Leadership
Strike up the brand
How Hank Mullany uses three strategies to get his 180,000 employees to embrace Wal-Mart’s mission
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Philadelphia | March 2009
Page 1 of 4
There is being a division president, and then there’s being a division president for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Hank Mullany is the latter.
He’s the president of Wal-Mart’s Northeast Division, a 600-store,
180,000-employee cog in the world’s largest retail chain, which
produced $374 billion in sales in 2007. Mullany’s divisional footprint stretches from Maine to Virginia, encompassing the metropolitan areas of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and making
him the head of a giant within a giant. Yet, with nearly a quarter-million employees under his umbrella, Mullany still must take big-picture corporate concepts and make them personal for his people — many of whom he’ll never meet beyond a handshake during
one of his store visits. If that doesn’t happen, initiatives don’t get
executed and Wal-Mart won’t succeed.
“If we want something to happen and get it executed, it happens
with the people in the stores,” Mullany says. “The best programs
and strategies in the world aren’t going to happen without execution. (The stores) are where people meet Wal-Mart. I’m not Wal-Mart to our customers. The people in the stores are Wal-Mart.”
Here’s how Mullany drives Wal-Mart’s vision to his employees
through training, communication and delegation to enable his
employees to pursue their ideas, furthering Wal-Mart’s mission in
the process.
