While reading the book “The 10 Rules of SAM WALTON”, I just thought of relating Sam Walton’s success rules to different management concepts. Here are my views related to the 1st rule:
Rule 1: COMMIT to achieve Success and always be passionate
When he thought of the concept of Rural Retailing and opened his 1st store in Arkansas, he was highly criticized but he maintained his Strategic Leadership style and big picture perspective. While pursuing MBA, we were always told to craft a vision for ourself and seek different ways of expanding our possibilities and horizon. Wal -Mart is a true example of this. Sam questioned the status quo and promoted new thinking.
Sam had Team Management Leadership style and always promoted high degree of participation and team work. After setting up the goals, he always used to share them with his team to gain commitment and generate enthusiasm among his associates. This can be related with Goal Setting Theory where challenging and higher goals contribute to better performance. He always believed in team work rather than individual performance and thus the culture at Wal-Mart was very conducive to a collaborative environment. This also depicts his farsightedness and his ability to envision a possible successful future.
Sam Walton made use of Pygmalion Effect, a type of self fulfilling prophecy at its best. This is best described as when high expectations are set on a person, it leads to better performance by that individual. Sam Walton, founder of the organization, used to promote inexperienced people, irrespective of gender, caste, religion, age, colour, to higher authority. He felt that people are always hungry for more responsibility as it gives them a chance to prove their mettle and show to the world that they are equal to the challenge. Through this if we try to uncover the levels of culture at Wal-Mart, we find the espoused values as Edgar Schein 2nd level of Culture, to be of meritocracy, equality and empowering people.
When we talk about Employee engagement, we only think of outing, arranging lunch/dinner for better team bonding but Sam had a very different approach towards it. Employee engagement is a barometer of an organization health and high levels of it signifies that employees are more committed towards their work and can go an extra mile to add value to the organization. Sam, while setting up goals for his company, always tried to involve everybody in the organization to gain commitment and give the employees a sense of ownership.
Wal-Mart was a learning organization and Sam always promoted learning and leadership at all levels of the organization. He always shifted people across different departments to facilitate cross functional training. Thought Wal-Mart’s primary strategic style was Operational Efficiency, and the focus was to provide low cost, reliable, easy to use products to its customers, it also adopted good features of other strategic styles and rotated people into different jobs to acquire fresh perspectives and value innovation.
He also utilized the concept of 70:20:10 learning framework which says that 70% of learning is acquired through on the job training, 20% from formal coaching & mentoring and 10% from structured learning- courses and reading. He always hired and promoted people to positions they did not have exposure to because he believed that learning happens at its best when people get a chance to experience everything on their own. It is also a proven fact that we can only retain of 10% of what we see, 30-40% of what we see and hear and 90% of what we see, hear and do. So Sam ensured that his employees receive training and utilize it for better learning
Staffing strategy of Wal-Mart was very unique as it always gave precedence and preference to the right attitude than educational qualification and experience. This could be related to Iceberg model which provides a clear understanding of why people do what they do. According to this model, 10% above the sea level is the visible part – our behaviours and 90% below the sea level corresponds to drivers of behaviours. Sam knew the fact that if given an opportunity, average people with the right attitude will try their best to prove their excellence.
Sam never fell into the trap of Group Think which is a psychological phenomenon which occurs within group of people, in which the desire for harmony and conformity results in a dysfunctional decision making outcome. He understood the fact that people are always reluctant to any kind of change because it requires to step out of your usual comfortable zone and try out something new. But he also knew that for any successful change, dissatisfaction or denial is very important as per Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher formula which is dissatisfaction*vision for the change*first, concrete steps towards it>resistance for change. He always made sure that people get to know the reasons required for change rather than gaining agreement.
Reading about Wal-Mart, one can fully fathom the fact that how carefully Sam crafted the EVP (Employee Value Proposition) of the company. EVP consists of everything what an employee receives and experience while being in the organization on behalf of his contribution towards the company. It consists of both Attraction & Commitment factors. Attraction factors at Wal-Mart being better career growth opportunities, culture of respect for employees. Commitment factors included employee empowerment, good leaders like SAM etc.
Wal-Mart is a legendary example to show how if employees are fully engaged, they do everything possible to benefit their organization. It also proves that when leaders walk the talk, it creates a profound impact on its followers and provides focus, purpose and direction to them. Sam always used to come to office by 3 or 4 A.M to go through the sales report and the other leaders too used to have 75-90 hours work week. This shows how transformational leadership works and motivates people to take the charge.
