The following is adapted from Built on Belief by Matt Marcotte.
When I served as regional director for Gap’s Boston region, I oversaw sixty stores and nearly a thousand employees. At the time, Gap was slipping. Once the darling of Wall Street, the brand had drifted from its core customers in pursuit of a new audience that never materialized. We alienated loyal shoppers and lost our clarity of purpose.
The company responded with panic-driven moves—slashing payroll, cutting costs, and trying to operate our way out of decline. But my team and I realized that if we were going to turn things around, we needed to ask three questions: How did we get here? What’s stopping us from moving forward? And most importantly—how do we win back our customers?
We quickly identified that Gap had lost what I called “clarity of offering.” Customers no longer understood what we stood for. To fix this, we had to rethink merchandising and create a shopping experience that felt easy, inspiring, and distinct for men, women, and children.
With little budget and even fewer resources, we pulled together district managers, store leaders, and merchants for a road trip to Vermont. There, we redesigned entire store sections overnight, working in teams under the philosophy of “freedom within a framework.” Each morning, we presented, debated, and refined ideas. What emerged was a new merchandising strategy—built collectively, tested quickly, and rooted in customer insight.
We couldn’t roll it out everywhere, but we focused on twelve stores. Each store across the region chipped in payroll hours to help staff them, and we treated these stores like live labs. Every day, managers reported what was working, what wasn’t, and what needed tweaking.
The results came fast. Stores that had been down 40 percent flattened within weeks and began outperforming others in the region. The reason wasn’t just strategy—it was clarity. Everyone knew what we were solving for, where we were starting from, and what success looked like.
Here’s the truth: if you don’t know where you’re starting from, you can’t chart a course forward. Too many leaders focus only on vision without a fact-based assessment of reality. Our turnaround worked because we combined both.
But clarity alone wasn’t enough. What truly powered our success was that the strategy came from within—not dictated by headquarters or consultants, but created by those closest to the customer. Employees weren’t just following orders; they were owning solutions. We weren’t rowing separately—we were rowing together.
Leadership isn’t about abandoning your team or issuing top-down mandates. It’s about showing up, telling the truth, and creating conditions where the best ideas emerge from those living the work every day. When people share clarity and commitment, the energy shifts. “Why are we doing this?” becomes “What if we tried this?”
That’s when momentum builds—and real transformation begins.
…
For more insights on clarity, leadership, and building belief-driven teams, you can find Built on Belief on Amazon.
Matt Marcotte is the founder of M2 Collaborative, a leadership coaching and brand strategy consultancy. He has spent more than three decades in the C-suite building, scaling, reinventing, and leading some of the most valuable brands in the world including Apple, Gap, Tory Burch, Bergdorf Goodman, and Salesforce. Matt teaches an MBA course on consumer and brand relationships at Boston College, his alma mater, and is a Columbia University trained coach. He has been one of RETHINK Retail’s 100 Most Influential People and Thinkers360 Top 100 Thought Leaders. He lives in Boston with his husband and dog.