38 | theceomagazine.com
With his writing, Richard says he is trying
to teach “brain sports”, which takes mundane
educational tasks and imbues them with the urgency
of professional athletics. In that way, he sees himself
as a coach rather than as a manager or executive,
a title he is eager to embrace.
“If I were to ask you if you remembered your
teachers’ names from high school, you’d draw blanks.
If I asked you about a coach you had when you
were playing junior sports, you would remember his
name as well as all the stuff he used to yell at you.
If you didn’t have those experiences growing up, you
probably won’t think the same thing, but I guarantee
if you ask an older athlete about their coaches, they’ll
remember every single one of them.
“The same is true for young people today. You
can tell a high school student to study hard and
they’ll probably nod at you politely. If we put it to
them like it’s a game of sports and tell them they’re
in the fourth quarter and need to work hard
to build on all the work they’ve done in the past
three quarters, they can understand the urgency of
what they’re faced with and carry on.”
Richard runs Costco in much the same way.
“My players are my directors and heads of
department. As the coach, I don’t want to be
personally dribbling the ball up the court, because
that’s my shooting guard’s job,” he reasons. “I don’t
want to wade into the information systems because
I don’t know more than the head of that department.
If I did, we would be in serious trouble. I don’t know
more than my CFO about accounting, forecasting or
cost analysis. If I did, I would’ve hired the person for
the job. My job as a leader is to guarantee everybody
has the same mindset and that we’re going in the
right direction, and that’s what I aim to do.”
Facilitating an autonomous environment for
his workers is important to Richard. “I have five
directors who have worked with me for more than
25 years; they like to work in this environment and
they like to work with me, and it’s because I treat
them with respect and not as a subordinate. We have
mutual respect, and that comes 100 per cent from
being an athlete and being on a team.”
The analogy extends to performance management.
Richard jokes that if ever someone is dragging their
feet, he can usually guess that person has never played
a team sport. “It’s always the case. It’s startling to see
that if someone has these problems, it’s usually the
case that they’ve never played on a hockey, football or
soccer team. They’ve never been in that community
or in a position where they’ve been relied upon.”“I have five
directors who
have worked with
me for more than
25 years ... We
have mutual
respect, and that
comes 100 per
cent from being
an athlete and
being on a team.”