Interviews from HR Innovator Magazine

The Road From Bentonville

Coleman Peterson
HR Chief (retired)
Wal-Mart
Bentonville, AK

Coleman Peterson is the former Wal-Mart HR chief who led the people function at the world's leading retailer through its years of greatest growth. Now he looks back - and ahead. With 30 years' HR experience in the retail industry, Coleman Peterson hasn't had the longest career in HR, but no one can argue that he hasn't had the biggest HR job - at least in the private sector. Last May, he retired from his post of Executive Vice President of People for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores, the world's largest private workforce with 1.5 million employees worldwide.

Plucked out of a garden-variety management training program only two years after he received his master's degree from Loyola University and given a "temporary assignment" in a college recruiting program, he immediately saw the power of HR to touch the future, and has looked forward ever since.

During Cole's 10 years with Wal-Mart, the People Division flourished, becoming a strategic partner within the company. In addition to focusing on three basic "people needs" - getting, keeping and growing great associates - he helped diversity a workforce to represent the communities it serves. Wal-Mart is the country's number one employer of African-Americans and Hispanics, and is ranked No. 1 among Fortune magazine's most admired companies in America.

Today, Cole is president and CEO of Hollis Enterprises, LLC, of Bentonville, a consulting group he formed after his retirement from Wal-Mart. He is using this new platform to continue consulting and speaking on the long-term strategic importance of recruitment and selection; organizational effectiveness; leadership development and diversity achievement.

How did you get into HR?

The profession found me more than I found it. I was in a management training program at a retail store when one day the vice president of personnel came into the store and said he wanted to put me on a temporary assignment as a college recruiter. I can remember the first campus that I visited like it was yesterday. It was Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. When we hit the campus, I fell in love with HR from that point on.

The temporary assignment became permanent. I went from college recruiting for one division to college recruiting for several divisions. From there I became the director of college recruiting. That's how my career in HR started. Of the 32 years I've spent in retail, 30 years of it has been in HR.

What was it about HR that grabbed your imagination?

It was recognizing the importance that selection and recruitment as in the strength of the company. The decisions that are made at this point influence the organization five, 10, 15 years later.

Everything begins with who you pick on the front end. And that determines how much or how little effort that you're going to have to put in later on.

What is the best advice you've ever received?

It came from an older fraternity brother of mine. I had graduated from college and was in a management training program. Six months later, I was prepared to quit. I went to see him. He was in the personnel job at another company and I figured he could get me a job there. He said, "I'll be happy to help you get another job. However, here's the deal: Go back to the job and stay on the job for 12 months. After you've been there for one year, if you feel the same way you do now, come back and see me." It taught me one of the most important rules: You've got to stick and stay. Today, people are so impatient. We want to take short cuts to glory and success, but we're not willing to take the time that it takes.

There is no such thing as a shortcut. You have to work hard, and it's going to take time. The moral of this story is that by the time I hit my 12 th month, I'd been promoted twice.

How do you know when it's worth the investment to "stick and stay," as opposed to get the hell out and find another organization to stick and stay there?

I'd be critical of anyone who says, "This isn't the organization for me," when they've been there less than 24 months. They were a poor decision maker on the front end, having made the decision to join the company without doing the appropriate due diligence. Or they are impatient and not prepared to do what it takes for as long as it takes. You need at least 24 months to determine whether you made the right decision or not.

The opposite of stick-and-stay is move-and-groove. The move-and-groove method may be a productive approach early in your career. But by the time you've made your fourth change in 10 years, when people start looking at your resume, they'll become less enamored with you. They'll do the math and say, "This person is averaging three years on every job. Why should I expect them to be any different on my job? I'm hiring for permanence, I'm not hiring a turnover player."

As you get higher up the org chart, is it more important to demonstrate your capacity for permanence?

It's important from the very beginning. If you have been in the world of work for 20 years and you have not demonstrated in your resume that you can be in a single place for seven to 10 years, then I'm really not interested.

That's a long stick. That's superglue.

I don't think so.

How do you keep your passion for HR alive when you're one of thousands deep inside an immense organization, like Wal-Mart?

