netrashetty
MP Guru
Leadership Style at Walmart : Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company was the world's largest public corporation in 2010 by revenue.[3]
The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, is the largest majority private employer[4] Walmart is also the largest grocery retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51% of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business.[5] It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America.
Walmart has 8,500 stores in 15 countries, under 55 different names.[6] The company operates under its own name in the United States, including the 50 states. It also operates under its own name in Puerto Rico. It operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. Walmart's investments outside North America have had mixed results: its operations in the United Kingdom, South America and China are highly successful, while it was forced to pull out of Germany and South Korea when ventures there were unsuccessful.
A third style of leadership is that demonstrated by Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) Chairman S. Robson Walton. At the conference Walton was interviewed onstage by Steve Forbes. Walton said it is the job of leaders to "listen to customers, listen to customers, listen to customers" and thereby establish a service spirit for the whole company. Walton took over his father Sam's empire in 1992, when Wal-Mart was doing $55 billion in annual revenue, almost all of it in the U.S. Today Wal-Mart is a global giant, with sales of more than $400 billion.
Rob Walton's secret is that he does not pretend to be Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart in 1962. Sam was an archetypal entrepreneur. Rob chooses to be the humble-servant leader. Under Rob Walton's leadership his company has listened well--even to its many critics--and prospered.
Moral/Ethical
An insistence on companywide ethical behavior--i.e., every employee practicing the Golden Rule in all company dealings--can be a powerful form of leadership. But it is also a fragile form, subject to human frailty. One mistake and a moral/ethical leader can easily look like a hypocrite.
If that's too much pressure for you, consider Francis Yeoh, head of Malaysia's YTL Corp., which builds utility plants, high-speed rail service and hotels. An advocate of moral leadership, Yeoh is also an outspoken Christian in a Muslim-majority country. In other words, Yeoh and his company have no room for ethical lapses. Yet Yeoh says the moral way is the only way to go. YTL's compound annual growth rate of 55% over the last 15 years (in pretax profits) is proof that the higher bar of moral/ethical leadership can pay off.
In the U.S. such companies as S.C. Johnson, Deere & Co. ( DE - news - people ), American Express ( AXP - news - people ) and Starbucks ( SBUX - news - people ) have done well by doing good.
There are many more leadership styles beyond these four. If there's any secret to leadership, it is "fit." Leadership style must fit the leader, and it must fit the organization.
1. Wal-Mart - Changing The Way We All Do Business
The love-hate relationship people have with Wal-Mart is interesting. The Wal-Mart story is compelling. Wal-Mart is setting the pace of change and shaping the art of doing business whether you're working for them, buying from them, or plotting against them.
Sam Walton's mastery of lowering costs is nothing short of legendary. Whether you love or hate Wal-Mart, you've got to respect Wal-Mart for its financial discipline and determination and total commitment to squeezing the last penny out of doing business. Whether it is saving a few pennies through distribution efficiencies, reducing supplier costs or employing cheap labor, Wal-Mart is the poster child for driving productivity up and costs down.
Regardless what you think about Wal-Mart, it is changing the way we all do business - and who we do business with. While community's fight off Wal-Mart development, Wal-Mart insidiously penetrates nearly everything we touch and every move we make.
Wal-Mart is everywhere. You've got to respect what they've done and hate what they're doing.
