The Retail Journey
Welcome to the Retail Journey where we will cover important topics, interview industry stakeholders, and address emerging trends as we journey through our mission of helping our listeners thrive in retail. Your hosts for this show are CEO James Harris and CGO Charles Greathouse.
The Retail Journey
Prepared for Anything: Walmart's Crisis Management Strategy with Jen Enssle
Curious about how Walmart tackles disasters with precision and preparedness? Join us in a conversation with Jen Enssle, Walmart's Director of Supply Chain Emergency Operations, as she shares her strategies for managing emergencies like hurricanes and tornadoes. From meticulous contingency planning to educating store operators, Jen gives us a front-row seat to the intricate process that keeps Walmart stores running smoothly even during natural disasters.
Hello and welcome back to the Retail Journey podcast. I'm one of your hosts.
Speaker 2:Charles Greathouse and I'm James Harris, and today we're going to be talking with Jen Insull. Jen serves as the Director of Supply emergency operations center at walmart, and we'll not only get to get into that fascinating and really important function, but we'll also be able to get into some of her background in both replenishment and logistics at walmart. Hello welcome to the retail journey, thank you that is, uh, the retail journey.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes it presents itself like a linear journey and it never is linear. As a director of supply chain emergency operations, I'd say you're familiar with the nonlinear nature of retail.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Is that your felt experience nonlinear?
Speaker 3:Yes, I would call it chaotic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was the plan and the thing that happened, and then we have lots of ways to resolve it. But we can rewind a little bit back. What does a director of supply chain emergency operations do? Yeah, tell us about yourself.
Speaker 3:Jen. So we typically react to emergencies. As you would imagine. Um we day to day, we prepare for planned events yeah um so currently our main focus is on hurricane season. We're expecting a very active hurricane season this year. It'll most likely be the act the most active season in for the last 20 years. Um, not saying it'll be devastating, but the activity definitely will be there.
Speaker 1:Is that the assumption going into every year, or is that actually the expectation?
Speaker 3:No, that is the expectation. So there are several universities and several forecasting agencies that do annual forecasting. So they look at several different water temperatures, just a bunch of different statistics and analytics, to see what the season holds.
Speaker 2:If I'm not mistaken, I saw a forecast of maybe 30 in the Caribbean alone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're looking at about 20, which is significantly higher than a typical hurricane season. Will it all come to fruition? Likely not. Will they all make landfall? No, but the potential is certainly there.
Speaker 3:So right now we're in the planning stages, which means planning with all of the buildings out in the field. So making sure they have contingency plans in place, making sure everybody is aware of how to prepare, making sure all of the associates know what to do in the event a hurricane makes landfalls, making sure all of our store operators are prepared to take action should something happen. So those are the things that we do day to day.
Speaker 1:Wow, fascinating.
Speaker 3:We prepare all sorts of playbooks for other events and then, anytime an emergency does happen, we learn from it, and then we create new playbooks. Whether it's a store fire or a gas leak or some other event, we learn from it and we create plans should something like that happen again.
Speaker 2:Right, so you just go to step one as soon as the thing happens. Absolutely, step one, step two. So you came from logistics and replenishment and your background. What was it that attracted you to the emergency operations?
Speaker 3:I've always had an interest in the EOC itself. Throughout my replenishment career I volunteered for the EOC several times. So during Harvey and Irma I volunteered in the EOC and I managed all of the ice, so all of the creation of POs for ice and all of the dispatching of ice, which was quite traumatizing really, because there was so much ice that we needed during those storms. I think I worked 20 hours a day just creating POs and dispatching ice loads. They called me the ice queen.
Speaker 1:Ice queen Awesome. I think we have our podcast title ice cream awesome.
Speaker 2:I think we have our podcast time.
Speaker 3:It was just it was inspiring and rewarding and I just always really had an interest in it. But I just really strive in just a higher energy and chaotic environment, like when a problem is right in my face. That's when I go into overdrive and my leadership really recognized that. And when this position came open, that leadership reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in it and I just jumped on the opportunity.
Speaker 3:So problem solving is just always something that's been in my blood, but then I also have a background in process improvement. So taking all of these situations that we go through day to day and then sitting down afterwards and analyzing, you know, what could we have done better, what can we do different next time, and just coming up with a better plan to prepare better next time, that's just something that comes naturally to me. So it was just a really good fit.
