Sam Walton – Made in America
I had a very rare opportunity to spend 4 – 5 hours on the road, uninterrupted. I took this chance to start reading on Sam Walton’s Made in America.
I enjoyed the book thoroughly because it was written with such flow. The words used were very descriptive and it painted the entire scenes straight out of my brain.
As an investor, it also allowed me to understand more about what are the key ingredients of a strong and powerful retail companies. Unfortunately, I also do recognise that with technological changes, a similar business like Walmart may not be as successful. The landscape is certainly very different.
As I read the last chapter “A Postscript” of the book, I nearly teared as a wave of sadness washed over me. What an inspiring life Sam Walton had… He lived a good life by all measures.
The key lessons for me:
- As long as you believe in a dream to the extent it is deep down in your bones, go out and do it!
- Never let naysayers determine your future. I determine it for myself.
- Wake up each day to find something fulfilling to do and it will enrich my life in many ways unpredictable.
- Treat people nice and show appreciate for people surrounding you.
- Have a strong bias towards action and experiment. Give the people space to explore and to grow.
- When it does do well, do tweaking. If the idea sucks, drop it altogether.
- When a company grows bigger, it is even more important for a company to ‘think small’.
- Sharing of critical information, even the minor details, would add transparency to the entire organisation and it develops trust. Shit happens when managers hoard information.
- Learn to push down responsibility to people and motivate them towards performance. Learn to trust them and learn to let go.
- Share the fruits of labour with every rank-and-file customers. Give them an ownership of the business via discounted stock options or profit-sharing. This would unleash great entrepreneurial initiatives from the ground-up.
- Keep your ears on the ground, and seek for ideas on the ground.
- Get rid of unnecessary spending, no matter how big or small you are. Keep a lean culture. Don’t be too full of yourself and abuse your powers. Break down layers of management.
- Be accessible.
- Last of all, a business survives because of its customers. Be customer-centric. Always.
Here are some other useful articles which you may enjoy:
https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/history/10-rules-for-building-a-business
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1992/06/29/76578/index.htm