Lessons in Leadership
in Arkansas, "it was kind of self-serving to have them believe we were behind the times when in fact we were sitting there with more computing capacity, more technology in our stores reading bar codes, using a central database, developing distribution communication skills." Walton never poked fun at competitors' stores, according to Shewmaker. "I kept wanting to go to a store with him and have him say, 'We've really gotten there, Jack. You've done a great job. We look a lot better.' It never happened — never, ever happened. "I remember going into a competitor's store once along the Mississippi River. We looked at that store and it was gosh awful bad. I thought, 'OK, today's my day. I'm going to get my praise.' He stood there for an inordinately long time and then pointed clear back in the corner of the store and he said, 'You see that keychain display back in automotive? That's really good. Do we have that?' 'No sir.' 'We oughta have that.' "I never did get him to say that we'd arrived, that we'd done it," Shewmaker says. "What do you learn when you go into your competition and see what they're doing wrong other than serve your own pride or ego? You're not going to incorporate what they're doing wrong into what you do. "Think about focusing only on the things that they're doing better than you and separating that out from everything else that they are doing and coming back and incorporating what they do better than you into what you're doing. That's how WalMart was built and it was primarily because of the way his mind worked and the way he got the rest of us to think. "He thought about people and inclusion and involvement," Shewmaker continues. "He never walked in and met any individual
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anywhere that he didn't relate to or respect. Sam did the simplest of things to communicate. He carried a legal pad with him wherever he went. We'd go into a store and he'd say, 'What's your name? Mary Jones? How do you spell Jones?' Literally he would give it that much attention. 'Mary, what do you think we could do better in our store?'" No matter what the suggestion was, Walton would write it down, Shewmaker says. "I had been with the man on days where he received the same suggestion as many as a dozen times. He did not have a bad memory. He wrote it down every single time. Why would he do that? The ultimate respect is if you bother to ask somebody what their name is to really want to know. The ultimate respect is to ask them what you should do differently and to really want to hear what they have to say." During times of crisis, Walton was on the scene, Shewmaker says. "It was Memorial Day of 1982 that
a tornado ripped through southern fee Illinois. It happened to hit the town of our very best store called Marion, Illinois," says Shewmaker, who flew there with Walton. "One-third of the back of the store is gone. The rest of the store is flooded. Glass and debris are all over the store. I'll never forget what happened. Most executives would walk in and say 'you need to do this to save that' and 'you need to do that to save that.' Sam walked in and he got on his hands and knees and he brushed the water and the glass away with his hands. Then he asked all of us to come sit down and talk." Shewmaker says Walton assured the employees that there would be no job losses or pay cuts while the store was closed for repairs. He pulled out his personal checkbook and gave the local Red Cross chapter thousands of dollars to help townspeople who had lost their homes. And he agreed to reopen part of the store within a week to sell supplies needed in cleanup and rebuilding efforts. "I learned some invaluable lessons," Shewmaker says. "I didn't learn how to be successful until I adopted and embraced and understood the policy of servant leadership." Through Wal-Mart Shewmaker also learned that constant change and teaching employees how to deal with it are vital. "Sam believed when we were doing our best was when we needed to change the most. I believe that too. We were constantly trying to find ways to change even when we were doing better than our competition. "With that comes a responsibility to communicate. As change occurs, the rate of communication must go up many times faster in order to have people understand why. I've rarely seen any organization outside of WalMart that does that. And it's one of the truest formulas I've ever known." > Âť
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I never did get him to say that we'd arrived, that we'd done it. What do you learn when you go into your competition and see what they're doing wrong other than serve your own pride or ego? JJ
Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2007
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