My Experience at the Global-Corporate Walmart Meeting
When Sam’s Club/Walmart decided to sell my books in their stores, they asked my publisher to fly me out to Bentonville, Arkansas for their famous weekly meeting to speak in front of their senior executive team and managers.
Walmart is the largest and one of the most powerful companies in the world. There are 10,524 stores and clubs in 24 countries, more than 2.2 million employees, and $548.743 billion dollars in annual revenues! Thus, while I went there to do some teaching; I mostly looked forward to learning. With my Masters in Corporate Health and Doctorate work in Business Administration, I had learned concepts related to building a powerful company culture, but this was seeing it in action at literally the highest level.
Here is how their meeting is set up:
The global head managers of all of the different Walmart departments were assembled in a group next to a PowerPoint projector, in front of the CEO and some other members of his executive team.
One by one the managers stood up and made a presentation to the executives based on the past week’s performance of their respective departments and their plans to meet goals the next week.
The CEO would comment on the report where necessary and approve or refine their plans. The most impressive parts to me were that the department heads knew their numbers so well, had a very specific plan to hit these numbers, were painfully aware of why they did or did not achieve the numbers for which they were aspiring, and the ownership they took in responding to challenges and reformulating the plan. This meeting takes place every week!
Here is what each department manager report contained:
STEP 1: Celebrate successes and publicly acknowledge and reward key employees that had exhibited remarkable performance or reached a company milestone.
STEP 2: Share what ACTUAL numbers were for the past week and compare them to the same week the year before.
STEP 3: Share what the GOAL number for the previous week was as compared to the ACTUAL.
STEP 4: What was the plan they had in place to attempt to reach the GOAL.
- If on goal: The plan moved forward for continued success with additional refinements based on areas that need improvement.
- If off goal: If there was a delta between the actual numbers for the week and the goal, they had to tell the CEO why they believed they fell short and propose their new plan as a
I was impressed by the responsibility passed on to team members. Most entrepreneurs delegate tasks, but not responsibility. The Walmart managers owned their numbers and were fully responsible for setting the goals, creating the plans to hit them, and for modifications if they were unable to reach the numbers to which they committed. This allowed the leader to lead, rather than be chief cook, and bottle-washer jack of all trades and master of none. NOTE: Delegation is not abdications! It is critical to train, support, and manage rather than dump a department on a team member and expect them to crush it. The only thing getting crushed in that scenario is your profits and peace of mind.
THE GOAL OF WALMART DELEGATION – A TEAM DRIVEN APPROACH:
I have many, many clients in my Velocity Coaching company doing 1-3 million each year done primarily through staff. If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s because you are not experiencing the product of an exponential organization that grows through team members who “own” their department and a culture where not just the leader, but the staff commit to their roles and goals.
When my clients have made this shift in approach to training and building culture, it is not uncommon to see a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of collections while radically lessening the stress and strain on the owner – which is always supposed to be the goal of business. An owner should experience greater growth and wealth while experiencing more freedom and having less involvement in the minutia over time.
Have fun saving the world!
Dr. Ben
