Nora Gomez has spent more than 30 years navigating growth, transformation and change from inside major organizations. Now, the former Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) executive is applying those lessons to a company of her own.
Next Generation Growth focuses on the intersection of leadership, organizational performance and what Gomez calls Human Intelligence—the judgment, clarity, trust and adaptability that allow people and organizations to turn increasingly powerful technology into meaningful business results.
For consumer electronics and appliance retailers, Gomez believes the implications go well beyond deciding which AI tools to deploy. Retailers need to think about how AI can make their people more capable, where human expertise still creates competitive advantage, and whether their cultures are prepared for the transformation technology is accelerating.
TWICE spoke with Gomez about leaving NFM, becoming an entrepreneur, what her years in retail taught her about leadership, and why the retailers that thrive in an AI-driven world may be the ones that invest as aggressively in their people as they do in technology.
TWICE: When we last spoke, you were a senior executive at NFM. Now you’re the founder of Next Generation Growth. What made you decide it was time to bet on yourself?
Nora Gomez: I had spent more than 30 years building businesses, brands, and teams inside some extraordinary organizations, and I loved being an operator. I still do. But toward the end of my corporate career, I started paying attention to a pattern. Companies could buy technology. They could hire talent. They could develop great strategies. But none of those things guaranteed that an organization could actually move.
The difference was often leadership. Did people have clarity about what mattered? Were they aligned around it? Did they have the confidence and capacity to act?
I realized I had accumulated three decades of experience around that problem through growth, turnaround, reinvention, and transformation, and I wanted to do something with it.
I suppose I did bet on myself. But more than that, I bet on the idea that what I had learned could help other organizations grow. There was also a moment when the idea became real. I was on a spring break trip with my family in Gig Harbor, Washington, and for the first time in a while, I had enough distance from the day-to-day to really think about what I wanted the next chapter of my career to look like.
I had spent my career building for other organizations, and I was incredibly proud of that. But I kept coming back to the idea that I wanted to build something of my own around the leadership challenges I had experienced firsthand.
I talked about it with my family on that trip, and something shifted. I came home knowing I was going to do it.
TWICE: What has surprised you most about going from senior executive at a major organization to entrepreneur?
Gomez: How much you learn about what actually belongs to you.
When you’re a senior executive, you have a title, resources, talented teams, infrastructure, and a large organization that can turn an idea into action very quickly. When you leave, all of that stays behind.
What travels with you is your judgment. Your relationships. Your ability to recognize patterns. Your ability to look at eleven things and determine which one actually matters.
That has been both humbling and incredibly energizing. I’ve also discovered how much I love building from the ground up. I’m probably doing some of the most creative thinking of my career right now.
You also become much more disciplined about what deserves your time. You can’t pursue ten priorities equally. You have to decide what matters most.
Technology has changed entrepreneurship enormously, too. Today, one person can do things that would have required a team not that many years ago. I’m living the positive side of the AI story every day.
TWICE: Now that you have some distance from NFM, what did your years there teach you about leadership and culture that you’re carrying into Next Generation Growth?
Gomez: That culture and performance aren’t separate conversations.
I had the privilege of working inside a Berkshire Hathaway company, and I saw firsthand what happens when trust, accountability and autonomy are real operating principles rather than words on a wall.
At NFM, we accomplished some significant things. We grew businesses, expanded digital, built new capabilities and navigated a tremendous amount of change. None of that happened because one executive had all the answers.
It happened because talented people throughout the organization understood what we were trying to accomplish and had the ability to act.
Great leaders don’t create organizations that depend on them for every decision. They create the conditions for other people to make great decisions.
Culture is the cumulative experience created by leadership every day. What leaders prioritize, tolerate, reward, communicate and model becomes the culture. You can often see the health of a business before you see it in the financial results.
That’s why I believe leadership isn’t the outcome. Leadership creates the conditions that produce outcomes.
TWICE: “Human Intelligence” is at the center of what you’re building. What does it mean, and why does it become more important as AI gets better?
Gomez: AI is extraordinary. It can give us access to information, analysis, and capabilities at a speed we’ve never experienced before.
But here’s what’s interesting: AI is making answers abundant. That makes the quality of the question, the judgment applied to the answer, and the decision about what to do next even more valuable.
AI doesn’t remove accountability. A leader still has to make the call.
That’s why I don’t see Human Intelligence and artificial intelligence as competing ideas. They’re complementary.
Human Intelligence is the leadership capability that enables organizations to turn artificial intelligence into better decisions, stronger execution, and meaningful business outcomes.
And as access to AI becomes increasingly democratized, leadership becomes the differentiator.
TWICE: You identify judgment, trust, clarity, and adaptability as critical human capabilities. Which are companies struggling with most?
Gomez: Clarity.
Clarity is tricky because a clarity problem often looks like agreement. Everyone sits in the meeting. Everyone nods. Everyone leaves believing they’re aligned. Then three different parts of the organization execute three slightly different versions of the strategy.
By the time you discover it, you’re calling it an execution problem.
I believe clarity is foundational to nearly everything else. People can’t exercise great judgment if they don’t understand what matters most.
That’s why one of the simplest ideas in my work is also one of the most important: Clarity first.
When leaders get clear, organizations move.
TWICE: Every retail executive is being told they need an AI strategy. Are companies asking the right questions?