Speaker 2:Does the preparation cycle look different depending on the events? Do you prepare in a similar way with, say, ice in the north as you would with hurricanes in the southeast?
Speaker 3:In some ways, yes, so some situations are transferable, some are not so there are always nuances, but in general, there are some situations that are transferable are not so there are always nuances, um, but in general there are some some situations that are transferable yeah interesting, yeah, and then everyone will be unique as well.
Speaker 1:Right, so it's like even uh, you know, we have the plan which is to run a store and operations network seamlessly, and then you have the disruption. It's like okay, then we have a disruption. It's not like a disruption, they're all different.
Speaker 1:Yes, different roads are closed every time you have the disruption, it's like okay, then we have a disruption, it's not like a disruption. They're all different. Different roads are closed every time. The ways around the needs are different. I couldn't imagine We've had our own small taste of disruption here in Bentonville with this very active storm Bentonville-Rogers, with the tornadoes that came through. What's been your experience like it happening here on home turf?
Speaker 3:It was a very unique experience being on the ground, so I had a unique look into what our disaster relief team does. So part of my role is leading our disaster relief team, which is a group of drivers that actually deploys to the disaster area and they cook for the community. So we have a mobile grill and our team actually takes that grill and a bunch of supplies and they set up at one of our stores and cook for the community.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:And I actually deployed with that team because they were local this time and I helped them cook for the community here in Rogers and we set up near a neighborhood market and we cooked over 20,000 meals in five days.
Speaker 3:So we were just cranking out mashed potatoes and green beans and chicken wings and burgers and it was a really unique experience because I was able to be there on site with the drivers and help them, and a lot of our drivers are. They're very efficient, they know what they're doing, but their role is to, you know, crank out meals and feed the community as fast as they can and as amazing as they are, they are not focused on process improvement.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was able to take back my learnings and help them look forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I'm able to now sit down and take my learnings and help them improve the program.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, totally Right.
Speaker 3:So that was really eye-opening for me, and then a little bit different with the storm hitting us here at home yeah, 20 000 meals. My goodness and the really neat thing was um our leadership was able to visit us too right so doug kieran um cedric. They all came out yeah and they helped us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's nothing like serving um and then actually serving a meal. We we get to share a meal. It's very humanizing. This has been a bit of a traumatic experience, very traumatic for folks who have a lot of loss, and for some it's just the trauma of having a very different drive down central, as the beautiful trees we've looked at for decades are not where they used to be. Right, so many trees, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, we've looked at for decades are not not where they used to be, so many trees, yeah, all right. Um, can we spend a little bit of time? I can't remember if you were in replenishment first or logistics, but at one point you managed, uh, logistics in region three. What were you, what was your uh? You know what was that experience like um.
Speaker 3:So I made the move from replenishment to transportation and I led dispatching operations for region three and my team dispatched all the drivers in region three and one of the biggest learnings I had was how some of the decisions that we made in merchandising impacted our private fleet. You know, a lot of times we made some knee-jerk reactions to where you know we wrote an SSO or we, you know, cranked up safety stock or, you know, made some pushes to, you know, send a bunch of merchandise to store.
Speaker 1:Probably for good reason. Yeah, Of course always.
Speaker 3:But we didn't really think about the impact it would have, you know, downstream.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, probably for good reason. 1700 loads the next day, you know that's, that's manageable, you know. And then I'd come in on wednesday morning or thursday morning and all of a sudden you know we'd have 2,200 loads yeah I don't have enough drivers to deliver all this stuff. Like, where does, where did all this incremental workload come from? You know, and some somewhere I knew our merchant sat around and just created an SSO. Ship it.
Speaker 1:As a former merchant, I agree with them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ship it. Somebody somewhere will find a driver to deliver it.
Speaker 2:So what do you do in a situation like that, if you don't have the machines or the people to deliver? Do you move days?
Speaker 3:Do you bring people in? I mean in Region 3, you can't bring drivers in because you know it's Idaho, it's.
Speaker 1:Wyoming.
Speaker 3:Your transit is 8-10 hours. No, a lot of it just gets rolled over to the following days and we miss the MABD.
