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The
Wal-Mart Decade: How a Generation of Leaders Turned Sam Walton's Legacy Into
the World's # 1 Company by Robert Slater Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Rollback If you can handle some repetition and a
few dozen boring pages, then go ahead and pick up a copy of Robert Slater’s
new book, The
Wal-Mart Decade. Most of us think we know a lot about Sam Walton and the
company he founded. Few of us could name members of the current management
team. Yet, Sam’s successors have created an amazing company, and one that’s
very different from the way it was when Walton died. Slater introduces
current and recent managers, and presents a somewhat interesting story of how
they’ve built the business. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of Chapter
11, “Mr. Logistics Takes Over,” (pp. 163-7): Throughout
the year 2002, Lee Scott was running the largest company in the world in
terms of revenue. He was the head of the largest private employer in the
world. The company h$ presided over sold more food than anyone else.
More than a hundred million people passed each week through the stores that
he oversaw. By virtue of Wal-Mart's arrival at the top
of the mountain, Lee Scott certainly must rank as one of the most important,
powerful, and influential CEOs of the day. But—and here's the paradox—he's
certainly not one of the most visible. By his own account, he can walk into
most Wal-Marts around the world and go unrecognized. Sam Walton couldn't do
that. Lee
Scott seems comfortable keeping a low profile, partly one imagines, because
he wants to make sure that Sam Walton remains, even in death, the most
important personality in the Wal-Mart organization. There seems to be an
unwritten agreement among the new leadership team, inspired no doubt by Rob
Walton, that Walton's image burn more brightly than that of any of his
successors. Sam
Walton and Lee Scott both seemed to be the right leaders at the right time.
That has a good deal to do with their contrasting personalities. Wal-Mart
needed a cheerleader, a business-savvy, hands-on kind of fellow at its start
and into the seventies and eighties. It
had less need for a cheerleader in the nineties, more for leaders like David Glass and Lee
Scott, both of whom had skills and knowledge in logistics and transportation. Most
of all, Wal-Mart in the past decade had no great need to project another icon
onto the business scene; it needed a Lee Scott to preside over a leadership
team that could wrestle with the present-day complexities brought by the new
Wal-Mart empire. Lee
Scott carries his near-anonymity with aplomb, eager to give the impression
that he's not entirely comfortable wearing the crown that Sam Walton wore for
so many years, eager to convey that it will take him time to get used to being
the leader of the largest company in the world. Lee
Scott took over as CEO from David Glass in January 2000. When we met for the first
time in June 2002 for a brief discussion, he had been in the job only 18
months. He pointed out at our first formal interview two months later that we
were sitting in the office once occupied by Sam Walton, and he confessed that he found
himself occupying it overwhelming: The office evoked for him the times when
Walton would summon him to chew him out about something. It was not only
sitting in the founder's chair that he found daunting; it was possessing so
much power and influence over the company. Before
becoming CEO, when Scott took part in a Wal-Mart meeting he would trade ideas
breezily with colleagues; some were adopted; some were not. As the CEO, he
learned to his surprise that colleagues were taking his thoughts much more
seriously: "When I got promoted to CEO, I did not become significantly
brighter. But I learned quickly that offering what was previously a nondangerous
opinion can be perceived, if you're not careful, as a command. And you are no
smarter. You have no new insight. But you have more power. So I've been very
careful—and I now say it quite a bit—what I'm about to say is not a
directive, it's only for discussion." Lee
Scott's low profile and his early unease at having so much power
comes, one assumes, from a long-standing conviction that he would never rise to the
CEO post. He knew all too well that the person chosen to succeed David Glass,
whenever he retired, was likely to be one of the renaissance men, men who
possessed skills that made them knowledgeable not only in general
merchandising and food but also in operations and logistics and
communications. Scott was a logistics man, perhaps the best Wal-Mart ever
had, but was that enough to qualify for CEO? David
Glass recruited Lee Scott to Wal-Mart. Born
in 1949 in Joplin, Missouri, Scott had grown up in the small Kansas town of
Baxter Springs, where his father ran a gas station and his mother taught music
at the elementary school. By age 21, he was married and a father; he worked
