Number of words – 592

Walmart was not the only retail establishment capable of offering low prices either. Price, has been already established, is a highly effective manipulation. But it alone does not inspire people to root for you and give you the undying loyalty needed to create a tipping point to grow to massive proportions. Being cheap does not inspire employees to give their blood sweat and tears. Walmart does not have a lock on cheap prices and cheap prices are not what made it so beloved and ultimately so successful.

For Sam Walton, there was something else, a deeper purpose, cause or belief that drove him. More than anything else, Walton believe in people. He believed that if you looked after people, people would look after you. The more Walmart could give to employees, customers and the community, the more that employees, customers and the community would give back to Walmart. “We are all working together, that’s the secret.” said Walton.

This was a much bigger concept than simply, “Passing on the savings”. To Walton, the inspiration came not simply from customer service but from service itself. Walmart was what Walton built to serve his fellow human beings. To serve the community, to serve employees and to serve customers. Service was a higher cause.

The problem was that his cause was not clearly handed down after he died. In the post Sam era, Walmart slowly started to confuse why it existed – to serve people – with how it did business – to offer low prices. They traded the inspiring cause of serving people for a manipulation. They forgot Walton’s why and their driving motivation became all about, cheap. In contrast to the founding cause that Walmart originally embodied, efficiency and margins became the name of the game. “A computer can tell you down to the dime what you sold, but it can never tell you how much you could have sold”, said Walton. There’s always a price to pay for the money you make, and given Walmart’s sheer size, that cost wasn’t paid in dollars and cents alone. In Walmart’s case, forgetting their founders why has come at a very high human cost. Ironic, considering the company’s founding cause.

The company, once renowned for how it treated employees and customers, has been scandal-ridden for nearly a decade. Nearly every scandal has centred on how poorly they treat their customers and their employees. As of December 2008, Walmart faced 73 class action lawsuits related to wage violations and has already paid hundreds of millions of dollars in past judgements and settlements. A company that believed in the symbiotic relationship between corporation and community managed to drive a wedge between themselves and so many of the communities in which they operate. There was a time when legislators would help pass laws to allow Walmart into new communities, now lawmakers rally to keep them out. Fights to block WalMart from opening new stores have erupted across the country. In New York, for example, city representatives in Brooklyn joined forces with labour unions to block the store, because of Walmart’s reputation for unfair labour practices.

In one of the more iconic violation of Walton’s founding beliefs, Walmart has been unable to laugh at itself or learn from the scandals. “Celebrate your successes”, said Walton. “Find some humour in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously.  Loosen up and everybody around you will loosen up.” Instead of admitting that things aren’t what they used to be, Walmart has done the opposite.

Excerpted from ‘Start with Why’ by Simon Sinek