Wal-Mart Facts
Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation, according to 2005 Fortune 500 list. It operates over 5,000 stores worldwide, nearly 4,000 in the U.S. and employs over 1.6 million people-- 1.3 million in the United States alone. In the U.S., another 3 million people have jobs directly dependent on purchases from Wal-Mart. (Source: Wal-Mart)
In 1970, the country's largest employer was General Motors, with 350,000 workers. Overwhelmingly union, they earned $17.50 an hour plus health, pension and vacation benefits and cost-of-living increases. Wal-Mart states it pays "full-time" employees $9.68 an hour with no defined benefit pension and inadequate health care. That translates into an annual wage of $17,114, and puts them below the Basic Family Budget requirement of $23,705. (Source: 2005 study by Arindrajit Dube and Steve Wertheim of the University of California's Berkeley Labor Center and www.ufcw.org)
Wal-Mart is as big as Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Costco, Sears and Kmart combined. Each year Wal-Mart sells more by Saint Patrick's Day than Target sells all year. More than half of all Americans live within five miles of a Wal-Mart store. Ninety percent live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart. With nearly 4,000 stores, that is more than one store for every single county in the U.S. Each year 93 percent of American households shop at least once at Wal-Mart. Worldwide, 7.2 billion people will go to a Wal-Mart store. (Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)
From 1997 to 2004, the U.S. population grew 7.7 percent. If jobs in retailing had grown at the rate of the population, the country would have added 1.1 million retailing jobs during those seven years. The country however added just over that number - 670,000 new retail jobs. Out of those 670,000 jobs, Wal-Mart created 70 percent of them. The remaining new retail jobs - 190,000 in the nation over seven years amount to just 540 new retail jobs in each state, each year. While the number of Wal-Mart jobs grew 67 percent, the number of jobs in the rest of U.S. retail grew 1.3 percent. (Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)
While Wal-Mart was adding 480,000 jobs between 1997 and 2004, U.S. manufacturing jobs during those years fell by 3.1 million jobs, a loss of 37,000 factory jobs a month. For the first time in U.S. history, the number of Americans working in retail (14.9 million) was greater than the number of Americans working in factories (14.5 million)
isionary Leadership increases efficiency by moving decision-making responsibility to the frontline. Efficiency is achieved with limited supervision. To make frontline responsibility effective, leadership must give workers opportunity to develop quality decision-making skills and learn to trust them. Wal-Mart stores use visionary leadership.
Standard leadership assumes employees to be robots and do as they are told. This is based on man’s natural instinct that only leadership is capable of making quality decisions. This is known as command-and-control leadership. Low efficiency is caused by the disconnect between management and the frontline. Management is busy dealing with problems that affect them while ignoring problems that affect the frontline. Front line problems are only dealt with when they explode into a major problem. K-Mart stores use standard leadership.
Workplace education creates a workforce of quality decision makers. Employees at all levels have the opportunity to discover and develop their unique skills, thereby, inspiring them to become quality decision-makers. The key word is “opportunity.” Not everyone will embrace this opportunity, but the few that do will inspire others with positive attitudes. This can only be achieved with visionary leadership.
Primary Elements
Organization structure controls decision-making responsibility. Visionary leadership allows decision-making responsibility all the way down to the frontline. Standard leadership limits decision making to management.
Priorities – Organization priorities control leadership style.
When priority is responsibility at the frontline, leadership will seek talent, people he can depend on to complete tasks with limited supervision. The policy will be “do it.” The frontline develops quality decision-making skills that are also found in layers of management.
When the priority is control, leadership will be organized in a way that all decisions must have approval. The policy will be “do not do anything until being told.” Layers of management slow the final decision, while lowering efficiency.
Policies - Leadership style is controlled by workplace policies. Leaders will adapt their style to the organization priorities and its goals.
High efficiency workplaces are based on visionary leadership, where workplace policies authorize decision-making responsibility at the frontline. Limited supervision is needed with worker responsibility.
Standard leadership is based on man’s instinctive desire for control, which is leadership by default. A leader’s changing mood controls policy of the moment and no one knows what the priorities are – mood-changing priorities reduce efficiency. Standard leadership requires a high level of supervision.
Elementary problems - Leadership style controls the level of elementary problems, which controls workplace efficiency. Level of elementary problems is controlled, in part, by learning opportunities and leader’s personal priority.
Decision-making responsibility, at all levels, allows minor problems to be solved by those who are first aware of them. Management can stay focused on problems related to the organization goals. As a bonus, employee motivation is high when they feel what they are doing makes a difference.
A leader’s desire for control prevents minor problems from being solved, because no one can make a decision without approval. Leaders’ priorities are based on high visibility events. As employees adjust work habits to minor problems, they become accepted as normal. The volume of these problems slowly grows and the workforce slowly becomes less efficient. Management blames workers for their lack of ability to get the job done. Assigning blame without responsibility solves nothing.
