What's your Wal-Smart I.Q.?
Take this quiz and find out! Along the way, youÕll get an exiting tour of Wal-Smart: What it Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World. Each correct answer directs you to pages of the book with more insightful stories and commentary.
Correct!
Strategy is the elimination of options. That's right, the first step in making a choice is choosing what not to do. The failure of many corporate strategies can be traced to having too many priorities and therefore too broad a focus. Organizations with strategies of this type tend to wander aimlessly, offering something for everyone, but standing for nothing to anyone.
- The first Choose or Lose decision you need to make is:
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We have all become actors in a drama staged by Wal-Mart--whether intentionally, accidentally, or serendipitously. In the United States, nearly one of every 100 workers works at Wal-Mart. Almost 9 of 10 Americans shops at Wal-Mart. Globally, Wal-Mart already runs stores in countries where 33.9 percent of the world's population lives--countries that generate 55.0 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP). (p.19)
- How many workers in America work at Wal-Mart?
Correct!
The story of Manco illustrates the key engine underlying Wal-Mart's growth and thus the key engine behind the Wal-Mart economy: the productivity loop. The loop is an endless cycle: Lower costs, invest savings in lower prices, use lower prices to boost sales, and generate higher profits to invest in lowering costs further. It is a guiding light for employees across Wal-Mart--and now among employees elsewhere. Anyone in a company can initiate a change to drive the loop. When they finish, they start again. At Wal-Mart, people have been at it for decades. (p.46-47)
- What is the Productivity Loop?
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Strong-process organizations (SPOs) have strong process discipline to ensure that their processes are adhered to throughout the organization. Changes to the processes are disseminated through the process design itself. Because the organization supports employees so well, average people can achieve above-average results. (p.63-64)
- One defining characteristics of a strong-process organization is that:
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Companies that replicate Wal-Mart's competitive advantages often end up with just a corporate "dye job." They find that the change often doesn't work or doesn't work well, and even if it does work, they have to reapply the fix to sustain the change. To replicate Wal-Mart's enduring operational strengths successfully, we need to start with the DNA. (p.87)
- If you try to duplicate competitive advantages without replicating a company's DNA:
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So what is the key to competing successfully against Wal-Mart or a dominant industry competitor?
Don't compete against them.
Instead, the key to profiting as a competitor in the Wal-Mart world is to make three explicit choices relative to the dominant industry player:
- How to differentiate
- What to emulate
- Where to dominate
Differentiate. Emulate. Dominate. These three imperatives form the triad of choices we all have to make as competitors to profit in the Wal-Mart economy. (p.113)
- How do you compete against Wal-Mart?
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Despite horror stories in the press about the collapse of suppliers in the Wal-Mart economy, we can survive and thrive in the face of giants. Let's look in detail at a few supplier success stories from the Wal-Mart world: Michael Farms, Manco, and Procter & Gamble.. Together they demonstrate how winning companies have succeeded by using the triad of strategic choices, deciding what strengths to leverage, how to invest, and where to diversify. (p.146)
- What do potatoes, duct tape, and Tide have in common?
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One of the critical issues with which Scott is struggling challenges all of us as employers in the Wal-Mart economy--creating a new employment compact that rebalances the needs and expectations of both employers and workers. This compact, forged in the heat of the fiery debate over Wal-Mart, must take into account competitive strategy, economic reality, and public sentiment. (p.157-158)
- What is the "Compact with the worker"?
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A sea change is occurring in the Wal-Mart economy. Business leaders are realizing that their involvement as community members can be entirely consistent with their strategic and profit objectives. As good stewards, we can align our business strategy and our community strategy. We can satisfy economic, social, and environmental responsibilities at the same time. (p.200)
- What is Align?
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This is what it means to be Wal-Smart. We link explicit, intentional strategic choices so that competitor strategy and vendor strategy and employer strategy and community strategy work together. The vision of our business that emerges is far brighter, far clearer, and far more effective than each choice standing on its own. We survive and thrive because--We find the and. (p.218)
- What is "Find the And"?