for a tire-mold manufacturer to pay his way through Pittsburgh State
University in Kansas where he majored in business administration, graduating
in 1971. When
Yellow Freight System, a large Kansas-based trucking company, refused his bid
to enter its management training program, young Scott asked a family friend
to intercede. As a result, in 1977, at age twenty-eight, he joined the
company as a terminal manager in Springdale, Arkansas. His
neighbor, Glenn Habern, a Wal-Mart manager, told David Glass, then an
executive vice president at Wal-Mart, that Scott might be worth hiring. As it
turned out. Yellow Freight felt that Wal-Mart owed it $7,000 in additional
storage costs for failing to accept a delivery on time. Determined to collect
the money, Scott drove to Bentonville and confronted Glass. Insisting
that Wal-Mart owed nothing. Glass was nevertheless struck by Scott's
abilities and offered him a job with Wal-Mart. Scott looked at Glass as it if
to say, "You've got to be kidding me." He then told Glass: "I
may not be the smartest person who ever came into this office, but I will not
leave the fastest-growing trucking company in America and go to work for a
guy who can't pay a $7,000 bill." WHAT'S
RIGHT FOR THE COMPANY Two
years later, Lee Scott had moved to Springfield, Missouri, and was working
for Queen City Warehouse, another company in the freight and transportation
business. Glass contacted Scott, asking him to become director of the
Wal-Mart truck fleet. This time, Scott was amenable. But upon arriving at the
new job, he listened with great surprise as David Glass declared that Scott
would have to be only assistant director for some time. Swallowing his ego,
Scott told Glass, "If it's right for the company, let's do that." Burying
one's ego helped one go far at Wal-Mart. Lee Scott was off to a good start.
He did not, however, have a particularly warm opening meeting with Sam
Walton. On his first day at work, Scott was summoned to Walton's office for
an interview. Scott got the impression that if the interview did not go well,
he might not have a job. Scott
sat down in Walton's office while the chairman propped himself against a
table. "How
old are you?" Scott
was not expecting that kind of question right off the bat. "I'm
thirty" "Do
you think you can do this job?" "Yes,
sir," said Scott. Walton
gazed into Scott's eyes for a long moment and said, "I reckon you
can," signaling that the meeting was over. The
meeting was short and abrupt, but at least Scott could be grateful that his
new job was intact—for the time being. Taking
up the job of assistant director of the trucking fleet, Scott quickly got on
the wrong side of Wal-Mart's truck drivers when he threatened to fire anyone
violating company rules. He thought that displaying such personal initiative
would win him points with the top brass.
So
when a driver failed to make a delivery on time, Scott fired him. The driver
complained directly to Sam Walton about the upstart who was wielding too much
power. Walton rehired the man on the spot. (Ultimately, Scott's judgment
about the errant truck driver was on the mark: He was fired and rehired two
more times; finally the fourth time, he was fired, again, and left for good.) Meanwhile,
drivers complained to Sam Walton that Scott was constantly issuing ultimatums
and threats to get them to obey the rules. Walton summoned Scott to his
office, suggesting that be had been overly harsh to the drivers, considering
that only 5 percent of them of them had committed infractions. Walton
had enough good sense and charm to get Scott and the truck drivers to make
peace. He did not wish to fire Scott, nor did he want Scott to fire a truck
driver too quickly. The solution, Walton told Scott, was to listen carefully
to the drivers' complaints before taking impulsive action against them.
Walton ordered him to shake hands with every driver and thank them for having
the courage to use the Wal-Mart open-door policy. At
times, Walton and Scott would have strong disagreements about this issue or
that, but Scott came to prize the relationship he developed with the founder.
Scott learned to assess Walton's moods by the name he used for him: He was
"Scott" when he had a beef with him, but "Levius" (a
Southern name for Lee) when things were all right. If you’re looking for a critical analysis
of the Wal-Mart business model, or a deep understanding of the organization’s
strengths and weaknesses, you won’t find that on the pages of The
Wal-Mart Decade. What you will find is a pleasant story about unassuming
and talented executives who built a gigantic and successful business. Steve Hopkins, September 23, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the October 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Wal-Mart Decade.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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