Johnson built the Apple Store and before that Target's design partnerships, then lasted about 17 months as CEO of JCPenney after scrapping its coupon-driven pricing. Here he is accounting for why he rolled the new pricing out across thousands of items in roughly six weeks instead of testing it: the team, the board, the investors and above all the customers did not understand what he was doing. Both halves of the quote come from the same stretch of the interview about that decision.
Yeah. And if I had done it over and we had a year, I would have at least tested the marketing messages. You know, you can do that without testing with a customer. That would have been helpful.
Yeah.
You know, there are a lot of ways we could have rolled out. I was worried about the cost of having two teams, one doing the new pennies, one managing the old. I thought it'd be too much work for the buyers to do both. So I thought of it as an either or. But the big thing, you know, quite honestly, I was arrogant. I was situationally arrogant. Everything I had done for 25 years had worked.
Yep.
You know, and because I had the courage to make change. And so when the board said go, I said, let's go. You know, and on that side, we should have tested a lot of things.
How did that impact your ego? Like, did you feel down or like that you were a failure because you had failed this transformation with Chase Watson?