"Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitor."
This is one of the factors that people living in closed, versus open societies, find difficult to comprehend. I'm not just talking nations, regions or cultures here; I'm talking business as well.
Many businesses operate in closed cultures because of the fear of competitors knowing what they may be planning next. While certain instances we do need some safeguards in place, many times the medicine is worse than perceived disease.
In the case of Sam Walton and Wal-Mart (WMT), look at what happened when their people were empowered and helped drive the company to its dizzying heights.
To this day, after years of knowing what they did to do it, competitors still can't catch up with their execution and delivery in their operations. They know what they're doing, but they aren't able to duplicate it. Knowledge is one thing, execution of that knowledge is another.
When we have this living, corporate group of people giving their input and challenging the way things are being done, it creates an atmosphere of excitement, belonging and innovation that can't simply be copied outwardly. It's part of the makeup of a culture. That one of the reasons it's so hard to understand other cultures when we visit them, even when we may study their characteristics, history and reasons the do things. If you're not part of it, you just don't know it.
This is why people immersed in a culture can learn more talking to locals in their native language in six months, than they do taking years of language lessons in a classroom environment.
Empowering our people means that we are opening up in a way that immerses them in who we are and encourages them to contribute and share their unique insights and knowledge. The entire process is part of what a business is. The end results can never be the sole understanding of what it is that makes something work. The whole being of a company and its people make up what that is.
This is why some companies can continue to outperform in their chosen fields, even though most the companies have the same general information they work from.
Information is more than data and studies, it's a drawing upon the entire wisdom of the people that are part of the business. Those that have things in place to encourage this flow of information and empowerment of their workers will outperform their competitors.
There are some things Sam Walton and his people introduced years ago that competitors still can't reproduce. The greatest risk is not tapping into the treasure within our people.
Other Walton Sources:
The Most Underrated CEO Ever The legendary Sam Walton
Sam Walton: The Power of Persistence
Sam Walton Business Quotes for Ya
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