy thousand.

Or seven. It works. Mm-hmm. To show you what I mean, I want you to hear from someone whose organization could not possibly be more removed. From the polished glass boxes of Apple's retail stores.

The house is an old rock house. And the water system

So when we were kids And my grandmother lived there, you would open the faucet. it would just dribble a little bit of water out. That voice.

A rancher we discovered through the annual cowboy poetry gathering. Oh Captain, my captain, our fearful trip is done. Yo lay lay Yeah. and twenty two other members of his family are co-owners of the Trig Family Ranch in New Mexico.

It's a functional cattle ranch operated and managed by sister Christin. So all twenty three owners. Still have a say. The ranch is set up through a trust. And all of the heirs are beneficiaries.

To the trust. We've set the trust up so that We can't sell the ranch unless 85% of the heirs agree to do so. Many family farms.

Don't survive once the original caretakers pass away. The inheritor cell. or simply let it fall into disrepair. It's hard. to feel a sense of belonging.

That's why the Trig family took steps. Make sure that didn't happen. To their ranch. We knew that

We had to come up with a plan if we wanted to keep it together. With everyone spread out across the country. The Trig family came up with two solutions that might sound familiar to you. One. They gave themselves a mission statement.

to rally around. That is ecologically, socially, and financially sustainable. so that all Steve and Best Trig descendants may access and enjoy the land's gift and to manage Our lands for healthy

Diverse, productive, and naturally beautiful landscapes of the we triggered. May live and in our dying rest in peace with our mother earth. That's quite a statement. And Eric has it seared into his memory. Actually I'm I'm reading it off my computer.

Oh. The next step they took. Was a face to face Human approach. Something to make sure all family members could keep their connection to the ranch.

to make it more real to them. as well as uphold the family's mission to keep the ranch together. Enter. The Trig Ranch Work Week. An annual seven day gathering of the family.

to tackle a construction or repair project right on the ranch. Remember that old rock house Eric told us about? That. was their first big undertaking. It's been concentrated on my grandmother's house, not us

which is an old rock house built in the nineteen twenties. was totally falling down. in the uh late nineties. When we decided that we would start putting it back together. You gotta have water.

So we dug a big Underground. Big well house. and put in a twelve hundred gallon fiberglass tank. the spring runs into that fiberglass tank and then we have a regular pressure pump.

that pumps the water. under pressure into the pipes in the house. Getting the water running was only the beginning. Fixing Nona's house would take many years. But it was just one of the many maintenance, repair, or ranchhand projects.

The family has undertaken. During work week. Eric believes the real glue holding the family together is the hard work they put in. Side by side to build something meaningful. Or fix something.

That's broken. It's not just a lesson in teamwork. But in team building. Team unifying. As each person

Becomes more invested. in the outcome. Like the time. Eric Son Colton. Wanted to paint one of Nona's.

House doors. The house is a rock house with blue trim. And there's a uh door that was needed painted real bad. And Colton wanted to paint it red. Some people were just

horrified that we'd have this one red door in this blue trim house. So we took a vote. one of the evenings when we were eating dinner at work week and Colton won the vote, so he got to paint the door red. So uh, you know, that's his door. Having a red door all your own that you can point to and say, I did that.

is a perfect example. of how individuals can feel connected. To the central mission. Whether it's a family ranch. Or

An Apple store. That brings us back. To Angela Errants. There were other changes Angela brought to the Apple stores. And they weren't small.

Like the elimination of the checkout counter. replaced by roving customer service agents. Any of whom. Can help. Also gone.

The genius bar. With its inscrutable time frames and implacable wizards. At the back of the store. Instead, you can now schedule a service repair request remotely. And bring your device in at the appointed time.

But Angela maintains that today at Apple. was her signature achievement. It was the culmination of her best strengths as a leader. The ability to project a grand vision and then see the work through. Ви фейс та фейс.

Human interaction. It was a project. Team members could invest themselves in. Put their own stamp on. Paint their own.

Red door. Best of all. It could continue to evolve and improve. Beyond what she'd initially conceived. Frequently when you do a startup and you you're do a product launch or a mission

There's this original conception, then there's things that you learn as you're getting the product market fit. So you had this idea. You went into this lunch. What were some of the things that you learned along the path of it? To tune it, to refine it, to make it better. We had moved a couple of people from Marcom over.

Marcom Marketing communications And then they hired a whole team of people'cause we didn't have in retail, we didn't have a huge marketing department to even create this, right? We spent a tremendous amount of time. And I was so clear in my vision.

It's iOS Live. And if it's iOS Live. It has to replicate every single thing on the phone. Because it's the 3D live version of it, right? So if if it's the number one camera in the world, and that's what everybody knows, when they walk into a store, it's gotta be intuitive that those classes, courses are all about photography. Or if it's music, Apple Music or the App Store, everything about creating app, right? I wanted it to just go right off of. And I was so clear.

Over and over. But you know, there were a handful of them that were like, No, no, Steve was also about art and creativity and but there's not an art app. Right? I mean, I was being so black and white and so linear. and pushing hard on it. But they finally convinced me that I shouldn't be so black and white.

That there should be some of this other stuff. But I had this vision that just lined up so perfect. And so they convinced me in some of the best classes today. R Some of those on art and design. Creating tree houses and you know, on iPads and Yep, which aren't necessarily a specific app on the phone, yes. What's interesting to me about this moment is that Angela wanted a logical direct correlation between the app on the iPhone

And the class being taught. And it was her team that convinced her to let the class topics be more intuitive. If you remember, in part one we talked about balancing The analytical. and the intuitive in leadership.

I didn't understand back then that I was half right brain and half left brain. I didn't even know what it meant. Angela wanted to cultivate the logical. And the intuitive inner self. And in those around her. The proof that she had built.

The right team. And the right approach. Is that when it came time to make a critical decision? They showed her The right answer.

They had adopted the elevated mission. Has their own. That How you unite. A global team.

You inspire them. With a guiding mission. You connect them. Face to face. Give them a reason.

To buy in. To think big. And think different. And then watch them. Take ownership.

Of the mission itself. Angela left Apple. In early two thousand nineteen. But she hasn't. Left leadership.

She sits on the boards of directors for Ralph Loren and Airbnb. When I asked her about her leadership style. She dropped a few hints. At what might. Be next.

What role has intuition and instinct played in Your leadership, your strategies, your decisions. Mm-hmm. Everything. Yeah. Yeah.

No, and I and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I think it's one of the greatest God given gifts that we're given. And I think You didn't ask me, but if anybody ever asked me your dream job next I would create curriculum.

Mm. From kindergarten on up. Mm. Teaching kids to use and unlock their instincts. Because they're not gonna win with

Memorization. And there is nothing right unless you get to Stanford and design thinking. There is nothing It's the greatest thing we have, and it has never Ever failed me. I'm Reid Hoffman.

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