Walmart’s phenomenal growth wasn’t because of some secret sauce or tremendous luck, but rather it stems from a consistent application of hard work, continuous improvement, grit, client service, and strong financial management.

If you’re interested in building a sustainable business or career, apply Sam Walton’s 10 rules for success:

1. Commit to your business

Find something you’re passionate about and stick to it. If you’re a top performer, you’ll have many options and it’s easy to be enticed by the different opportunities that come your way. Resist the bright shiny objects in your career path and commit to your life’s work.

If you’re not sure what that work might be or what you’re passionate about, sign up for my free Know What You Want course. It’ll get you moving in the right direction.

Once you commit, be biased towards taking action and expect to win. When you are optimistic about your chances to succeed, it makes it easier for you to be resourceful and to persist until you win.

2. Partner with your team

To succeed, it’s paramount for your employees, peers, and stakeholders to be invested in you and your company or project. To get their buy-in, find ways to share credit and profits with your team so they feel better off when you and the firm are doing well. People follow leaders who will leave them better off.

Walton echoes British entrepreneur Richard Branson, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

3. Challenge your team

To build a world-class firm or career, set high goals and expectations for yourself and those around you. Encourage competition and find ways to keep the score to build accountability. Value hard work, innovation, and integrity and build teams that exude similar values.

As you institutionalize best practices, don’t be too predictable. Always keep things moving forward so your people and firm stay fresh. To hold people accountable, identify measurable performance indicators that connect to the value added to the firm.

4. Communicate openly and thoroughly to your team

Proactively empower your team by being transparent and sharing important information about the business. The more your people know the more they will understand how to focus their energy on the right things. Sam Walton believed the value for empowering your employees far outweigh the risk of competitors gaining access to the inner workings of your business.

Communicate often through staff meetings and written updates. Use these touch points to share information in a timely manner, provide a sounding board to your people, and boost your team’s morale.

5. Appreciate everything your people do for you and the business

It never hurts to be thankful.

To effectively show gratitude, be observant and notice when those around you are doing the right things. Then depending on the person, show appreciation either publicly or privately to recognize their specific actions. Specificity shows people you’re paying attention, which also shows that you care.

6. Celebrate your successes (and failures)

When you reach the top of the mountain you’ve decided to climb, take time to soak it in and celebrate. Reflect on what you did right and what you could do better. Thank all the people who helped you achieve your success and share credit with the people involved.

When you fail, take responsibility but don’t take yourself too seriously. Find humor in the situation and have fun. If you’re in a business you’re passionate about (see #1), know that any setback is only a small part of your overall journey. As long as you learn from your failures, each one will be a building block for your future success.

7. Listen to everyone

To be successful, find ways to listen to everything that’s going around you – in your department, company, and industry. Build trust with people around you so they open up to you and feel safe to share what they see is happening. If you have employees who report to you, push power down and pull info and ideas up. When you hear great ideas, share them with others in the firm.

Throughout his career, Sam would often visit his competitors to learn from their best practices and implement them in his stores. Sam’s Club was a direct result of listening to his competitors. Don’t be afraid to build on what others are doing. Everyone has a lesson to teach you.

8. Exceed your clients’ expectations

Give the people you serve what they want and a little more. This means constantly updating your understanding of what matters to your clients. Show that you appreciate them. When you make a mistake, apologize, and don’t make excuses. Just fix the issue and make good on your mistake.

Your business and career grow because your clients support you. Keep looking for ways to serve your customers better than anyone else. What else can you do to guarantee your client’s satisfaction?

9. Control your expenses better than your competition

If you want to succeed in business and in life, manage your finances and operations effectively. Whether it’s your company, department, or project, the ability to understand the drivers of your business and create sustainable profits is what will boost your value to the company.

If you’re not sure how to read financial statements or manage a P&L, take a class or consider an MBA. If you don’t, you won’t be able to compete and competition is unavoidable. To win, be passionate about competing and compete to win.

10. Swim upstream

When you feel strongly about a trend or idea, stick to your convictions even if it means going against the crowd. Leaders lead by changing and improving the status quo. Anytime you’re leading change, there will be dissuaders.

Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to change your mind if you realize you’re wrong.

If you’re passionate about being successful, take inventory on how you’re doing on these 10 tips. If you found these ideas useful, consider tips from these other top CEOs – Ken Chenault (American Express), Alex Gorsky (Johnson and Johnson), and Mary Barra (General Motors).

The post 10 Reasons for Walmart’s Success – Sam Walton: Made in America appeared first on Robert Chen.

Beyond workaholics, this phrase puts off more people than it excites. When people think of the grind, they envision their routine commute and their brainless, repetitive tasks. Not exactly a motivating image.

Yet, the grind is needed for success.

Most of your working life will consist of the grind with achievements peppered throughout. Your career is similar to a watch that keeps running and only gets recognized when you’re looking for the time or when your alarm goes off. It’s not glorious but it’s the way things work. You can’t shortcut the time it takes to get great at something.

