Caution: If you’re
really looking for his advice here, trying to get something serious out of
this exercise he put himself through, remember these rules are not in any way
intended to be the Ten Commandments of Business. They are some rules that
worked for him. But he always prided himself on breaking everybody else’s
rules and he always favoured the mavericks who challenged his rules. He may
have fought them all the way, but he respected them, and in the end, he
listened to them a lot more closely than he did the pack who always agreed with
everything he said.
So, pay special attention to rule no 10, if you interpret it
in the right spirit – it could simply mean “Break all the rules”
Rule 1: COMMIT
COMMIT to your business. Believe in it more than anybody
else. Sam thinks he overcame every single one of his personal shortcomings by
the sheer passion he brought to his work. He says “I don’t know if you’re born
with this kind of passion or you can learn it. But I do know you need it” If
you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you
possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you
--- like a fever.
Rule 2: SHARE
SHARE your profits with all your associates, and treat them
as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will
all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain
control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in a partnership. Encourage
your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock and
grant them stock for their future. It’s the best thing they’ve ever done at
Walmart.
Rule 3: MOTIVATE
MOTIVATE your partners. Money and ownership alone aren’t
enough. Constantly day by day, think of new and more interesting way ways to
motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition,
and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale,
cross-pollinate; have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged.
Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don’t become
too predictable.
Rule 4: COMMUNICATE
COMMUNICATE everything you possibly can to your partners.
The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the
more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them. If you don’t trust
your associates to know what’s going on, they’ll know you don’t really consider
them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of
informing your competition.
Rule 5: APPRECIATE
APPRECIATE everything your associates do for the business. A
paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to
be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it
often, and especially when we have done something, we’re really proud of.
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere
words of praise. They’re absolutely free – and a worth fortune.
Rule 6: CELEBRATE
CELEBRATE your successes. Find some humour in your failures.
Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everybody around you will
loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm always. When all else fails put on a
costume and sing a silly song. They make everybody else sing with you. Don’t do
the hula on wall street. It’s been done by Sam. Think up your own stunt. All of
this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the
competition.
Rule 7: LISTEN
LISTEN to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to
get them talking. The folks on the front lines – the ones who actually talk to
the customer -- are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there.
You’d better find out what they know. This really is what quality is all about.
To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to
bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell
you.
Rule 8: EXCEED
EXCEED your customers’ expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over.
Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate
them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don’t make excuses – apologize. Stand
behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that
first Wal-Mart sign: “Satisfaction Guaranteed”. They’re still up there, and
they have made all the difference.
Rule 9: CONTROL
CONTROL your expense better than your competition. This is
where you can always find a competitive advantage. For twenty-five years
running – long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation’s largest retailer –
they ranked number one in their industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to
sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an
efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if
you’re too inefficient.
Rule 10: SWIM
SWIM upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional
wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can
find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for
a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you’re headed the wrong way.
Sam in all his years heard more often than anything was: “a
town less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very
long.”
Those are some pretty ordinary rules, some would say even simplistic. The hard part, the real challenge, is to constantly figure out ways to execute them. You can’t just keep doing what works one time, because everything would around you is always changing. To succeed, you have to stay out in front of that change.
To purchase this book follow the link: https://amzn.to/2WIr8b3
or, you can click on the "Buy Now" button to Order this book from Amazon.
 |
No comments: