Kroger Exec Traces Her Path to Career Success
The role of a leader at Kroger, she noted, is to “empower our associates and bring out the greatest in our teams and our individuals. That’s what makes the difference, and that’s what makes it special. All of our team members have really great ideas, and they’re all really focused on the customer. … They really want to take care of the customer, and how do you connect to that? Part of that, from Kroger’s standpoint, is having a culture where people can use their voice and bring those [viewpoints] to make us better, because great ideas happen all throughout the organization, all different places. You just have to ask, and people will bring up ideas.”
Regarding work-life balance, Adcock offered the opinion that the term “is a little bit of a misnomer, because it kind of implies that it’s very balanced and very tidy and everything is neat and equal, and from my experience … it’s not equal all the time and it’s always up and down and up and down. My experience has been you just have to embrace that that’s how it’s going to be.” She also noted that when it came to her own experience as a working mom, “I don’t compare myself [to others]. … It has to be what works for you. It has to work for your family.”
As equality continues to evolve at Kroger and in the broader grocery industry, Adcock took the time to consider the top lessons learned during her career. These included having mentors and being a mentor, but to take the initiative in such relationships, and that it’s okay not to have all of the answers and to reach out for help.
On challenging days, she said that she reminds herself: “This is not about me. This is about the bigger picture. This is about our purpose, to Feed the Human Spirit and just staying true to that North Star. Then the best thing for me is to go into the stores and engage with our associates, because it’ll remind you why we do this.”
Attendees of the session came away with the knowledge that Adcock’s tenure at grocery more than lives up to the goals of the company where she learned how to lead: “As we say at Kroger, come for a job, discover a career.”