People who are really dedicated to this career don't suffer from ego issues. If you are looking for a lot of stroking and recognition, this is not the profession for you. The HR person is generally the last person within the organization to be appreciated and get recognition. You are constantly the caretaker of others, but it is seldom to be returned in kind.

The nature of the job itself must bring you joy. Understand and genuinely feel that you're helping other people and changing their lives. That's what should drive you. If you're dedicated to that, you will excel in your job. Anyone who excels in their job over time will be recognized.

How can you distinguish yourself when you have thousands of colleagues within the company's HR function?

In 1972, there wasn't academic training in HR, but I learned about Maslow's hierarchy of human needs and Herzberg's theory of motivation in my undergrad and graduate work at Loyola. Those were things I just assumed everyone understood academically when in truth they did not. I found myself applying this grounding in my work. It distinguished me and it helped my productivity, which possibly led me to being selected as an HR candidate.

Here I was, two years out of grad school and in a training program, and a guy comes along and says, "Hey, I'm going to put you on temporary assignment." And 30 years later I'm the HR director of the largest private workforce in the world. It's a combination of two things: I had innate skills that other people recognized in me. One was getting things done through other people. But what helped ante up those skills was my academic training.

Shortly after I got out of grad school, I said that my job objective was to become a senior HR professional in a Fortune 500 company. I already had a vision of where it was going to be later. I think that vision for my future was a function of my academic training. My undergrad degree was in English literature with a minor in philosophy. On some days I think it was that philosophy minor that helped me when I approached problems.

Are you saying that anyone who is still in school and is aspiring to HR should get a thorough grounding in philosophy?

I would say that one must have a good, logical thought process. Taking a course in logic wouldn't be a bad investment.

To be an HR person, you have to have the nerve to be willing to lose your job for the sake of standing up for what's right. Can you think of a time when you stared fear in the face?

Oh yeah, it's like every other month. Your responsibility is to represent the people side of a business issue because yours may be the only voice that's heard around that issue. Or sometimes the business is under such pressure for earnings that it makes decisions that really aren't best for the company long term. It's your responsibility to represent that point of view.

During the early phase of my career, I said repeatedly, "I'm glad I still have a chauffeur's license." I was a young guy who was disagreeing with the way things were done. And I kept reminding myself that I could always go back to driving a cab.

The further along a person goes, the more senior they become, the more vested they become in their companies, the harder it is to say, "I'm going to take my marbles and go home."

It's been said before in this interview series that what you don't want is an organization that has not problems. If you find yourself in a situation where the problems are unacceptable to you, that could be just the right place for you to be.

That's exactly right.

If you had to build a massive HR organization from scratch at this point, what would be looking for now that you might not have been looking for five years ago in terms of HR acumen, passion and skills?

I'd want the candidates to have had some practical line management experience. They have to have walked a mile in a supervisor's shoes and performed some aspect of the job. Secondly, they would have to be trained HR people, either degreed or certified, all the way down the ranks.

How would you be able to gauge the candidates' vision, passion, and sense of mission for the profession?

They have to reflect the values of the company. Lastly they would have to be willing to be measured.

You'd be looking for someone who could carry the flame of the vision as well as be willing to be grounded by the metrics.

Exactly.

That's a lot!

That's required.

Do you see the HR career as restoring hope, relieving pain, or bringing beauty into the world?

HR restores hope. When people bring a problem to the HR person and they get the help they need, they might leave saying, "I didn't think another person could change my condition, and yet it has been changed." That's extremely powerful in keeping HR people doing what they do. They get stopped on the street, or they get a phone call, or a card saying, "Thank you so much for helping me with the problem." Or, "You have changed my life." Or, "You have helped me get in the right career direction." That could come in 24 hours, 24 months, or sometimes years later.

In the human resources job you also have the opportunity to see examples of people doing extraordinary things for others. When you turn on the news, you see the worst of things. But then when you see how people pull together in their community at work, you can say there is a genuine kindness and caring in this society and this world.

How can the HR role restore hope to the organization itself?

Companies are nothing more than a compilation of people. By virtue of restoring hope to its people, you're restoring hope to the company. They are one and the same. Nothing can be good for the company that's not good for its people. Not ultimately.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2005 issue of HR Innovator magazine. Reprinted with permission.