Gomez: I think we’re asking a lot of technology-first questions: What’s our AI strategy? What can we automate? Which tools should we implement?
Those questions matter, but I wouldn’t start there.
I’d start with: Where are we making decisions too slowly or poorly today, and why?
If the problem is that people don’t have the right information at the right time, AI may create enormous value. But if the problem is that nobody will tell the CEO the truth, or three functions are working toward different definitions of success, technology isn’t going to solve that.
In some organizations, AI isn’t creating the leadership problem. It’s exposing the one that was already there.
AI is an amplifier. If the culture is dysfunctional, you can very quickly automate the dysfunction. But put AI into a healthy organization and you can accelerate learning, experimentation and better decision-making.
That’s why I believe AI transformation and leadership transformation have to happen together. The goal isn’t to become an AI company. The goal is to become a better company because of AI.
TWICE: Do you see a danger that retailers could become so focused on AI-driven efficiency that they remove the human interactions that create customer loyalty?
Gomez: Absolutely.
I think retailers need to distinguish between transactions and moments of consequence.
If I want to know where my delivery is, make it effortless. If I need to reorder something routine, automate it. Customers aren’t asking for more human interaction in places where technology can make their lives easier.
But buying a major appliance is different. Building a home theater is different. Those are moments where expertise, reassurance and confidence matter.
The goal shouldn’t be to preserve human interaction everywhere. It should be to use technology to eliminate friction so your people can be exceptional in the moments where being human creates real value.
If we automate those moments away, we may win the transaction and lose the customer.
TWICE: CE and appliance retailers often sell the same brands and products, sometimes at essentially the same prices. Where is the biggest opportunity to differentiate?
Gomez: Confidence.
When everyone has the same product, similar pricing and comparable delivery options, what the customer is really deciding is: Who do I trust to help me make the right decision? That’s where great people become an enormous competitive advantage. A knowledgeable associate who listens, understands the customer’s real need and is confident enough to say, “Actually, this feature set may be a better fit for you, even if it costs less,” creates trust. That kind of interaction is emotional, not transactional. It tells the customer they’re being helped, not sold to.
And that matters because many big-ticket purchases happen under some form of duress. A refrigerator fails. A washer stops working. A family needs a television before a major event. The customer may be making a significant purchase quickly without feeling fully prepared or confident.
In those moments, people remember whether a retailer made the situation easier or took advantage of it.
A competitor can match your price tomorrow. A competitor can’t build a capable, trusted workforce overnight.
There’s also an enormous opportunity after the sale. The relationship doesn’t end at checkout. In many ways, that’s where it begins. The retailers that create a genuine emotional connection, rather than simply completing a transaction, are the ones customers come back to and recommend.
TWICE: How should CE and appliance retailers use AI to make their people better at serving customers rather than viewing it primarily as a way to reduce costs or headcount?
Gomez: I’d start with this question: What could our best people do if we gave them more capacity?
Can AI put better product knowledge in an associate’s hands while they’re standing with a customer? Can it eliminate administrative work that keeps people away from customers? Can it help someone prepare for an appointment? Can it help a new employee become proficient in weeks instead of months?
Those are exciting applications because you’re not simply taking cost out of the business. You’re increasing the capability of the people already in it.
Efficiency matters. Of course it does.
But imagine the competitive advantage of using AI to make every person in your organization smarter, faster and more capable of serving the customer.
AI shouldn’t just make work faster. It should make people better.
That’s a much bigger idea.
TWICE: What can the CE and appliance industries learn from other retail categories?
Gomez: Other categories have learned that customers rarely buy only the product.
Luxury understands emotion. Hospitality understands experience. Great specialty retailers understand expertise and relationships. Digital businesses understand convenience and personalization.
CE and appliance retailers have tremendous technical knowledge, and that’s an advantage. But the customer doesn’t wake up wanting specifications.
They want a kitchen that works for their family. They want their home to be more connected. They want movie night to be amazing. Most of all, they want to feel confident that they made the right choice.
The opportunity is to combine this industry’s technical expertise with a deeper understanding of the life the customer is trying to create.
TWICE: If I’m a longtime CE or appliance retail employee wondering what AI means for my career, what should I be doing now to make myself more valuable five years from now?
Gomez: First, learn the tools.
Don’t be intimidated by AI and don’t try to compete with it. Learn how to use it to make yourself better at what you already do.
Then invest just as intentionally in the capabilities that become more valuable as technology improves: judgment, curiosity, adaptability, relationships and the ability to understand what a customer really needs.
I’ve spent my career in retail, and the people who continue to grow aren’t necessarily the people who know the most. They’re the people who keep learning.
So I wouldn’t ask, “How do I protect myself from AI?”
I’d ask, “How can I use AI to strengthen my judgment, expand my capabilities, and create more value for the business?”
That’s the opportunity.
TWICE: Finally, finish this sentence for TWICE readers: “The retailers that will win in an AI-driven world will be the ones that ______.”
Gomez: “Invest as intentionally in Human Intelligence as they do in artificial intelligence.”
Extraordinary technology is becoming available to almost everyone. The real advantage will be what your people are capable of doing with it.
To learn more about Nora Gomez and Next Generation Growth, visit NGGROWTH.com, email [email protected], or connect with her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/nora-gomez.
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