Beyond the Label

Maureen Chiquet

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780062655721
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Leadership

The former global CEO of Chanel charts her unlikely path from literature major to global chief executive, guiding readers to move beyond the confines of staid expectations and discover their own true paths, strengths, and leadership values.

Driven. Shy. Leader. Wife. Mother. We live in a world of categories — labels designed to tell the world, and ourselves, who we are and ought to be. Some we may covet, others we may fear or disdain; but creating a life that's truly your own, means learning to define yourself on your own terms.

In Beyond the Label, Maureen Chiquet charts her unlikely path from literature major to global chief executive. Sharing the inklings, risks and (re)defining moments that have shaped her exemplary career, Chiquet seeks to inspire a new generation of women, liberal arts grads, and unconventional thinkers to cultivate a way of living and leading that is all their own.

Through vivid storytelling and provocative insights, Chiquet guides readers to consider the pressing questions and inherent paradoxes of creating a successful, fulfilling life in today's increasingly complex and competitive world.

"Why should we separate art from business, feelings from logic, intuition from judgment?" Chiquet poses. "Who decided you can't be determined and flexible, introspective and attuned, mother and top executive? And where does it state standing unflinchingly in your vulnerability, embracing your femininity, won't make you stronger?"

Wise, inspiring, and deeply felt, Beyond the Label is for anyone who longs for a life without limits on who she is or who she will become.

EIGHT

Taking Charge

Mickey Meetings” were the stuff of lore at The Gap. Their purpose was to attain Mickey’s approval and sign-off on the final product assortments and buy plans. The tone of these meetings ranged from wild enthusiasm to near-catastrophic despair and everything in between, largely dependent on Mickey’s (and consequently, everyone else’s) reaction to the products and visual displays. There was a reason that Wall Street investors and financiers called Mickey “the merchant prince”; he had a near-perfect batting average at picking best sellers. As a consequence, most merchants sat on pins and needles awaiting Mickey’s discriminating judgment. Timelines were invariably tight, and decisions in these meetings could make or break a season’s deliveries. Merchants and visual merchandising teams often pulled all-nighters preparing their presentations, rearranging outfits, fanning the colors of T-shirts, and organizing the look of each wall to tell the story for the season’s hottest trends. Exhausted, we would then hold our breaths in anxious anticipation of that inevitable moment when our best-laid plans would be torn to pieces.

With little warning, Mickey would blow into the room, kicking up dust like the Tasmanian devil, then rush from display to display, grabbing clothes off the wall. “AMAZING!” He’d rub the fabric between his fingers. “How much did’ya buy?” he’d yell excitedly, “NOT ENOUGH, NO WAY! How many per store? How many will you sell a week? You’ll be broken [out of sizes] in a day!” He’d hurl himself at the displays and, without pausing, lunge for the next item even before the poor merchant could respond. “WHAT?!? Who would buy this thing? Twenty thousand units is twenty thousand too many!” With that, the reject would be tossed to the ground seconds after the meeting had started.

It didn’t matter how much strategizing we did to prepare for these meetings because you could never predict what Mickey might ask. As soon as you thought you’d figured it out, he would change the rules. For good reason—in the fashion business, if you don’t change, you die. And pity the merchants who stubbornly defended a poor choice or weak buy. Mickey cut through their carefully constructed arguments in one fell swoop, homing in on exactly what customers would want and why it wasn’t this, as he pointed at one of their painstakingly chosen gems.

Despite the pressure, I learned so much from Mickey Meetings. When you declared, “I love this pant,” he’d test your conviction, point out the missed opportunities, and convince you to take an even bigger risk. I was always amazed how many merchants resorted to reams of data and comparisons to the previous year’s sales figures for similar items. Mickey hated these comparisons. “Last-year-itis,” he’d call it. “You can’t predict the future based on the past!” And, if you felt good about how an item looked but knew its sales potential was limited, Mickey made you walk through the math of your “exit strategy”—how to preserve the highest possible margin if the item tanked. By continually challenging us to think like a customer, to put our money where our mouths were, and to hedge the bets we were placing, Mickey helped us all become better merchants.

Now as the merchandise manager for Women’s Denim, one of the linchpins of our business, I was next in the lineup. What’s more, I was seven months pregnant with my first child and about twenty-five pounds heavier than usual, so the idea of thinking fast on my feet was, quite literally, impossible. Come what may, I grabbed a rolling rack and, like a duck on speed, waddled down the hall to the conference room, organizing my samples as best I could. I cascaded the hangers so that the jeans were sorted by fit and quickly clipped the swatches of corresponding finishes to the jeans. I hadn’t had time to get each of the finishes sampled in the right fit, which I knew would be a disadvantage. Tough luck. It’ll have to do.

Mickey leaned back in his chair, his lips pressed together as if he wasn’t entirely pleased with whatever had happened before I entered. “Come on in, Maureen,” Mickey said. “Take a seat.”