With that said, surviving the grind isn’t as bad as you think as long as you choose something you want to do. A nostalgic example that comes to mind for me is Super Mario Brothers (the original version on the Nintendo Entertainment System). Like most young children, I had a short attention span. Yet I would spend countless hours repeating the same exact stages over and over again because I wanted to “beat” the game and impress my friends. That was the grind.

What allowed me to keep going with this seemingly mundane task was making progress in the game. As long as I was moving ahead, the grind was paying off.

If you begin to question your daily grind, there is a good chance that you’re not seeing improvement or progress anymore. This should alarm you because you’re probably on the cusp of burning out or you’ve already disengaged from work. Neither one of these outcomes will bring you long-term success.

To succeed professionally, find meaningful work that will help you grow. How willing you are to embrace the grind will help you determine if you’re on the right track. Below is an excellent reminder from Paul Graham’s fantastic article on the shortness of life:

“Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That’s what you do when life is short.”

– Paul Graham

Photo by Joe Madonna

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You can do the work but you can’t control the results.

Whether or not you get promoted, make a deal or get the resources you need all depends on the decisions of other people. Unfortunately, Peter Drucker is right – the decision maker may not be the best person to make that decision but they still get to decide.

If you’re not getting what you want, think of what you can do to influence the decision. It doesn’t help to blame or judge the decision maker.

If you’re the boss, hire good decision makers because ultimately, they decide what happens.

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or

when everything you touch turns to gold and you can’t seem to fail,

remember these words from Churchill

and

keep doing the small things that matter.

keep pursuing the big things you love.

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… ignore them.

(especially if they have not achieved success by your definition of success and if you know this is what you want to do.  If you’re not sure of what you want, go here.)

Now if people are telling you to quit, great news, you’re not alone. Here is a running list of successful people who were told they wouldn’t make it either:

• Walt Disney, Animator and Founder of Disney
  • Former employer thought “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.“
• Oprah Winfrey, Talkshow Host
  • Fired as a tv reporter because she was “unfit for TV“
• Fred Astaire, Actor and Dancer
  • Testing director at MGM – “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”
• Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO
  • Business partners didn’t think Americans would pay for lattes and cappuccinos
• JK Rowlings, Writer (Harry Potter Series)
  • Rejected by 12 different publishers and told “not to quit her day job.“
• Elvis Presley, Singer – “King of Pop”
  • Told by the manager at Grand Ole Opry -“You ain’t going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.“
• Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning Actor
  • Casting director – “Why don’t you stop wasting people’s time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?”
• Stephen King, Writer
  • 30 rejections for Carrie, the book that launched his career
• Vincent Van Gogh, Painter
  • Sold only one painting during his lifetime
• Colonel Sanders, Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken
  • Recipe rejected 1009 times
• Beatles, Music Band
  • Record executive -“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out“; “They have no future in show business.“
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, Writer
  • Book review headline for The Great Gatsby -“Fitzgerald’s Latest A Dud.“
• Michael Jordan, Basketball Player
  • Didn’t make high school basketball team
• Anderon Cooper, CNN Anchor
  • From previous colleagues in TV – “You’ll never be on air.“; “You’ll never be hired as a correspondent here.“
  • “Okay, so you are working for this little show that’s seen in high schools, but you’ll never get a job at a network”
• Graydon Carter, Editor of Vanity Fair
  • From a former boss – “Look, everyone really likes you, and you’re a wonderful person, but you’ll never make it in the magazine business. Maybe you should think about going into ad sales?”
• Arianna Huffington, Founder of Huffington Post
  • Skeptics – “A millionaire socialite who didn’t get the web.“; “this is simply unsurvivable.“
• Thomas Edison, Inventor
  • His teacher – “too stupid to learn anything.“
• Frank Geary, Architect
  • From a former architecture professor – “You will never make it in this field. Get out now or you’re just going to waste a lot of time.”
• Amy Tan, Writer
  • Her former business partner – “You’ll never make a dime writing.“
• Fred Smith, Founder of FedEx (shipping company)
  • His professor on his idea of reliable overnight shipping – “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.“
• Dr. Judah Folkman, Cancer Research Pioneer
  • His fellow scientists on his research – “You’re studying dirt.“

Others who have been told they wouldn’t make it (without naysayer quotes):

• Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin
• Bruce Springsteen, Singer – “The Boss”
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bodybuilder, Actor, Politician
• Maxine Clark, Founder of “Build-A-Bear”
• Sara Blakely, Founder of Spanx
• John Paul Dejoria, Founder of John Paul Mitchell and Patron Spirits
• WD-40 – took 40 tries to perfect the formula.

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there will always be someone to tell you that you are wrong.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inspired by individual biographies, articles and Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal.

