How Sam’s Club Leader Readies for Change
Sam’s Club Chief Growth Officer Diana Marshall sat down with Progressive Grocer Editorial Director and Associate Publisher Gina Acosta earlier this month during the publication’s Grocery Impact event to discuss why readiness for change is the bedrock of disruptive and adaptive organizations.
“What's the one thing constant in retail? It's change,” Marshall reminded event attendees. “The thing that's been true every single year is that consumers have changed.”
So how can the food retail industry stay ahead and ensure it doesn’t disappoint consumers with it comes to experiences? Marshall shared insights into her personal leadership style that has helped her team become more resilient.
“From a leadership standpoint, first, it's my role to make sure that I set the examples,” said Marshall. “Secondly, it is also my role to make sure that people are clear on the vision and they know what we're working against and that we're all aligned.”
Marshall also shared some creative leadership strategies, including “celebrating failure.”
“It’s really easy to recognize the things that work, but how do we celebrate the things that don't work?” asked Marshall, “and how do you build people to become more comfortable with continuing to change?”
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Marshall found the answer to these questions by celebrating when her team doesn’t do so well. “One, you can do it with little things. You can make a T-shirt, you can make a trophy, and just talk about it,” she said. “What did you learn? What would you do next time? It's like: ‘Hey, we learned this. It's going to make us better for this job.’ Help people to not be like, ‘Oh no, I screwed up.’ Instead, how about: ‘Hey, good news. You screwed up. We learned. Great. Let's do something else.’ I think that's just making it more fun, versus ‘Oh, failure, I'm in trouble.’”
Another piece of advice from Marshall is not to get comfortable. “The moment you're comfortable, you're behind,” she said. “So even in the moments where things might appear to be going well, push yourself to do something else that makes you uncomfortable so that you can continue to change at the rate consumers change.”
Marshall also built resilience in her team to handle change by giving short timelines and big goals. “When people look at you, you can tell when people are uncomfortable, that it may not be possible,” she explains. “But that will get the behaviors and the progress, against how do we move that speed? How can we make sure that we're more agile in serving our consumer better?”
Marshall’s culture of fostering innovation and growth has led to impactful breakthroughs at Sam’s Club, from creating frictionless shopping opportunities to recently rolling out a completely checkout-free prototype store in Texas.
While she ensures that everyone on her team knows their part and the objectives, Marshall also supports having fun at work. “I'm a big believer in work hard and play hard, and we do laugh a lot,” she said. “I like to laugh, so I encourage my team to not always take ourselves too seriously and go on the journey of being real humans first and then being great business professionals and retailers second, and that seems to work pretty well. People get along, they recognize each other as human and they build relationships. I heard a podcast last week that said people will follow you and work harder because you bring them joy than those who don't. … that means people will try harder and move faster and deliver on the business, but also have a good time doing it.”
