Give back
Under Blank’s leadership, the Atlanta Fal-cons Youth Foundation has given $6.4 million in grants to 194 nonprofit organizations across Georgia since 2002. And, Home Depot employees annually log tens of thousands of hours volunteering in their communities.
“Part of a piece of fabric, in a general sense, you’re woven into the life of the fabric, and when a company weaves its way into the life of a community, it becomes part of the fabric of that community,” Blank says. “It becomes very hard to tear it out of the community, and you don’t want to tear it out of the community. It’s part of what makes the community unique.”
Beyond helping others, service creates employee loyalty and buy-in because they know their employer is a part of something more than financial reports.
“They feel the company has not only a brain but has a heart and has a soul to it,” Blank says.
“They end up going home, instead of feeling they were at a job all day, that this was not a job — this is part of their life experience,” Blank says. “This is part of what I am as a person — the company I’m associated with.
“When you get to that point with an associate, it’s a very powerful place to be because without asking, without telling — and there aren’t enough hours in the day to tell and ask associates to do everything that you want them to do — they do it out of themselves for the right reasons. That’s a perfect environment.”
But leaders have to genuinely care about a commitment to service and view it as an opportunity instead of a responsibility.
“If you have a responsibility to do something, sometimes you do it, you’re not happy about doing it, but you do it,” Blank says. “If you have an opportunity to do it, and you still do it, that means you didn’t have to do it, but you did it for all the right reasons.”
Just as running plays correctly and cohesively allows a team to win, when an organization combines all of these business plays, it creates a financial victory.
“Our philosophy has always been on doing the right thing and having the right kinds of standards, and that by doing that, we’d produce the financial performance that was important to the organization,” Blank says. “It wasn’t based on first producing financial results. It was based on a set of values — living those values, supporting those values.” •