The company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, incorporated on October 31, 1969, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, is the largest majority private employer[4] Walmart is also the largest grocery retailer in the United States. In 2009, it generated 51% of its US$258 billion sales in the U.S. from grocery business.[5] It also owns and operates the Sam's Club retail warehouses in North America.
Walmart has 8,500 stores in 15 countries, under 55 different names.[6] The company operates under its own name in the United States, including the 50 states. It also operates under its own name in Puerto Rico. It operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. Walmart's investments outside North America have had mixed results: its operations in the United Kingdom, South America and China are highly successful, while it was forced to pull out of Germany and South Korea when ventures there were unsuccessful.
A third style of leadership is that demonstrated by Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) Chairman S. Robson Walton. At the conference Walton was interviewed onstage by Steve Forbes. Walton said it is the job of leaders to "listen to customers, listen to customers, listen to customers" and thereby establish a service spirit for the whole company. Walton took over his father Sam's empire in 1992, when Wal-Mart was doing $55 billion in annual revenue, almost all of it in the U.S. Today Wal-Mart is a global giant, with sales of more than $400 billion.
Rob Walton's secret is that he does not pretend to be Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart in 1962. Sam was an archetypal entrepreneur. Rob chooses to be the humble-servant leader. Under Rob Walton's leadership his company has listened well--even to its many critics--and prospered.
Moral/Ethical
An insistence on companywide ethical behavior--i.e., every employee practicing the Golden Rule in all company dealings--can be a powerful form of leadership. But it is also a fragile form, subject to human frailty. One mistake and a moral/ethical leader can easily look like a hypocrite.
If that's too much pressure for you, consider Francis Yeoh, head of Malaysia's YTL Corp., which builds utility plants, high-speed rail service and hotels. An advocate of moral leadership, Yeoh is also an outspoken Christian in a Muslim-majority country. In other words, Yeoh and his company have no room for ethical lapses. Yet Yeoh says the moral way is the only way to go. YTL's compound annual growth rate of 55% over the last 15 years (in pretax profits) is proof that the higher bar of moral/ethical leadership can pay off.
In the U.S. such companies as S.C. Johnson, Deere & Co. ( DE - news - people ), American Express ( AXP - news - people ) and Starbucks ( SBUX - news - people ) have done well by doing good.
There are many more leadership styles beyond these four. If there's any secret to leadership, it is "fit." Leadership style must fit the leader, and it must fit the organization.
1. Wal-Mart - Changing The Way We All Do Business
The love-hate relationship people have with Wal-Mart is interesting. The Wal-Mart story is compelling. Wal-Mart is setting the pace of change and shaping the art of doing business whether you're working for them, buying from them, or plotting against them.
Sam Walton's mastery of lowering costs is nothing short of legendary. Whether you love or hate Wal-Mart, you've got to respect Wal-Mart for its financial discipline and determination and total commitment to squeezing the last penny out of doing business. Whether it is saving a few pennies through distribution efficiencies, reducing supplier costs or employing cheap labor, Wal-Mart is the poster child for driving productivity up and costs down.
Regardless what you think about Wal-Mart, it is changing the way we all do business - and who we do business with. While community's fight off Wal-Mart development, Wal-Mart insidiously penetrates nearly everything we touch and every move we make.
Wal-Mart is everywhere. You've got to respect what they've done and hate what they're doing.
