David Glass and Don Soderquist giving advice to this year's 40 Under 40 class

David Glass has a way of cutting through the bull. He speaks in no uncertain terms about what he thinks.

I’m glad he does, he has a lot to say.

Retired CEO of Walmart, David arguably accomplished more than any other CEO in history.

Yesterday I got to hear him speak at the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s ‘Forty Under 40′ event. (The Soderquist Center is a sponsor)

He talked about some things that I believe most organizations today fail miserably at.

1. Just make a dang decision already.

And if you screw something up, fix it. David admittedly “hates” decision by committee. His rule at Walmart was never to leave a meeting with something undecided. He didn’t wait for people to go do research. He didn’t allow people to put things off. They just made decisions and moved ahead. “There are two ways to climb an oak tree. 1. Start climbing. 2. Stand on an acorn and wait for the tree to grow.”

2. Keep it simple.

David’s people would send him 2-page, single spaced memos to update him on important issues. Eventually he stopped reading the second page. He thought the reports were too cumbersome. If he missed something on the second page, oh well. Once people realized he was only reading the first page, they started condensing the reports to one page. Obviously the reports were more complicated than they needed to be.

3. You don’t have all the best ideas

“Most of the ideas we had at Walmart were copied from our competitors. We just figured out how to improve on them.” David’s advice is to see what others are doing around you. Don’t get enamored with yourself or you will miss the best ideas.

You can watch part of an interview I filmed with David Glass and Don Soderquist here.