Good morning.
Over this past year, I’ve been talking with industry experts and executives about what it takes for a CFO to become a CEO. Today, I’m continuing the conversation with some keen insight from Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy Co. Inc.
Barry joined the electronics retailer in 1999 and became CEO in June 2019. She was promoted to chief executive after three years in the CFO role. And before that, Barry held a variety of financial and operational roles across the company.
The leader offered advice on transitioning from CFO to CEO during an interview with Fortune‘s Emma Hinchliffe at the Most Powerful Women Summit on Oct. 11.
“There's a couple things that were really instrumental for me,” Barry explained. “I had a CEO who was also very much a mentor to me and stretched my responsibilities as CFO. I became CFO and the chief transformation officer, and by nature, it was left brain, right brain every day. You have to think about how you’re going to drive growth, and I’m also on the hook to make sure our SG&A [selling, general, and administrative expenses] is in line with where it needs to be as an organization.”
Barry thinks there will be a pivot from linear careers that “go straight up one level of expertise,” she said. “I think it will look more like a lattice versus a ladder, and you’re going to spend more time trying to add responsibilities.” To become a successful CEO, “you’re going to have to think around every corner of every issue,” she said. “For me, that was the biggest change from CFO where you’re a little bit more linear in how you’re thinking.”
Barry continued, “As a CEO, you will opine on everything from an invasion in Ukraine all the way to a structural issue about your business model. I’m always recommending to change, and push yourself to get uncomfortable. It’s way easier to try to be great on a linear path. But you’ve got to make yourself really uncomfortable in your career journey.”
Barry positioned Best Buy (No. 94 on this year’s Fortune 500 list earning $46 billion in revenue) well to ride the pandemic-fueled jump in electronics spending. But now that consumers are done building themselves home offices and theaters, the CEO has to counteract a drop in sales. Best Buy is trying out new avenues of revenue, such as new, smaller stores selling refurbished electronics to pull in more budget-oriented shoppers.
“For me, I think there is a unique set of challenges CEOs are navigating,” Barry said to the audience of leaders. “An invasion in Ukraine. A $3 trillion stimulus. A pandemic. And we have stacked those. No CEO before us, no one before all of you, has had to navigate that stacked set of crises.”
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
*An upcoming event: Fortune’s CFO Collaborative is an invitation-only group of CFOs from leading companies, which meets virtually and in person for deep-dive discussions on what is top of mind for finance leaders. Next month, our conversation will focus on, “What will the CFO role look like in 2024?” In this intimate dinner discussion scheduled for November 9 in Boston, Mass., hosted in partnership with Workday and Deloitte, we will explore the evolving role and scope of the CFO. We will be joined by Alan Murray, CEO at Fortune, and Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
It’s an invite-only event, but CFOs can apply to attend here. If you’d like more information, please send an email to: CFOCollaborative@Fortune.com
