Key Lessons from Sam Walton's Made in America Part 2

This is my final review of Sam Walton's biography 'Made in America'. It is my sincere hope you have learned something from this great American who dified odds to establish what is today the world's largest retail store chain emplying over 3 million people worldwide.

  

Learn From Books and Publiations

During a stint in the army, Sam was posted in Salt Lake City. He checked out every book on retailing in their library, and studied a nearby department store. He would read every retail publication he could find, and would later refer to himself as an "avid student of management theory

Learn from Your Workers

Walton learned from everyone in his stores, regardless of status."Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who’s going to have a great idea."  He especially loved to talk to the truck drivers. According to Lee Scott, "For a long, long time, Sam would show up regularly in the drivers’ break room at 4 A.M. with a bunch of doughnuts and just sit there for a couple of hours talking to them." According to Sam, “It’s amazing to me how many ideas they always have for fine-tuning the system." He'd grill them, asking, ‘What are you seeing at the stores?’ ‘Have you been to that store lately?’ ‘How do the people act there?’ ‘Is it getting better?’ "…I’d still say that visiting the stores and listening to our folks was one of the most valuable uses of my time as an executive. But really, our best ideas usually do come from the folks in the stores. Period." 

Innovate, Swim Upstream; Constantly Experiment With New Ideas

Many people are good at learning, but have a hard time applying what they learn. After Walton learned something new, he’d experiment with the best ideas in his own store.  According to Walton, "I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Wal-Mart. "A pattern emerges in Walton’s biography. First, grab ideas from anybody you can. Second, shake things up in your stores by innovating. Learn something else. Innovate. It became a lifelong obsession. According to Walton, "…after a lifetime of swimming upstream, I am convinced that one of the real secrets to Wal-mart’s phenomenal success has been that very tendency." 

Learn from Your Mistakes

Not all of his ideas worked. The minnow buckets didn’t sell. People in Wisconsin didn’t go for his Moon Pies. But when he saw he was wrong, he admitted his mistake and went on to try something else. And he wanted his associates to be the same way. He’d get them together on Saturday mornings to share their success and admit their failures. That culture of candor produced a great environment to capture ideas. It helped that he had "very little capacity for embarrassment." 

Travel Far and Wide for Great Ideas

He’d travel the world to get an idea. In his early career, he read an article about how two stores in Minnesota had gone to self-service, which nobody else was doing. Customers picked out their own stuff and checked out at the cash registers at the front of the store. So he rode the bus all night to visit the stores, liked what they were doing, and changed his store to self service. He was always out looking for new merchandise. Once he came back from New York with some unique sandals which some called flip-flops, or thongs. The clerk said, "No way will those things sell. They’ll just blister your toes." They sold like crazy. Before Walton, very few stores concentrated on buying low, selling cheap, and making their profit by selling such huge quantities. When Walton heard of a few discounters, he ran around the country from the East to California, studying the concept. Everywhere he went; he visited stores and scribbled ideas in his yellow legal pad.  According to his brother Bud, "There’s not an individual in these whole United States who has been in more retail stores…than Sam Walton. Make that all over the world. He’s been in stores in Australia and South America, Europe and Asia and South Africa. His mind is just so inquisitive when it comes to this business. And there may not be anything he enjoys more than going into a competitor’s store trying to learn something from it."  

For more inforamtion about Wal-mart visit walmartstores.com

Happy reading!!!

 

Key Lessons from Sam Walton's Made in America (Part 1)

Build on Your Strengths

Sam Walton had strengths, which he developed tirelessly. He was a great leader and team builder. He set extremely high personal goals, which he accomplished with his team through his competitive spirit and intense drive. His entire life, much of that drive was focused on learning.

Learn by Doing

He learned a lot about hard work and sales from doing it in his early years. At ages 7 or 8 he sold magazine subscriptions. Later, he raised and sold rabbits and pigeons. From seventh grade through high school, he ran paper routes. In college, he added more routes and hired helpers, making some serious money. He needed it, since he was paying his own way. He did whatever it took to make ends meet, waiting tables in exchange for meals and life guarding on the side.

Besides learning hard work, he learned people skills. In college, he aspired to become the student body president. Here’s a trick he learned that he’d use the rest of his life:

I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college. I did it when I carried my papers. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them, I would call them by name, but even if I didn’t I would still speak to them. Before long, I probably knew more students than anybody in the university, and they recognized me and considered me their friend." 

Get Formal Education

In his formal education, he majored in business at the University of Missouri.Later in life he’d take formal classes as needed. But the most striking thing to me about Sam was that he never stopped learning. In fact, he became a learning machine. Way before personal computers came along, he felt that Wal-Mart needed to move toward computerization.

"…I was curious. I made up my mind I was going to learn something about IBM computers. So I enrolled in an IBM school for retailers in Poughkeepsie, New York." 

Learn From Mentors

Just out of college, he went to work for J.C. Penney, finding a mentor in Duncan Majors, his very successful store manager. He’d learn from Duncan at the store six days a week, then go to Duncan’s house on Sundays with his associates to play ping-pong, cards, and talk about retailing.

Learn From Books and Publications

During a stint in the army, he was posted in Salt Lake City. He checked out every book on retailing in their library, and studied a nearby department store. He would read every retail publication he could find, and would later refer to himself as an "avid student of management theory." 

Learn from Company Training Classes

After the army, he bought a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. The company put him through a two week training class, which taught him the basics of running a store. He would use their accounting system well into his Wal-mart years. 

Learn from Your Competition

Once he started working at his first store, his unique spin on education came into play. He soon discovered that the store he’d just bought was "a real dog." His competition across the street had an excellent manager and was doing twice the business in sales. According to Walton,

"…I learned a lesson which has stuck with me all through the years: you can learn from everybody. I didn’t just learn from reading every retail publication I could get my hands on, I probably learned the most from studying what John Dunham was doing across the street."

So Walton became a student of his competitor, always hanging out across the street, checking out Dunham’s prices, how he displayed his merchandise, learning everything about why he was successful. According to associate Charlie Cate: "I remember him saying over and over again: go in and check our competition. Check everyone who is our competition. And don’t look for the bad. Look for the good. …everyone is doing something right."

He especially checked out Kmarts, which were far ahead of them in those early years. He was even so bold as to visit the headquarters of other retailers. He could get away with it, since they were small at the time and they didn’t consider him to be serious competition. "I probably visited more headquarters offices of more discounters than anybody else – ever." 

Sam Walton is the greatest retailer of all time. These simple lessons made what Wa-Mart is today - the world's largest retailer. I will do a follow up post (part 2) next week.  

Happy reading!!!!