Wal-Mart Facts
Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation, according to 2005 Fortune 500 list. It operates over 5,000 stores worldwide, nearly 4,000 in the U.S. and employs over 1.6 million people-- 1.3 million in the United States alone. In the U.S., another 3 million people have jobs directly dependent on purchases from Wal-Mart. (Source: Wal-Mart)
In 1970, the country's largest employer was General Motors, with 350,000 workers. Overwhelmingly union, they earned $17.50 an hour plus health, pension and vacation benefits and cost-of-living increases. Wal-Mart states it pays "full-time" employees $9.68 an hour with no defined benefit pension and inadequate health care. That translates into an annual wage of $17,114, and puts them below the Basic Family Budget requirement of $23,705. (Source: 2005 study by Arindrajit Dube and Steve Wertheim of the University of California's Berkeley Labor Center and www.ufcw.org)
Wal-Mart is as big as Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Costco, Sears and Kmart combined. Each year Wal-Mart sells more by Saint Patrick's Day than Target sells all year. More than half of all Americans live within five miles of a Wal-Mart store. Ninety percent live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart. With nearly 4,000 stores, that is more than one store for every single county in the U.S. Each year 93 percent of American households shop at least once at Wal-Mart. Worldwide, 7.2 billion people will go to a Wal-Mart store. (Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)
From 1997 to 2004, the U.S. population grew 7.7 percent. If jobs in retailing had grown at the rate of the population, the country would have added 1.1 million retailing jobs during those seven years. The country however added just over that number - 670,000 new retail jobs. Out of those 670,000 jobs, Wal-Mart created 70 percent of them. The remaining new retail jobs - 190,000 in the nation over seven years amount to just 540 new retail jobs in each state, each year. While the number of Wal-Mart jobs grew 67 percent, the number of jobs in the rest of U.S. retail grew 1.3 percent. (Source: The Wal-Mart Effect)
While Wal-Mart was adding 480,000 jobs between 1997 and 2004, U.S. manufacturing jobs during those years fell by 3.1 million jobs, a loss of 37,000 factory jobs a month. For the first time in U.S. history, the number of Americans working in retail (14.9 million) was greater than the number of Americans working in factories (14.5 million)
isionary Leadership increases efficiency by moving decision-making responsibility to the frontline. Efficiency is achieved with limited supervision. To make frontline responsibility effective, leadership must give workers opportunity to develop quality decision-making skills and learn to trust them. Wal-Mart stores use visionary leadership.
Standard leadership assumes employees to be robots and do as they are told. This is based on man’s natural instinct that only leadership is capable of making quality decisions. This is known as command-and-control leadership. Low efficiency is caused by the disconnect between management and the frontline. Management is busy dealing with problems that affect them while ignoring problems that affect the frontline. Front line problems are only dealt with when they explode into a major problem. K-Mart stores use standard leadership.
Workplace education creates a workforce of quality decision makers. Employees at all levels have the opportunity to discover and develop their unique skills, thereby, inspiring them to become quality decision-makers. The key word is “opportunity.” Not everyone will embrace this opportunity, but the few that do will inspire others with positive attitudes. This can only be achieved with visionary leadership.
Primary Elements
Organization structure controls decision-making responsibility. Visionary leadership allows decision-making responsibility all the way down to the frontline. Standard leadership limits decision making to management.
Priorities – Organization priorities control leadership style.
When priority is responsibility at the frontline, leadership will seek talent, people he can depend on to complete tasks with limited supervision. The policy will be “do it.” The frontline develops quality decision-making skills that are also found in layers of management.
When the priority is control, leadership will be organized in a way that all decisions must have approval. The policy will be “do not do anything until being told.” Layers of management slow the final decision, while lowering efficiency.
Policies - Leadership style is controlled by workplace policies. Leaders will adapt their style to the organization priorities and its goals.
High efficiency workplaces are based on visionary leadership, where workplace policies authorize decision-making responsibility at the frontline. Limited supervision is needed with worker responsibility.
Standard leadership is based on man’s instinctive desire for control, which is leadership by default. A leader’s changing mood controls policy of the moment and no one knows what the priorities are – mood-changing priorities reduce efficiency. Standard leadership requires a high level of supervision.
Elementary problems - Leadership style controls the level of elementary problems, which controls workplace efficiency. Level of elementary problems is controlled, in part, by learning opportunities and leader’s personal priority.
Decision-making responsibility, at all levels, allows minor problems to be solved by those who are first aware of them. Management can stay focused on problems related to the organization goals. As a bonus, employee motivation is high when they feel what they are doing makes a difference.
A leader’s desire for control prevents minor problems from being solved, because no one can make a decision without approval. Leaders’ priorities are based on high visibility events. As employees adjust work habits to minor problems, they become accepted as normal. The volume of these problems slowly grows and the workforce slowly becomes less efficient. Management blames workers for their lack of ability to get the job done. Assigning blame without responsibility solves nothing.
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