Tension rippled in the air. “Show us what’s new and exciting. I want to see everything, even stuff you didn’t buy a lot of, actually, especially the stuff you didn’t buy a lot of.” I could read between the lines. He meant, “I know you merchants don’t take enough risks, so I want to see the things you’re too scared to go after because those will be our best sellers.”

I’ll show him I’m not afraid of risks, I thought. I was about to unleash what I hoped would be our new secret weapon—a fantastic new fabric in a trendy new fit. Our best-selling jean was the Classic Fit, which was high-waisted, with a straight leg that tapered at the bottom. Personally I thought the fit was unflattering, and its declining sales indicated that I might not be alone. I’d begun to notice wider leg, stovepipe, and even bell-bottoms coming back into fashion.

“We have this incredible new denim from Japan,” I announced. “It’s lighter weight than our Cone [a domestic mill] denim, so the drape is amazing. And we can do it in this light, sandblasted finish, which I think looks incredibly cool.” I ignored that Mickey generally hated when we tried to sell him on our products as I forged on.

“Oh, this isn’t the right sample. I only have it done in a Classic Fit right now, but we’re going to put it into a cooler style.” My comment was met by Mickey’s blank stare. A jolt of nervous adrenaline coursed through my veins; the baby squirmed beneath my sweater.

“The mill says they have only sold limited quantities to high-end denim makers, so we would be the first big brand to have anything like it,” I said. Was my voice cracking? “I also really think it will look good in this new style. Our Classic Fit is really suffering these days. I don’t think cool people want to wear the tapered legs anymore. This Stovepipe jean came from New York [meaning from our design team, a fact I hoped would give it some “cred”]. They love it and—”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Mickey cut me off mid-sentence as he bounded back from his reclining position and motioned for me to pass the fabric to him. “This finish is pretty cool. How much did you buy?”

Ha, I thought. He’ll see I’m no wimp. “A hundred thousand units in the Stovepipe jean, our new silhouette,” I said proudly. “It’s a lower rise than the Classic Fit and the legs don’t taper but go straight down from the waist.” Now I was repeating myself, as I turned to take my sample off the rack and hold it up against my burgeoning belly so he could imagine the fit. In retrospect, that move probably didn’t help sell the poor jean. “Oh, this one is in the wrong fabric, but it’s the right silhouette,” I shot back. Mickey squinted back at me, his brow knitted, his mouth twisting in what I could only read as distaste. I handed him the jean, which he held for less than a second before crumpling it up on the table.

“No, no. How much of this jean?” He held up the sample of the Classic Fit and began to shake it. “How much of the Classic Fit did you buy in the new finish?”

Oh no. I hadn’t bought any of the Classic Fit jean in the new finish, and the yardage for the Stovepipe had already been ordered and was on its way to the plant to be cut. “We didn’t think that finish would look right in the Classic Fit, so we only bought it in the Stovepipe. I think it will look much cooler in the new fit and that’s what everyone wants to wear right now.” I didn’t hesitate with my answer. Surely Mickey would be sensitive to what was trending and pleased that I was taking a risk on something new.

Wrong. “Wait a minute. Stop. What?!? You didn’t buy your best new finish in your best-selling jean? That makes absolutely no sense!”

I’d only been head of Women’s Denim for a couple of months, but wanted to show him I knew what I was doing, so I pressed on. “The Classic Fit is trending down and it really looks wrong. Women don’t want jeans that taper at the ankles. It’s not very attract—”

“Of course, it’s trending down!” Mickey cut in forcefully. “If you keep putting your cheapest, ugliest fabrics in it, it certainly won’t help sell it.” Without taking a breath, he asked, “How many are you selling of the Classic Fit?” He fired the question at me. “How many are you selling this week?”

“Uh, um.” I fumbled through my trend report. “Just a sec. Let me look it up.” Mickey was usually okay if we didn’t have an answer, but I could feel his eyes boring into me. “Um, 24,500 units this week,” I squeaked.

“Okay, now how much are you selling of your second-best jean?” His voice was now several decibels louder. The answer was implicit in the question. A lot less. Obviously.

I couldn’t resist the urge to explain my point of view one more time. He didn’t seem to get where I was coming from. “We’re selling four thousand units of the Wide Leg jean, but we’re ‘broken’ [out of stock] and don’t have our reorder in yet. Also, we only bought that one in two finishes and the Classic Fit is in four. I really think the Stovepipe is going to blow out. The Classic Fit is just so old and tir—”

Mickey stood up, fuming. Traces of spit formed at the edges of his mouth. All of the merchants knew that this was a very, very bad sign. His voice now boomed. “Four thousand units? And you’re selling twenty-five thousand of the Classic Fit, more than six times as much? Really? Listen, Maureen, I gotta tell you, I am not going to stand here and argue with you anymore about this. You are not listening to me. You need to buy the finish in the Classic Fit and stop jerking around with this other thing.” He flung the Stovepipe across the table and stormed out of the room. “I have to go to my next meeting.”

