Charles Fishman is a Senior Writer with the business magazine Fast Company and the author of The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works — and How It’s Transforming the American Economy. If you take the time to read this blog regularly, you should certainly take the time to read this book. It is anything but an anti-Wal-Mart screed. Many of Fishman’s insights are flattering to the company. Many are not. What Fishman does in this book is look at Wal-Mart in ways that it has never been looked at before. By doing so, he has helped bring the public debate about Wal-Mart a level of sophistication it didn’t have before he offered his analysis.

I first learned that Fishman read this blog last January, shortly before the publication of his book. I talked to him briefly then and we have stayed in contact by e-mail here and there. A few weeks ago, I though it might be interesting to catch up with him after the initial hoopla over his book had died down and before the publication of the paperback version. He graciously agreed to an e-mail interview. Fishman’s answers are both long enough and interesting enough that I will be breaking this interview into three posts. Many thanks as well to Jeff for coming up with all the best questions.

Q. I hear you’ve visited Wal-Mart HQ in Bentonville. What’s it like? How did they treat you?

A. About 6 weeks after the The Wal-Mart Effect came out, a member of Wal-Mart’s media team sent me an email, saying the company was well aware of the book, and offering to clarify some things. That email exchange ultmately led to an invitation from Wal-Mart to come spend the day at the home office. The point of the invitation was, essentially, “It looks like you’re going to be writing and talking about Wal-Mart a fair amount in the near future — we’d like you to come learn something about the company first-hand.”

I didn’t hesitate to say yes. Wal-Mart is one of the most powerful economic and cultural forces in the U.S. today, and I think given its influence, it’s also one of the most poorly understood. When they offer a chance to a reporter to ask questions, well — I’ve been trying to get them to return my calls for three years.

The day before my visit to headquarters, I went and visited Sam Walton’s grave, which is in the Bentonville city cemetery, adjacent to the grounds of the home office. Just to keep a little perspective.

My day at Wal-Mart was fascinating. Plenty was as you would expect — the offices really are austere, the typical Starbucks is more plushly appointed — and there were plenty of surprises. One thing it was good to be reminded of is that the people who work at Wal-Mart, the people who make decisions at Wal-Mart — they are real people. They have spouses and worries and kids, they have goals and bosses and pressures, they have emotions and live in the world just like the rest of us. I think, for me, it was great to put some real human faces to the word, “Wal-Mart,” especially given the acrimony of the conversation about Wal-Mart.

I was certainly treated with courtesy and respect — no differently, typically, than I’m treated when I go to report anywhere. I will say it was odd to have Wal-Mart staff members hand me copies of The Wal-Mart Effect to be autographed. Odd, but nice to know they were willing to read something so critical about their company.

I’ve written a whole new final chapter for the book, based on my visit, that will be in the paperback edition of the book, coming out in January. And my recent story for Fast Company magazine about compact fluorescent light bulbs — “How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Save the World?” — that story grew out of my visit.

Q. During your book tour, did anybody who might know better come up and say you got this all wrong? Did anybody say something like, “You don’t know how right you are”? What parts of the book elicited the most reaction?

A. I would say the most briefly heart-stopping moment of my book trips came at DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, speaking to an audience not just of students but of members of the community around DePauw. At the moment the floor was opened to questions, the first person to take the microphone said in a very loud, firm voice, “Hi, my name is Steve, I’ve worked for the Wal-Mart distribution center here for 8 years, and I just want to say” — and he paused, or it seemed like he paused — “thank you for writing this book.”

Well. Whew.

He went on to talk briefly about his experiences, and to say that he felt like the value of “The Wal-Mart Effect” was in trying to hold Wal-Mart to a higher standard. As an employee, he said, he appreciated that. He and I spoke briefly after the event, a thoughtful man who had read the book. I must say for a moment, I was worried I was about to be read the riot act. No one, in fact, has pointed out any errors in the book (except for a place where we used AK as the abbreviation for Arkansas, instead of AR).

In my case, most people come to the book events not so much to ask about the book itself, as to learn more about Wal-Mart, and to vent their own very strong feelings about Wal-Mart. The thing I think surprises people is that I am just as capable of ticking off the good things Wal-Mart does as I am the bad things. We tend to want the world, and all its parts, to be either good or bad. Most people, most experiences, most institutions, most companies aren’t either good or bad. They’re a mix. The criticism of Wal-Mart, I think, has much more force if you’re willing to acknowledge that some of the things Wal-Mart does are valuable and worthwhile.

The best question I got was from someone at “Politics & Prose,” the Washington DC bookstore, who asked, “If you could ask Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO, just one question, what would it be?” I was, frankly, stumped for a moment. I’d never seriously considered I’d have the chance to ask Lee Scott a question. But I came up with one in the moment, and I haven’t changed my mind about it in the months since.

Wal-Mart’s employee turnover is 50 percent in the U.S. They have to hire 12,000 people a week, just to stay even. That’s incredible — it’s a terrible drain of management energy, of resources, and a real waste of training and experience. That’d be my question: “Why do you let half the employees leave every year, what does that cost you — and why don’t you vow to cut turnover in half?”

*

Part Two of the interview will appear here tomorrow. And for those of you who’ve read the book and want to show some appreciation: The Wal-Mart Effect has been nominated for two Quills Awards. It’s kind of a People’s Choice Awards for books with winners decided by the vote of the general public. To vote for the Wal-Mart Effect as Business Book of the Year, click here. To vote for it as Book of the Year, click here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 1520 by Jonathan Rees and is filed under Books, Employment, Media, Technology, Walmart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.