How Will We Get There?
Tom – As I think of this, I go back to 1999 and the beginning of the reinvent process. I think this was shortly after you became the president, Terry, you said, "You know what? We need to reinvent the department store." And we put together a bright group of people – I think they initially had 160 ideas – that would have really been a reinvention but which based on cost and other things we knocked down to 20. We built a new store in Easton that became one of our best stores and still is one of our best stores. I think that kicked off this entire reinvention and many of the things we've done since then have just been the next layer based on that original reinvent idea. When you look back on all the steps we've taken over that period of time, I think that when we did that, we got everybody excited about reinventing the store and everybody talking about reinventing the store. I think that's changed our culture entirely to where it's this idea of continuous improvement and change, change, change as a good thing, not a bad thing. And that's an important part of Macy's, Inc.'s culture today. It's one of the things that's going to separate us from the rest of the field in the future.
Terry – I think the fact that we have made a lot of changes – we've talked about the reinventing of the store, we've certainly made changes in marketing, we've made changes in our organization structure and we've made changes with acquisitions and the big changes of name for our stores in our divisions – and those have been significant. I think we all feel pretty darn good about the changes we've made and that just gives us more encouragement to think about making more changes in the future. This is an organization that has not only lived through change, we thrived through change and that gives us reason to think about, "What's the next idea? What's the next thing we've gotta do to make the shopping experience for our customer a better one? To make the experience for our employees a better one?" One of the key things we're doing is communicate, communicate, communicate. We all believe that if you tell this organization, "Here's our vision. Here's our plan. Here's what your role is. This is what we want you to do to be part of this," they line up with enthusiasm to support that vision and that, I think, is what is making this whole thing work.
Sue – We get so many great new ideas from the company. It doesn't really come from us. The direction is here, but the ideas come from everybody in the company at all levels. So, that's what makes it so exciting.
Terry – We make ourselves accessible to a very, very broad audience and answering some of those emails is hard some days, but it's great because we all take the time to personally respond to these ideas from our employees no matter what level, where they come from. Some are better ideas than other ideas, but the fact that we do respond, I think, gives people the encouragement to say, "management's listening" and it encourages people to want to again be part of this winning team.
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Tom Cole,
Vice Chair