Speaker 1:It is what it is, so there's certainly some room for improvement, and that would be like on the otif side of things, where it's like you know, uh, supplier responsibility, well, responsibility, probably show up on the walmart side, because it's like yeah, I know that, that just didn't make it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, most of this would be store or dc to store. Yeah, um, didn't make it. Yeah, most of this would be store or dc to store. Yeah, um, but yeah, certainly some room for improvement there. Just, you know, on the merchant side, being more aware of you know what, what your, you know actions have impact on down downstream and day of the week makes a big difference is the those kind of things that you have to know in order to work with it but if you don't know, you don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know in the future. You know. I hope there's one day where you know a transportation partner is part of a cross-functional team, you know, with a merchant and with a MerchOps partner. And you know we're all a little bit closer together. You know, we always talk about working in silos, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's hard. I mean it's a big org.
Speaker 3:Yes it is.
Speaker 1:It's funny, when we were sort of prepping for this, I was like, yeah, you know, I had my own sort of transportation learning as a planner when I wrote an order for two weeks of supply which felt like a reasonable amount, and it was like 15 trucks and Jen immediately goes El Paso and I was like yes, and it was like 15 trucks and jen immediately goes el paso and it's like yes, it was el paso.
Speaker 2:How'd you know the store bag dog food?
Speaker 1:it was dog food and there's a store in el paso, uh, texas, that just they sell so much, um, and there's a lot of cross border purchase and whatnot, but just an enormous amount of volume, and, uh, there are few like there's a lot of merchants who aren't ever faced with making such an enormous mistake that I made where it was like no, actually we can't fit that many trucks here, charles, you can't write that order, slash, I wrote it.
Speaker 1:They were like no, we're not going to, we can't do this, you need to cancel it and rewrite. Or in a position like transportation, where you're seeing the like, hey, you can't just have a few hundred more people driving today, we don't have a few hundred more people to drive today, um. So for those that don't get to see it, you don't always see when your decision stacks up against a scale so significant, um, that would earn someone a nickname like Ice Queen, because you're shipping so many truckloads of ice just constantly Walmart's scale definitely comes to mind. There's always this enormity of what Walmart's able to accomplish. But for those that don't get to see it, that haven't been in that perspective, what kind of advice or counsel would you give to the, your merchant friends, uh, who who don't run into it day to day?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, um uh. I think just keep the timeframe in consideration. You know any kind of knee jerk reaction you know could have a bad outcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. That's the reason why they don't like writing SSOs for tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know you should probably.
Speaker 2:Well, I learned the same lesson the hard way when I was in replenishment. I was very young, very inexperienced and I needed to write. It was about 30 truckloads worth of orders for this one supplier, so I wrote them. I was really proud of my SSOs. Way to go my flow felt perfect until the guy called me and he said I have two dock doors, you just scheduled 30 trucks for this week. Like oh, that might not work. Did you want something else? You only wanted. So we staged him a little bit.
Speaker 3:At the same time, though, if you plan things well, you can make miracles happen.
Speaker 2:Totally yeah.
Speaker 3:You know my merchant and I. We decided to do a modular reset and we replaced just about 100% of SKUs. Wow, and this was paper towels. We deleted all but two SKUs and brought in a whole new assortment Never been done in the entire history of Walmart.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't think in any category. Ever, yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:Our modular fill was 2,400 truckloads of paper towels.
Speaker 1:That's pretty bulky. Huh, that's going to cube out pretty quick.
Speaker 3:It's a lot. That's a lot, and I brought it in in four days 2,400 truckloads I brought into our DC network in four days.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, that's a lot.
Speaker 3:That is a lot, and I had calls with all of our DCs. I went into our EVP staff meeting and I laid out my plan. Like went into our EVP staff meeting and I laid out my plan Like this is what I plan to do. This is how many trucks by DC I plan to land by the hour and this is how it'll happen. I need your support. And he said it looks good. If you're comfortable, if you're confident, I'll sign off on it. Yeah, and I was sweating.
Speaker 1:My heart was beating.
Speaker 2:And I almost fainted. But I said I've got this and it worked beautifully. That's impressive, was that really?
Speaker 3:impressive. Oh no, that was Tim Cooper.
Speaker 1:Oh, transportation side On the DC on the supply chain side, oh, okay, cool yeah.
Speaker 3:And it worked Awesome. And the day the modular reset, we were at 100% in stock.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 3:And we had zero markdowns. We never took any markdowns whatsoever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, you know if you plan well and you execute well.