Bonus: And if you end up failing …

Source: OnlineMBAToday.com

Photo by hobvias sudoneighm

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It’s hard to see others gain the successes you wish for yourself especially when you’re doing all you can and giving your best effort. Because you see and know everything that you’ve been doing, it’s natural to feel that you’re doing more than others yet not receiving the same rewards.

What you don’t see is their struggles and sacrifices to get to this point.

Because you don’t know enough about their situation to accurately benchmark yourself against them, you mistakenly compare their best results to all of your results – good and bad. Rarely will you win this lop-sided comparison.

Make life easier for yourself by:

• Comparing “present” you to “previous” you:
  • Are you a better and more successful person today than you were last week?
    • If not, what are you going to do about it?

• Compare comprehensively with others:
  • Look at and compare all facets of your life to all facets of the other person (for example: career, health, relationships, finances). If you still deem them more successful, imagine yourself in their shoes and ask yourself:
    • What would you have to do, give up and endure to achieve the success you see and will it be worthwhile for you?
      • If so, what’s the next step you can take right now to step into this role?
      • If this exercise is too much trouble for you to do, stop comparing.

Channel the energy of your frustration, disappointment and envy into taking action.

Photo by Jaap Joris

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Where you are and what you have now is the result of your actions, your environment and your timing. If you feel that you deserve more, you’re wrong. You are what you are right now. Accept it so you can empower yourself to improve it.

Once you gain clarity of your current reality, you can learn from your past to take better action for the future. Hold yourself accountable for where you are now and focus on what you can do and not on how unfair you’ve been treated.

There will always be factors out of your control that get in your way – it’s up to you to navigate around them if you want to be successful. It won’t be easy but it will be worthwhile.

Don’t stop taking action until you become what you want to be.

Photo by Allan Rotgers

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Even in the “iteration age” where failure is reframed as a pre-requisite for success, it still stings when you fail, no matter how smartly you do so.

But do you really need to fail in order to succeed?

I don’t think so…

When you study failures closely, you can find opportunities to prevent the failure while still extracting the valuable lesson.  There is usually an avoidable mistake that you can navigate around to allow you to grow without having to experience the pain.

Here are common avoidable mistakes to watch out for:

Didn’t Know What to Do (Awareness Gap) …

… so they did the wrong thing.

Great people become extraordinary because they constantly push their boundaries. Unfortunately, when you’re in uncharted territory, there are no guidelines or paths for you to follow. At the edge of your comfort zone, you fail when you step outside that edge.

If you imagine your abilities as the floor you walk on, when you’re at the edge, you can prevent yourself from falling off by either expanding the floor or stopping movement. The key idea is to grow your skills faster than you can move (pursue the next-level opportunity).

Look at your daily activities – how much of it do you spend moving and how much do you spend expanding your floor?

Whenever possible, get a guide who is already successful in what you’re looking to accomplish to help you decide on the right skills to build. If you don’t build the right skills, you’ll end up having to learn the hard way.

Example: You want to manage your own division and take on P&L responsibilities. You’ve never been client-facing and you don’t have a strong grasp of financials. Since you don’t think those elements are important to the role, you decide to take on P&L responsibilities without building these skills.  In this scenario, you’ll most likely fail and learn the hard way that you need to influence clients and accurately analyze financial statements to succeed.

Couldn’t Do What Was Needed (Competency Gap)

Knowing what skills to build doesn’t mean you can successfully build it. Part of mastery, especially if you’re going from great to extraordinary, requires perseverance and purposeful practice. You have to come up with a plan and actually go through with it, getting feedback and monitoring your progress along the way.

It takes time to acquire skill and you need persist patiently.

Example: You’ve received feedback to work on your business development skills so you decide to take a course, shadow some successful salespeople and participate in client meetings. Despite all of this work, you still haven’t been able to make a sale. If you decide to take on P&L responsibilities before you become competent in the prerequisite skills, you’ll most likely fail and then learn that you need to sell successfully before you can run a division.

Didn’t Want to Do What Was Needed (Passion Gap)

The higher you go, the least likely you’ll be able to thrive unless you’re on fertile ground. In business, that means operating in your sweet spot. At this point, if you’re competent in the skills you need, failure is a sign that maybe you’re meant to head in a different direction.

Conan O’Brien expressed it perfectly in his commencement speech at Dartmouth in 2011,

“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.”

Follow and do what you’re born and made to do. In my interview with the late and great American writer, Bill Zinsser, he gives advice on generating uniqueness. The more “you” that you become, the more successful you will be.

In any situation, know that failure is just feedback. Maybe you need to develop your skills or head in another direction altogether. The difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is what they do with this feedback.

It’s in your mistakes that you can figure out your next step. Failure is a method to help you gain clarity. If you slow down the process, you might be able to gain the clarity without the pain that comes from failure.

Be like a seasoned race car driver: Avoid crashes and still win the race by going fast on the straight aways and slowing down during the turns.

Photo by Matt Brown

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