George Jones says he’s been able to assemble a terrific team at Borders.
Question: What has been your greatest success?
George Jones: At Borders I think the greatest success I have achieved so far I think really falls into two things. One is putting together a really great team and I think we have a really- an excellent team now. We’ve made the changes we needed. We’ve brought in some really good people at key positions and I think we continue to work on that throughout the organization but I think we have a really great team and I feel great about that. The other thing is I think we have the right strategic plan for this business. We put a lot of work into it. I had the cornerstones of it in my- when I arrived as far as what I thought, and it all goes around creating a headquarters for knowledge and entertainment, really looking at our business beyond just being a seller of books, CDs and DVDs that also has a café and saying the business that we’re really in is delivering knowledge or information and entertainment, and if we can do that better than other people out there then there is a great business to be had here and a lot of opportunities. We put together a strategic plan that will support that and really get us to where we need to go. It was a very participative plan with a lot of contribution from our team on it and I think we ended up with the plan which we announced in March 2007 that we really believe in, that we think is the right plan for our business. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made on it and it’s- it takes time to get there but we are on track. We’ve certainly had more difficulties in a more challenging economic situation that we have right now in the retail climate we’ve had but even with that we may re-prioritize some to try to focus on improving our cash flow and paying down debt this year as opposed to just solely driving sales or the other basic elements of the plan, but in those areas we’ve made great progress and I think-- I feel more confident than ever that we can really build a great company here and deliver a lot of value for our shareholders.
Recorded on: 6/12/08