Speaker 1:Good example of the best plan executing yeah, you know I hate to turn the turn the page, but another one of your roles was in merch ops as replenishment manager. Uh, in the year 2020, a couple things happened a lot of things on the bulk paper business yes and I think myself and every other american noticed like hey, there seems to not be any toilet paper left I dropped the ball on that one, sorry about that you want to share.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know from your experience, like hey, guys say here's, here's what happens, uh, when america starts to panic about something that's just in time you know, the first couple of days were kind of funny yeah you know when you come in you're like category has an 80 comp yeah, what's going on here?
Speaker 2:what's going on, what's happening then you get on facebook or instagram and see all these pictures of people with carts full.
Speaker 3:No, it it was. It was terrifying, it was great, I mean we know you like uh an emergency situation. So this was good you know, I think what it taught me is that you can do a lot of creative things under pressure and when somebody supports you, because my leadership and they were all absolutely amazing through this. They told me you have an open checkbook. Yeah, yeah, you have our support. We've got your back. You do whatever you have to do Like handcuffs are off. You do what you got to do.
Speaker 1:Godspeed.
Speaker 3:We'll get you what you need. You do whatever you need to do. Our suppliers were absolutely amazing. Yeah, and I did things that have never been done. You know, when I first explored direct-to-store deliveries, I was told it couldn't be done. I was told I don't want to throw anybody under the bus but I was told by the water team you can't do it. Like there's so many issues with item files, with EDI transmission, with PO creation, it can't be done. So I just set up a warm room. I talked to a bunch of people and I was like we have to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, if it all has to flow through the DCs, it's going to.
Speaker 3:But you know what I did? I got it done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you did.
Speaker 3:And we shipped it straight from the supplier to store and I worked with all the big suppliers and we worked through it. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:You said something, which is I put a wardroom together and I talked to a lot of people. I think that's an error that a lot of people make, both on the merchant side if you're either new in merchandising or you've established patterns of not really bringing the team along or on the supplier side, where you have issues going on and you seem to under-communicate. Can you give some advice to both of these groups about okay, when you're in a situation because in retail it's going to happen it presents itself as linear. It's never actually linear. When you find yourself in that situation, how do you bring the team along and what's the value in doing that?
Speaker 3:I mean you just add anybody and everybody to an email, jay. I mean especially like on the item file side and the EDI side. You know I just started emailing people. You know you look at distribution groups like you just type EDI and Outlook and somebody's going to come up and you just email them and say, hey, I have this issue with an EDI transmission.
Speaker 3:Who do I need to talk to? This is what I'm trying to accomplish and I'm not getting anywhere. And then you track that person down and you, you know, find them on Zoom and you know you're like I have this big problem. I'm dealing with toilet paper and somebody has got to help me figure this out. It's the pandemic and you know Doug's going to give me a phone call if I don't get this figured out. You know you just figure something out yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't have to have the end solved. You know where you're trying to go and you, you know, you don't know how to get there yet. And you openly communicate.
Speaker 3:I also had an amazing cross-functional team, my merchant and all the associate merchants. There's not a whole lot they could do either.
Speaker 1:Buyers got to buy. Well, there's nothing to buy.
Speaker 3:What they did is they took a lot of pressure off of me so I could do what I needed to do so they were like what can I do to take off of you so you can chase down those things?
Speaker 3:yeah, so they did a lot of, you know, random replenishment stuff yeah that they knew how to do so I could could go chase, chase down stuff. So I had an incredible team, you know, like I said, all of the suppliers they were. Just they knew Walmart had to win, you know, and that's really what mattered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure. As someone who grew up, you know, in consumables, I, you know, have a bias to agree like, yeah, the consumables team, I mean come on.
Speaker 2:What was the recovery time in that? Was it a matter of weeks, months, years, years?
Speaker 3:I mean, it's really hard to define what the end was. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, it's such a tight. I mean we talk about well-laid plans and strategy. The well-laid plan and strategy prior to those 80 comps was basically just in time, very efficient, distributed manufacturing and as little time on a truck as possible, which makes so much sense. People aren't going to suddenly be like, hey, I'm going to use twice as much toilet paper this week until they might not have toilet paper the next week, and then I'm buying as much as I possibly can. It turns out.
Speaker 3:Most of our DCs had less than two days of supply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, because why would they? Because that's a huge footprint.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we had just gone through a lot of our initiatives to stop doing coupons, stop doing free rolls, so all of this, you know, back and forth, and this volatility and sales had really gone away. So our sales were as stable as they could be.
Speaker 1:Our inventory was the most stable it had been in centuries yeah, store specific mods, yeah, remember that with just like keeping it really lean, yeah, which is great.
