Just returned to my office from this Thought Leader Gathering (TLG) put on by Heartland Circle and held this morning at Best Buy Company.

Being in a contemplative mood for the last few weeks, today’s gathering was interesting on many levels and also brought me back to one aspect of my work: unleashing the collective. The collective of Internet-connected humanity is my work, but I was sort of surprised by how something NOT directly in my strategic technology domain informed my thoughts in such a profound way today.

The event was about WoLF: The Women’s Leadership Forum at Best Buy. The leaders, Julie Gilbert and Mary Capozzi, led off with powerfully told personal stories that helped us understand what led each of them to the formation of this forum. WoLF’s essence is that it empowers women in the organization and is clearly unleashing their perspectives, their influence and engaging them. Apparently most women had been relatively excluded.

A key aspect to this forum (and the WoLF ‘packs’ which have formed) is that partnering with the men within Best Buy is critical to bringing women’s energy to bear for the good of them and, especially, the company. Read the link above to learn more but what you won’t take away was how powerful this has become and the ROI that Best Buy the business is achieving from it.

If you want to get all left brain and quantified and dismiss my relating this event to you as YAWM (Yet Another Women’s Movement) consider this: Best Buy is measuring the results of lower female turnover in an otherwise incredibly high turnover labor pool (i.e., retail). Another fact Ms. Gilbert articulated is that, “Women buy more technology products than men — spending $55 billion of the annual $96 billion in technology sales.” Hmmm…so engaging women could be good business and profitable…hmmm.

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