Shaken, I gathered up my things and lumbered back to my office, sure that Mickey would fire me. I put my head in my hands and started to imagine how I would tell Antoine that I’d lost my job. Suddenly, the phone rang.

“Maureen, Mickey.” Here goes, I thought. “Maureen, you have potential. You could be a damn good merchant. I know you have good taste and can pick best sellers, but . . .” Mickey paused. I held my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “But you need to learn to listen. You spent that entire meeting trying to tell me you were right. You didn’t hear a word I said!”

“I know, Mickey. I’m sorry. You were right,” I gurgled, still trying to keep my composure.

“No,” he said. “It’s not about being right. And it’s not because I’m the CEO. I am just asking you to stop, open your ears, and hear what people have to say. If you don’t, you’ll never be a great merchant. I didn’t mean to be so hard on you, but I think you have a lot of potential. You need to listen better. Okay?”

“Thanks, Mickey,” I said softly, suddenly realizing the magnitude of his call. He didn’t have to pick up the phone or spend the time to explain to me what I should have already known. He was a busy person, the CEO of one of America’s most successful retail companies. Yet he cared enough to teach me one of the most important lessons I would ever learn. To listen. To listen deeply.

At the moment I understood that if I was going to succeed, not just as a merchant but in life, I would have to practice listening; not just sometimes, but all of the time; not just to him but to my teams, my customers, and other stakeholders. More give-and-take and less defensiveness—these were the skills I’d need to develop if I wanted to continue to make my mark. Now that I had a few direct reports and depended on their input and their ideas just as much as, if not more than, my own, I was going to have to loosen the reins to become less focused on proving myself and my points and more directed toward others. Hard-charging competence and expertise weren’t enough.

I also began to understand something fundamental about myself. Up until this point in my life, I’d succeeded largely because I’d been good at doing what was expected of me; I was good at winning approval—whether it was from my parents, my teachers, or my bosses. This was a way to show my worth, to stand out from my peers, and to demonstrate that I understood the rules of the game—and could play better than others. But I hadn’t yet seen the darker side of this dogged determination—that it kept me in a reactive posture and could shut me off from others’ perspectives and experiences. My own hunger to prove myself was overshadowing everything else, including my ability to excel at my job.

A shadow. We all have one that changes shape with our actions. Sometimes, the shadow becomes elongated and foreboding; sometimes it is amorphous and shrunken to nearly nothing. But it never disappears entirely. Psychotherapists and coaches talk about the shadow as the hidden side of our personality, the unconscious drives and desires that nevertheless inform our conscious choices. Mickey’s admonitions had shone a light on one side of my shadow and helped me understand that I’d need to keep that aspect in check. As I continued to earn promotions over the next few years, I also learned to navigate those treacherous Mickey Meetings with more grace (and success) by seeing them as fruitful conversations and opportunities to learn from his great experience rather than trials I needed to pass. I tried to worry less about being perfect and gaining approval and more about how we might come up with the best assortment. I was able to take many of his good ideas to heart in the same way that I’d started to open my ears to the assistants and associates who ran segments of the business in my departments. As counterintuitive as it may sound, relaxing the reins a bit actually improved his and others’ opinion of me. Soon, I became respected for my ability to train new hires and lead small teams.

But a few years later, when I was already an executive vice president at Old Navy managing a team of two hundred people, my shadow started to loom large again.

As a progressive company, The Gap was eager to groom a new generation of leaders to become presidents for its divisions (Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy), so they decided to give some of their “high potentials” the opportunity to work with executive coaches. I was one of the lucky ones chosen to be part of this effort, though I wasn’t sure how lucky I felt at the time. I’d always thought that a coach was assigned when a leader was really messing up and needed a correction, like getting a trainer to reform a naughty dog. But as my boss, Jenny Ming, president of Old Navy, explained, “The coach will help you to see what you’re missing to become a president.” Missing? It sounded like yet another unpleasant test I had to pass in order to prove my worth.

When Devé, my new coach, walked into my office, I hardly thought she was the one to prepare me for my next big role. She looked to be about twenty-five years old, almost ten years younger than I was. Her athletic build and well-tanned skin indicated that she might make a better surf instructor than leadership guide. What could she possibly teach me that I didn’t already know?

Our first meeting felt innocuous enough. She conducted a few personality tests, not unlike those dating quizzes I found at the career services office in college. (I sure hoped these would be more useful.) According to Myers-Briggs, the first test I took, I was an extreme introvert. No big surprise there. I had worked hard to “manage” my shyness over the years, putting myself in new situations and inserting my presence where necessary. It was draining, but I assumed it was the price I had to pay to accomplish my...