Speaker 2:Well, there's some, until there's there's some products and categories that the more the shopper purchases, the more they consume. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Expandable consumption. Toilet paper is not really one of them. If you're stretching out the squares, they're like come on, man, go get you a big 24-pack or whatever.
Speaker 2:Get a value pack in your household. So one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you today besides everything we have talked about is that you're the first person that had been a replenishment manager that we've been able to talk to, and we always like to try to leave our listeners, or people that watch the videos, with some tangible kind of takeaways. So from a you know, now it's a MerchOps, but formerly replenishment manager role Say you were talking to a new supplier, what would be the two, three, four things you would tell them? Focus on this when you're engaging with your MerchOps manager, and this will lead to success.
Speaker 3:That's a really difficult question because there are so many different replenishment managers and MerchOps managers out there and personalities are so different. Relationship building is really important and figuring out how they operate is so critical. One of the things I always tell suppliers, especially when they have challenges, is use the resources in the supplier community first, because it is such a supportive community.
Speaker 2:There are so many resources out there.
Speaker 3:community first, because it is such a supportive community. There are so many resources out there and I always feel so grateful for how they help one another and support one another. So if you don't get enough support within Walmart, reach there. But that that wasn't your question, so sorry about that. No, that's great.
Speaker 2:No that's great.
Speaker 3:But build a relationship and find out how your replenishment manager wants information from you. Yeah, I think that's critical. I've had some suppliers reach out to me or email me with like one liner and it'll be. Hey, Jen, my in stock is 96%. Can you look at it?
Speaker 1:So this is thumbs up or thumbs down.
Speaker 3:That's not very actionable, so what? Unfortunately that goes to the bottom of my email.
Speaker 1:I hate to say it, or you just archive it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't go that low.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if you do that to a merchant, they're just going to delete it Just as a merchant. I just I'm not responding to that.
Speaker 3:But I will probably wait until later to readdress that.
Speaker 1:What would a good one sound like?
Speaker 3:A good one is, you know, here are the items that have opportunities. Here is a template yeah to upload to address the issues. Here's the financial summary of what this template will do to your cat and here's the five metrics you always ask me for when I bring something up, exactly I'm answering them for you?
Speaker 3:yeah, so that you can then take the action that you and and then also come with the opposite, like taking this action will increase your inventory, but here are five items that are over inventory, so if you upload this template, it'll also decrease your inventory by this much so just come with a solution. Make it easy, make it efficient. Just bring the whole package and tell us the story quickly.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:Easy to understand, so just bring the solution to us. But I think the relationship building is just most important. I've been incredibly fortunate to have built amazing relationship with my suppliers and I can't be more thankful for you know, the suppliers I've worked with. They still reach out constantly to ask me questions and get advice on things.
Speaker 3:So, um, you know, it just warms my heart that you know, there's so many suppliers out there who try so hard and, you know, unfortunately not all of them are as successful to build those relationships. Um, and if things aren't as great, you know, just please keep trying yeah and when do you like to learn of a problem?
Speaker 2:the day it happens, or?
Speaker 1:a month or two before the day it happens.
Speaker 2:yeah, but if you, if you know something, if you know you're going to be short, that's something that, yeah, I think is a temptation to a lot of especially smaller or newer suppliers of, well, we think we're going to miss this deadline, but it's not for six more weeks, so we'll just we'll sit tight and kind of cross our fingers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know that's also a conversation to have upfront.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Do you want to know beforehand? Do you want to know the day of?
Speaker 2:you know.
Speaker 3:would you like a weekly summary? Would you like a quick, short email the day of Just find out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Work with the manager the way they want to be, the way they're working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used to repeat it and it's probably pretty annoying as a merchant I need a paramedic, not a coroner. Don't just tell me what died, how it died. We've got to keep this thing alive. What's the plan? Come with some kind of solution here, and that seemed to that analogy, seemed to get through pretty quickly. Be a paramedic, guys. Come with something.
Speaker 2:I mean occasionally if it's already dead. You need to learn from it. But let's not jump to that.
Speaker 1:Fair. Don't beat that dead horse.
Speaker 2:That's fair. Let's not jump to anything else for suppliers from a replenishment or engaging with logistics or anything that has been a part of your background. If I could just communicate this to everybody and everybody heard it they'd be better for it.
