Yes, Our Neighbor is an 800 lb Gorilla
The little guy: think about what it means to be "the little guy (or girl)." Think of a basketball player or fighter. They can't beat the bigger guy on pure physical capability or force, so they have to learn other skills. My lil inBubbleBro taught himself these crazy lay-up techniques that made it almost impossible for me, at least 4 inches taller, to block. Now think about Shaquille O'Neil. His opponents might not be little, but they simply don't have the pure physical force that he does. Teams have been forced to adopt strategies like "Hack-a-Shaq" in order to compete with O'Neal's teams. Come to think about it, Shaquille O'Neal's career has a lot of similarities to the rise and worldwide dominance of Wal-Mart. As we look at William H. Marquard's fascinating new book Walsmart, this analogy - Wal-Mart being the Shaq of business - will become even clearer.
I suppose the first thing that you need to know about Walsmart is that it is completely neutral. Marquard's goal is not to prop up or tear down the image of Wal-Mart, it's to talk realistically about the business climate we live in, and that climate just happens to include Wal-Mart as possibly the most dominant business figure ever. We live in a Wal-Mart economy, and whether we like it or not, we have to work and succeed within this Wal-Mart world.
Shaq doesn't play that much differently than great centers of recent past, he's simply enormous. Ewing and Hakeem used to initiate contact just as much as Shaq does. But for some reason, people want to believe that "the game has changed" to allow Shaq to bully the league. Go watch video of Karl Malone and tell me he doesn't ram his shoulder into a defender at least 10 times a game. But Shaq is so big, it seems like he's getting away with more. The fact is, Wal-Mart has never done anything that much different than other business, the just did it more and with more intensity.
Marquard was, by the way, the architect of Wal-Mart's first ever strategic planning process, so he knows the ins and outs. But again, as an author, he stays completely neutral. What he does is answer the questions that soooooo many businesses large and small have reluctantly had to ask themselves: "Now that we're immersed in the Wal-Mart world, what are we going to do about it?" Suppliers, employers, competitors, community members, there are very few people not completely immersed in the Wal-Mart economy. It's the same as going through Shaq to get the NBA title. Like I said, Shaq has physical ability never before seen. The referees didn't know what to do. Other teams didn't know what to do, and the fans didn't know what to think. Ultimately, the refs focused on consistency, and the teams implored whatever new and creative strategies they could generate to get past the big man.
William Marquard tries to do what so many NBA coaches have failed to do: survive in a league so dominated by one player. He offers strict research, success and failure stories, and very specific strategies and choices every company must pay attention to if it wants to "win in the shadow of any giant of industry...or to become a giant yourself."
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