Walmart Leadership Quotes

Wisdom cannot be bought from the walmart, it can only come from the Holy Spirit of God.

Every domain has different components needed for mastery.   It’s not hard to figure out what they are. Study everything rigorously and implement everything you find.   This is the theme you see over and over again at really outsized successes: at Walmart, Sam Walton studied everything. At Toyota, they studied every aspect of making automobiles and tried to refine every single one of them to perfection. Under the leadership of Wozniak, Jobs, and Ive among others, Apple of course became fanatical about getting the tiniest details perfect.   It’s not complicated.   You study everything in your domain.   If something does fail or go wrong, you don’t sweep it under the rug – you study it relentlessly, and put new policies in place, and then train them up.

Under Duke’s leadership, Walmart’s stock price did increase . . . for a while. However, focusing on numbers before people comes at a cost. The once beloved brand also found itself embroiled in multiple scandals over the treatment of their people and their customers.

What happened at Walmart happens all too often in public companies, even the Cause-driven ones. Under pressure from Wall Street, we too often put finite-minded executives in the highest leadership position when what we actually need is a visionary, infinite-minded leader.

One reason Lore left Amazon is that he didn’t like the culture Bezos had created in which executives used sharp elbows and raised voices to get to the truth. Sitting in his modern Hoboken, New Jersey, office overlooking the Hudson River, Lore, dressed in a very un-Walmart-like black T-shirt and jeans, reflected on his years at Amazon. “Jeff said he didn’t believe in social cohesion because you can get to the wrong answer that way,” explains Lore. “There are some benefits to that approach. If you tell people exactly what you’re thinking—even if you hurt their feelings—you get to the right answers.” The downside, Lore believes, is that if you hurt coworkers’ feelings, maybe they don’t have as much trust in the leadership or they won’t speak up the next time or they’ll be risk averse or leave the company. “There are pros and cons to both approaches, but I personally love the Walmart culture of social cohesion where feelings matter. How you interact with people is very important and how you make them feel is very important. It’s not always about just getting to the right answer.

To grow and create profits, you need to differentiate based on market needs and your competitive strengths. The entry wedge can take many forms and can include new technologies (Medtronic), new business models (Dell), new locations (Walmart), or better leadership (Jobs, Bezos). The first step is to know where your venture can get an edge over your competitors and then develop marketing, operations, management, and resource strategies that are consistent with that edge.