In a 1989 feature on the then up-and-coming discount superstore Wal-Mart, Fortune’s John Huey recounted a simple but urgent request from the chain’s cofounder, Sam Walton, to his 215,000 employees (or “associates” in the company’s internal lingo).
It was the beginning of the 1988 holiday season, and in a November address to managers via the company’s ahead-of-its-time satellite video address system, Walton asked all employees to pledge that “whenever customers approach, the associates should look them in the eye, greet them, and ask to help.”
Even for shy employees, he went on, “it would, I’m sure, help you become a leader, it would help your personality develop, you would become more outgoing, and in time you might become manager of that store, you might become a department manager, you might become a district manager, or whatever you choose to be in the company. It will do wonders for you.”
One of the company’s employees in the 1980s was a young man named Doug McMillon. As Sydney Lake wrote in Fortune this week, McMillon “got his start in 1984 picking orders and unloading trailers at a Walmart warehouse, making just $6.50 an hour.”
In 1988, McMillon was on a brief hiatus from the company to earn a BA and MBA, before returning as a buyer in 1991. (It’s worth reading Huey’s Fortune feature just for the vivid description of how Walmart buyers scrutinized those seeking to sell their products in the store: “They talk softly, but they have piranha hearts, and if you aren’t totally prepared when you go in there, you’ll have your ass handed to you.”)
McMillon went on to fulfill Walton’s prophecy, moving up the ranks at Walmart and being appointed chief executive in 2013. McMillon announced on Friday that he is retiring at the age of 59, after presiding over more than a decade of growth and technological advancement at the retail giant. Since his appointment, the company’s stock has quadrupled, and Walmart has held the No. 1 spot on the Fortune 500 for his entire tenure.
In 1989, Huey described “the house that Sam built” as a “militantly unglamorous, religiously cost-conscious mass merchandiser that has rewarded true believers and confounded skeptics.” McMillon is, certainly, one of those true believers. “The values of Walmart aligned to my personal values,” the outgoing CEO has said in the past, “and I haven’t been bored one single day.”
