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Do managers have the key to Wal-Mart's (WMT) success?

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BusinessWeek has a great piece on struggling retail-giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and what it needs to do to get back on track. The magazine spoken with 12 Wal-Mart managers (including some who recently left the company) from all over the country, and picked their brains for ideas about what is wrong with the company:

  1. The obsession with cost-cutting may be reaching a point of diminishing returns, or even hurting the company.
  2. Too much reliance on computers and not enough on the instincts of store-level managers -- too much centralization
  3. Increasing the percentage of part-time workers makes recruiting difficult
  4. Customer service problems; partly a results of being understaffed (any customer could have told you that one)
  5. Managers knew the higher-fashion clothing blitz would flop -- it did.

In all, this is probably the most insightful thing I've seen about Wal-Mart anywhere in awhile. Wal-Mart is facing major challenges, and managers appear to have a lot of idea. Here's what may be troubling for Wal-Mart: "Some (managers) even felt more comfortable discussing the company's challenges with an outsider since their ideas aren't consistent with the corporate orthodoxy."

They have ideas, but many feel like corporate headquarters doesn't want to hear them. Has a company that was once arguably one of the best in the world become too ideological and unwilling to change?

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Last updated: July 06, 2009: 05:34 PM

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