Sam Walton saw his employees as PR wins

(First of Two)

One of the most important aspects of good public relations is communicating with employees. After all, they are the front-line champions of a leader’s vision. Without them, an organization cannot succeed.

The best person I’ve ever seen at employee communications is Wal-Mart Founder Sam Walton, who pulled it off the old-fashioned way – through human interaction. In the days before e-mail and mobile technology became ubiquitous, Walton would show up at one of his stores, having flown his plane to a local airport and rented a low-budget sedan to get there.

He would park on the outskirts of the parking lot and walk his way through the parking lot, picking up paper and chatting up guys gathering shopping carts. They had no idea who he was, and that’s the way he wanted it. 

Back in 1991, when I was a business reporter at Arkansas’ big statewide newspaper, the Arkansas Gazette, I was witnessed this firsthand.  Here are some observations about why his employees admired him.

He set an example.  Imagine if your CEO reported to work before anyone else and behaved in a way that general wisdom suggests is below his pay grade. That’s the example that Walton set. I’m not the only one who saw him that morning picking up gum wrappers, cups and other nasty things in the parking lot. Also, his frugality was legendary. He preferred low-budget hotels during business trips, and some executives even shared rooms. No doubt, this spoke volumes to employees. 

He was their biggest cheerleader. There is a saying. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Back then, it seemed Walton would remember where employees were from, their family situations and how long they had been an associate. He would talk to them about their child’s sports activities while peppering with questions about what was selling well and what was not. For a reporter trained to be a skeptic, I saw his behavior as authentic, and I’m sure his employees did too.

He dreamed big and then asked for their help. Anyone who has played competitive sports knows a great coach can push players past their own expectations. Walton set huge goals then empowered and motivated his team to execute them. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the star-studded annual shareholder’s meeting, usually held in the Bud Walton Arena on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. There, he would celebrate success, lead 5,000-plus employees in cheers, then challenge executives to do more next year.

When I was covering the company, the big goal was to pivot Wal-Mart into the grocery business and achieve $100 billion in sales before the decade of the 1990s ended. (This goal was achieved in 1997, and I suspect many people reading this don’t remember when Wal-Mart didn’t sell groceries.)

In today’s global business world, with the availability of digital communication, one could argue that we are much more efficient than we were 30 years ago, but less personal. Yet, during its first 30 years of existence, Wal-Mart overtook its competition, many of which had been in business since the 19th century.

I’m inclined to think the power of the human touch had a lot to do with that.