Speaker 1:Well, the buyer replenishment relationship, because you've had a couple of really good partnerships yes I think you you invite that also because you're a collaborative person yes, but like there are a lot of rms out there, who who tend to just struggle on that side right that that might go.
Speaker 1:Or there's merchants out there who like try to ignore their merch ops partners when they really should be figuring out all the ways they can work together. So kind of advice on the merchant side as you think about like fostering really good partnerships with your MerchOps teams.
Speaker 3:I mean neither one can be successful without the other. Yeah, yeah. I mean I bluntly told my merchant all the time like if I don't press a button, it doesn't matter what you buy, it's not going to be on the shelf.
Speaker 2:That's true, it's so true, that's great. It's a good communication. It's key to everything.
Speaker 3:I told him all the time you need to humble yourself because your decision is worthless if I don't stand beside you and make it happen.
Speaker 1:That's awesome I love make it happen. That's awesome. I love that so much. That's good leverage. Yeah, yeah, to be fair, I mean, that's, that's where we're at. Yeah, so other, uh, anything else on your mind as you think about? You know all from you know, replenishment, uh, transportation, emergency operations, that's a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I pull it together. I'm like, okay, this journey of retail nonlinear things tend to go wrong. We talked a little bit about strategy. There's some readiness things and there's also just responsiveness when it comes to when the actual situation happens, how do you respond? Well Advice you'd like to share to folks that are likely going to run into issues on both sides.
Speaker 3:Um gosh, I think if there's a problem reported to the EOC that's really what I'm struggling with the most right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, of actually finding out about issues, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think there there are a lot of people who try to handle things on their own, and that could be, you know, anyone anywhere.
Speaker 1:So true.
Speaker 3:I've experienced it countless times, whether it's on the store side or the DC side, or whether it's a supplier or a merchant. You know they face a problem or face an issue and they try to fix it, and you know just ask for help. Call somebody.
Speaker 1:Reach out.
Speaker 3:You know, even if it's not the right person, just talk it through with somebody. You know, maybe even just saying it out loud will, you know, spark some sort of thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So just ask somebody Talk to your neighbor about it.
Speaker 2:I don't know, just ask for help. I think, that's true for anybody? Yeah, for sure. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Ready for the lightning round? Yeah, so the last segment is called the lightning round. And it starts with the zinger.
Speaker 3:Lightning, I mean emergencies and lightning and all of this. Haven't we had enough? Sorry? Hopefully it doesn't traumatize you, but greatest failure in uh retail.
Speaker 1:I don't want to sound arrogant, but there's no such thing as failure all right learning learning tell me about your biggest learning, then I like the attitude, so we're looking for some of those. You know, there's always a fun story of, like you know, I blew up, not blew up, I shipped 15 truckloads of dog food to El Paso.
Speaker 3:I think my biggest learning was around inventory.
Speaker 1:So when I first came to Walmart and this was like way back in what 2011?
Speaker 3:It might have been the same year I did that, but yeah, I was handed a laptop and they told me what category I would replenish, and that was like in the days of Inform and DD.
Speaker 2:Updates and all of that. So that's all I knew.
Speaker 3:They told me, my category goal was, I think, 97.5, and it was hanging at around 96. Ship it All right, that's what I did, great. I was like I've got to. That's what I did. Great. It's like I gotta get this up. Um, so I ran dd updates for probably three weeks. That's all I did all day long all my suppliers were happy yeah, they had pos coming through. They wrapped, rammed up production and I just kept doing dd updates all day long until john hatch called well, it was my buyer.
Speaker 3:She was like our inventory is out of control. I was like what's?
Speaker 2:going on. Have you seen our in stock?
Speaker 3:yeah, I know, this is great, you're welcome and she was like what are you doing? I was like getting our own stock up. And she was like this is our budget. And I was like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:no one mentioned the budget. Can you?
Speaker 3:can you explain? Yeah, we didn't have a planner at that time.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing. Td updates, man, I haven't done that in a long time. I had zero idea.
Speaker 3:Nobody had let me in on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think it took years to. I mean, this was a small animal. I think the rate of sale was like 0.2.
Speaker 1:Yes, not high Nice Sally, who is a I don't know yeah.
Speaker 3:So that that's how I learned about inventory budgets. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 3:But you know it couldn't have been that bad because I was only in that role for about 10 months before they put me on dog food.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think somebody decided this is too small.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:She needs a bigger budget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's going to need a bigger budget.
