Our “On the Move” series highlights HBS alumni who are taking on new roles and responsibilities. Here we speak with Massimo (Max) Magni (MBA 2003), who has been named Macy’s new chief customer and digital officer. In this role, Magni will take charge of Macy’s digital business and help guide the strategic long-term growth of the company.

Magni’s journey to Macy’s has been many years in the making. He grew up in a village of 8,000 people in Italy. His parents believed in the importance of traveling, so Magni spent a year as a high-school exchange student in Marshfield, Wisconsin, where he played in the marching band. The group was invited to participate in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in New York and had a private, after-hours tour of the store. “They showed us everything—the Christmas decorations, I just loved it. So I’ve always had this thing about this brand,” he says.

What brought you to Macy’s?
When I decided it was time for me to leave McKinsey, the reason was I wanted to see what it is to be an operator, and I want to be a CEO one day of a big corporation. So, what I'm excited about here is for the first time in my life I really have to operate and drive the business. Now it's about, there's a top line, there's a bottom line, and that's what you need to drive.

Describe your first day.
On the first day, before I started, I took a long, long, long, long walk. I walked from home to here, which is three and a half miles.

I was supposed to be here at 8 am and I left home at 6:30 am because I was excited and that way I could let the tension go. I couldn't really sleep the night before, so I had to let it go. And then it was about letting the agenda go and just going with the flow and enjoying every single moment, and soaking it all in.

How do you start your day off right?
The first thing that I do is clear my head. I live in downtown Manhattan, and I come to midtown, I take the subway and I stop two stops before and then I walk. I listen to music, and I just relax, let it go. When I come here, the first thing that I do is obsess around performance. I look at numbers. Where are we? What's good, what's bad? So that I can ask the right question. And then I rebuild my day based on what is the priority, what is the immediate priority, and then what are the big projects that we're working on so that we can make sure that we don't forget about them.

Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving Day parade float?
The picture that I'm about to show you, my team here found it in the archives and they're making a huge poster to put just behind me. It’s Goofy, and this is my [high school] band in front of it. So that has to be my favorite float for sure.

This year, by the way, I just signed up to be a balloon handler, and three of my four kids are going to be balloon handlers with me.

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