Organizational Structure (at Walmart)

I know, I know, Walmart is like one of those giant elephants in the room no one ever wants to talk about, but I'm going to (probably more than you want to hear about) because I spent 5 years there as a salaried manager.  And while it was difficult, and I was treated with little-to-no respect, there is much to be learned from my experience, and so much that fascinates me, specifically regarding their organizational structure.  Don't get me wrong, they are inefficient to the point of debilitating, but somehow they work, and somehow they operate with these bare-bones staff.  They save on staff costs (for better or worse) like no other.  They seem to be overwhelmingly compelled by the "ratchet effect" similar to what the USSR faced just before their collapse (Milgrom & Roberts).  Always reducing costs, increasing profits.  The driving force behind the retail giant is an organization with a clear structure, designated roles and responsibilities, and yet no boundaries separating the leaders from the worker-bees, rendering these divisions of labor useless.  (Leading to inefficiencies too numerous to name)

The basic structure at Walmart is similar to that of the University of Illinois, hundreds of workers at the bottom that report to supervisors, who report to their supervisors, and so-on, all the way up to the CEO, Doug Mcmillon.  I will just focus on the local structure in this post.  A Regional Manager oversees a region of about 100 stores and about 12 Market Managers, who each oversee about 10 stores and their managers who oversee a team of Co-Managers, overseeing Assistant Managers, overseeing Zone Managers, overseeing Department Managers, overseeing sales associates.  (I can't help but chuckle to myself as I write this...talk about too many chiefs and not enough Indians, it's a miracle we accomplished anything!)  While intuitively it seems the flow of information is straightforward, trust me when I say: "it isn't."  Each person along the chain of managers give instructions to subordinates (anyone lower on the chain) to complete tasks.  This results in questions like "who should I listen to?" or "what does this mean?" or "I'm getting conflicting tasks, which one should I complete?"

Maybe this is blatant, but the structure should operate like this: managers at the top create the largest form of concept and allow ideas to trickle down through the chain, each person adding bits of information until it reaches the bottom where an associate is assigned a simple task that can be completed with the training s/he has been given in the time allotted.  Unfortunately, it is commonplace for managers (not direct supervisors) to direct an associate to a task that is not part of his or her supervisor's priorities.  Generally, this leads to incomplete daily tasks, incorrectly performed tasks, and even tasks that must be repeated to fulfill a different set of guidelines.  It is this repetition that is most frustrating and appalling.  Many times ensuring tasks were completed according to corporate communications rendered useless, because the Market Manager would come to the store, decide he disagreed with the corporate communication, and we would spend hours redoing a project instead of focusing on the next task.

So what am I getting at?  Structure requires boundaries.  It is easy to draw a chart and pontificate on the simple flow of information, but there must be a level of accountability to ensure superiors give direction (or bad direction, in this case) only to their direct subordinates.  There are costs associated with every bad piece of information given to a worker.  Time is the biggest cost for an employer, and should be carefully considered when institutionalizing a organizational structure.