Speaker 2:What was your key takeaway from 2023?
Speaker 3:That's a long time ago Last year, not fiscal.
Speaker 1:Not fiscal 23. Yeah, just last year. The last year, well, we're saying fiscal 25.
Speaker 3:That's a long time ago.
Speaker 1:It's only 2024.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's just the last year. Um goodness, can I just do general learning?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, over the last year ask for help yeah, like if you're in a pickle.
Speaker 3:Ask for help um yeah like you know, I I'll. I'll tell you. I know I mentioned this earlier, um, but we had this cooking event last year, last year, last last week, um and and Rogers and um Doug came by and on on Monday and it wasn't so great because there were only four of us. There was myself and then three drivers and we were a little underprepared because we thought we'd only do maybe 500 meals. It would be a small event.
Speaker 1:You did 20,000.
Speaker 3:We did 20,000, planned for 500. Wow, you know, northwest Arkansas is a pretty affluent area. We didn't think the damage was that bad, looking at bentonville, um. And then doug came and we were all a little frazzled. Um, he was like you know, how are you guys doing? You know, what do you need, you know? And I was like we need better equipment, like we need more help. Like you know, our guys are struggling a little bit with the equipment we have. We can't wash our hands because we don't have a sink. And he was like okay, we can get you, think we can get you better equipment. And he made some phone calls. The next day kieran and cedric showed up yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And we had made some improvements. We looked a little bit better. We got some volunteers out and they asked the same question like what do you need help with? And we thought it through a little bit better and we're like. You know we need better branding. We need to be a little bit more proud of what we do here. You know we need some canopies for our volunteers to have some shade. You know we need some canopies for our volunteers to have some shade. You know it would be nice if we had some hats and some Walmart shirts and some other things. You know we're out here doing a great things. We're feeding a lot of people. We should be proud to be out here. We need to represent Walmart, you know, and within an hour or two we had boxes of vests and shirts and the table covers. So I think my big takeaway is you know, even people like our executives, our leaders, they're here to help, they're here to support. Like, don't be afraid to ask for things. They just need to know you know they're here for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you don't ask for help and you don't get it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Don't stand there and struggle. You know we had people standing over, you know propane burners stirring mashed potatoes for hours and hours and hours. You know Doug walked up as one of the drivers and we were literally scooping mashed potatoes into a storm drain because we didn't have a sink or a hose or anything to wash a pot so that was a very humbling experience what we're doing here, yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 3:is this how we operate making? Do should we get you a food truck or some kind of professional equipment. Yes, please, that would be nice, and he was like send me an email with what you want, um, so just you know, we have amazing leadership, um, and people will move mountains for you. If you have a good reason, yeah, and you do a good thing and you just ask for it, yeah, you know, don't ask for stupid stuff.
Speaker 3:But right, yeah, you know, if you do a good thing and you just ask for it, don't ask for stupid stuff. If you do the right thing and there's a good reason behind it, and the right thing is take some perspective.
Speaker 1:As a replenishment manager, without knowledge of an inventory budget, keep chipping, that's the right thing. Once you get to transportation, you start to understand. The right thing includes understanding how many drivers there are and whether or not we have enough trucks to do this thing, and then in emergency operations, it's a different level of readiness for the right thing. I think all of us have a different perspective of what right is. If you don't go alone, we work with others, ask for help. I've underlined that one. That's just such a necessary thing on either side supplier, merchant.
Speaker 1:When you're doing this thing, you've got to ask for help, don't struggle and then, when you ask for it, if you've got good people, it's going to work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then last question is any books, media content, whatever, what are you consuming these days?
Speaker 3:I'm reading Smart Brevity.
Speaker 2:Smart Brevity Keep it short, keep it short.
Speaker 1:I'd ask what it's about, but I feel like you just told me Stop being explanatory. You just told me yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially in emergency operations and you know, yeah, not a lot of time to waste.
Speaker 3:Yeah, getting back with leadership and a lot of corporate communication. Yeah, keep it short, keep it simple. Take out some of the words that are just not necessary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate your time yeah me too.
Speaker 2:It's been fun to get to know you and learn about what you do in the EOC. Jen, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3:Of course, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:Jen, thanks so much for joining us, of course. Thank you, yeah, and thank you for listening, as always. You can get all of our podcasts, video or audio, on our website at highimpactanalyticscom. Thank you, thank you.
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