- How much of your time do
you spend thinking about
building and sustaining
the culture of Walmart?
Which is built on such
a strong foundation.
- A lot. Specifically,
shaping the culture and
changing the culture is what
my leadership team and I
are focused on at the moment.
To understand that you
need to know what our
four core values are.
They are respect for the individual.
Strive for excellence.
Serving the customer.
And acting with integrity.
And those four core values
have been around in Walmart
for a long time.
They were written down after
watching Sam Walton work.
When he started the company, he didn't say
these are our four core values
and stamp it into stone.
He just was an entrepreneur
working, and others around him
saw those behaviors,
wrote them down, and said
these are the things we believe in.
So our behaviors, culture, needs to match
those set of values.
As companies grow and as time
goes on, it gets misshaped.
You lose, in some cases,
aspects that were there
when the founder was there.
For example, Sam Walton
held people accountable.
If you work in Walmart, you
are frequently are presented
a Sam Walton that looks
like a grandfather, loving,
appreciative.
He was all those things,
but he also held people
accountable to performance.
I have heard first hand
stories of him doing that
and know that he did it.
So striving for excellence,
one of our four core values,
embedded in that is accountability,
personal, performance, accountability.
We need to, in today's
Walmart, drive that up.
We're trying to shape the
culture, behaviorally,
as we embrace technology,
as we change in a transformational way,
how Walmart serves customers.
Be consistent on those core values,
but sharpen up the behaviors
associated with them,
we talk about this all the time, so that
that engine, that is culture,
generates the right results.
