How Did Sam Walton Manage Walmart?

David Senra says Sam Walton managed Walmart by walking stores, warehouses, and truck cabs, and some staffers called him that old slave driver, the boss people resigned or got fired under because the work was a pressure cooker. The public picture of a good old country boy in a soft velvet glove missed the iron fist inside. He can get a little tough if he sees things he does not like. He knew the business from top to bottom because he used to sweep the floor, keep the books, and buy the merchandise. A core asset was his willingness to try something new, and he repeated a low resistance to change, the RC factor, throughout the entire company.

On the road he flagged down one of his semi trucks, jumped into the cab, and rode 100 miles with the driver to gain firsthand experience. He showed up at 2:30 in the morning with donuts for a warehouse loading dock, asked the dock workers how to upgrade their efforts, and immediately got them an extra shower or two. He spent most of his time in the stores, in the warehouses, and riding with the truck drivers. He identified the style as management by walking around: haunting Walmart stores and competitors' stores for the winning and losing tricks of mass merchandising. As hard as he was on executives, he backed the frontline workers serving customers.

He was just as hard on vendors and on his own buyers, who had to obtain rock bottom wholesale prices. At his insistence the buyers demanded price concessions from P&G, General Electric, and Sony, promising high volume sales.