Simple Directions, Hard Twisting Path

It was 1991 and I was being escorted through the halls of Walmart for my meeting with Sam Walton in his brother Bud's office. This was a special honor as Mr. Sam had recently returned from receiving treatment for multiple myeloma and his time was well protected by a caring team in Bentonville, Arkansas. Both of these gentlemen were highly complimentary of what had become the biggest sale in my company's history but it was the whispered words of Mr. Sam leaning forward in his chair before I left who said, "you must strive to be better and never forget your customer".

Have you seen any company whose strategies reflected a mission any better or more successfully? Most analysts at the time compared Walmart with Kmart, I always felt they were competing against themselves by being more innovative and listening to their core customer, always pushing upstream to a different destination or following a course as Stephen Covey affirmed, "begin with the end in mind". At the time, the $1 Billion investment in a satelite communication system to link their not yet international stores with the headquarters and to manage inventory seemed out of step with the fiscal conservative approach however it highlights what made Walmart so remarkable, they build long-term strategies and investment, innovate by understanding what and how their core customer wants to buy, execute to accomplish a differentiated and more appealing product. Today Jet.com and Flipkart are proving out the investment path as Walmart has reemerged as an e-commerce leader after being lapped by the likes of Amazon, Alibaba and Ebay.

Why is it that my family and millions of others order online with Walmart when Kroger is more convenient? For my wife who has used both services for groceries, the Walmart process while imperfect, takes less time, has an easier to use app and costs less, not to mention they were providing service ahead of the other guys for at least a year. My collegiate mentor, Dr. Richard Carr enthused the winning concept as "being the firstest with the mostest". Tilting retail on its axis has created casualties of Goliath sized adversaries like JC Penney, Sears and ironically, almost Walmart. Indeed had it not been for the glacial shift it made to compete with uber growth retail e-com sites by catching up in innovative value to its evolving customers, Walmart could have easily become the latest Blockbuster or Radio Shack. You can see the last mile ownership of the customer's purse...home delivery is an epic battle where there may only be one victor.

I have had the great pleasure of sharing direction to both start-up entrepreneurs and veteran founders whose company's growth have mired in mud. Each will share my resilient theme of knowing who their customer is and what they want and need, their elevator speech on how their product differentiates, how their company mission makes them essential and a plan that details to their exit how they must innovate and invest to meet their end goals. Fails, pivots, resilient competition are inevitable but I can hear Mr. Sam's words echoing as I coached a CEO of a technology company, "you must strive to be better and never forget your customer".