SUCCESSFUL LEADER Sam Walton Founder of Wal-Mart

1. SUCCESSFUL LEADER Sam Walton Founder of Wal-Mart

2. Outline • Sam’s Profile • What was his success? • Sam’s personal attributes • Sam’s leadership style/approach • Situational circumstances • What we have learnt

3. Sam’s Profile • 1918-1992 • Founder of Wal-Mart, the world's largest merchant empire • “Walton has transformed retailing the way Henry Ford revolutionarized transportation.”

4. The Wal-Mart Story “We're all working together; that's the secret. And we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished; we've just begun."

5. What was Sam’s success? • Walt-Mart is one of the world’s largest corporations of any kind with shops in America, Asia and Europe

6. Secret of success: • offering a wide range of goods at a very low price • keeping his store centrally located in order to attract many customer • Longer business hours than others • Sam searched around in other people's stores for good manager talents

7. Personal Attributes • Hard worker, energetic and stress tolerant:> He started his own business from almost nothing > He was always trying to get the most out of money

8. …continued • He took chances and never said never:> He never stopped looking for cheaper and better ways of doing business > He was always trying to improve the business

9. …continued • He spread his way of thinking:> He believed: “If you try to give every day your best, you do your work with love and passion, pretty soon every body around you will catch this passion.”

10. …continued • self-confidence: > he was well aware of his power and he cultivated it > he set himself challenging objectives

11. …continued • Employees were partners and not subordinates: >he listened to his employees >he was reachable for them also at home >he offered them a percentage of the store's profits and the possibility to become limited partners

12. Sam’s leadership style/approach • Mix of participative and autocratic leader • Hand-on manager and arm’s length type Task oriented behaviors:> planning, coordinating, organizing Relation oriented Behavior> communicating , developing, rewarding

13. Participative Leader • Local stores can decide on their own on what to stock to suit customers’ needs • He talk to the associates to find out how the stores were doing and pay visit to the ones who were not doing very well • representative of associates are invited to the annual meeting

14. Autocratic Leader • To ensure success he made also autocratic decisionse.g. Saturday work is part of the commitment when it comes to a career in retail working on Saturday

15. Task oriented behaviors:planning, coordinating, organizing • He established a network between the Wal-Mart stores in order to get an cost advantage

16. Relation oriented Behavior:communicating , developing, rewarding Communicating:•he informed the associates about company’s data •information sharing helps associates to implement strategies accordingly

17. Developing • Sam asked for the associates’ feedback to encourage development in business. Thereby also associates were able to improve their skill.

18. Rewarding • Sam rewarded the good performance of his associates and encouraged others to improve. • So they could learn and improve

19. Situational circumstances • Sam developed a new idea of retailing • Traditional retailer feared to loose the control over their market

20. 1. Sam’s measures • Good cost management is necessary to achieve objectives • series of reform in motivating employees and in the compensation system • created a partnership with his employees • profit sharing, incentive bonuses, discount stock purchase plan

21. Arguments for Sam’s continued success as a leader • Passion and enthusiasme.g. he was always searching for new ideas and possibilities to improve business and relation to his associates • Sam tried to combine tasks and relations > he wanted to offer customers a wide range of product at low price >he encourage teamwork

22. …continued • He created the Walt-Mart culturee.g. Walt-Mart cheer: • It goes like this: Give me a W! "W!" Give me an A! "A!" Give me an L! "L!" Give me a squiggly (shake hips)! "Squiggly! (Shake hips)" Give me an M! "M!" Give me an A! "A!" Give me an R! "R!" Give me a T! "T!" Who's number one? "The CUSTOMER!"

23. What we have learned Factors to successful personal leadership development • Personality • Knowledge and experience

24. 1. Personality • Hard work leads to success • Interpersonal skills: respect and understanding for others leads to a good climate and improves working performance • Risk taking is necessary for invention and development

25. 2.Knowledge and experience • Knowledge about the business is the basis of success but a lot comes from learning by doing • Learning from experience can avoid new mistakes e.g. particularly crisis situation have a huge learning impact

26. 3. Strengths and weaknesses • Be aware with your strengths and weaknesses • Use your strengths appropriately • Ask for help in case of weaknessese.g. hire experts to complement your weaknesses

27. Conclusion Sam Walton was a successful leader and his leadership style is a severe template for other leaders. But every leader has to analyze the situation, incorporate the organizational culture and adjust the leadership style.

28. Group 4 Evelyn Hofer 02762793 Phoebe Hon 01244524