Let ideas flourish
Communication must be a two-way street between employees
and management. If you make time to tell your employees what’s
on your mind, you must make time so they can do the same with
you.
Mullany says he believes ideas must have avenues through which
to flow upward in a business. Some ideas won’t fit your plans, but
some could become best practices throughout the company.
“We had an idea in the Northeast Division about how to lay out
the produce departments in the stores,” he says. “It came from one
of my regional general managers. I told him it sounded interesting
and we’d try to pilot it in a couple of markets.
“We tested it, and it worked. Then we expanded it to the entire
Northeast Division, and more than 600 stores tried it with similar
great results. We shared that with the rest of the Wal-Mart system,
and the system that was thought up by one regional general manager is now how we set up produce departments nationwide.”
Mullany’s bottom-up philosophy for generating ideas has helped
spawn other initiatives at Wal-Mart, among them a national Wal-Mart blog where employees and managers can share their ideas,
giving updates on what is working and not working.
“It’s powerful for an associate to see their idea implemented,”
he says. “That’s why you need to let your employees reach all the
way to the top of the organization. Here, an associate can speak
directly to a member of management, all the way up to me, and
even up to … the CEO of Wal-Mart. It’s about having an environment where people feel open to sharing new ideas.”
But, as is often communicated by leaders in all types of businesses, innovation can’t occur in a vacuum. You want your
employees to produce and share ideas, but you don’t want them to
get off track with regard to the company mission and goals. It
requires a balance between showing appreciation for all contributions but also developing a selective eye about what you’re going
to implement.
Mullany has a number of barometers in place for deciding on whether to utilize a new idea.
“The key is you want to make sure that you stay true to your mission,” he says. “If a new idea isn’t going to further the mission,
that’s kind of the first filter. We also want to make sure that what
we’re doing lines up with our brand strategy and how we’re going
to market.”
The best way to keep your employees’ creative juices flowing
while keeping the company on track is to remind them of where
the company is headed.
“Part of leadership is clearly communicating the goals and strategies,” Mullany says. “You have to keep your messages clear and
simple. What is simple is understood, and what is understood gets
executed thoroughly. You need to narrow the focus of your messages down to the few critical things that are really important.
Make sure the message is consistent, repeat the message, and I’ve
also found that it’s helpful to deliver the message via multiple
media. That means I’ll do video messages, speeches, meetings in
person, I’ll visit the stores. I’ll also make sure that my entire team
reinforces and delivers the message.”
