12 by Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter Ph.D

Author:Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter, Ph.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallup Press

On July 8, it was time for the Cabela’s team to begin turning the new building into a store. But the building wasn’t finished. “All that was done was Fishing, and then Camping and Gifts,” said Boldrick. “The rest of the store was still uncarpeted. We had giant lifts in here. They were putting tile in. They didn’t have the register pods in up front. There were still about 500 or 600 pallets of construction material in the building.”

That was Monday. The merchandise was going to start arriving on Wednesday. “The builders weren’t done, so we had to work around them,” said Clothing Manager Susan Sacks. As the merchandise was loaded on trucks bound for Wheeling, the fixtures to hold those products lay unassembled. The first test of the new team was whether they could assemble them in 48 hours. “The vendor that provides the fixtures came in and said, ‘Can you give me eight people?’ We brought everybody in,” recounted Boldrick. “Instead of taking two days, we got everything built, not just the fixtures for the sections that were being turned over to us. We generated a ton of excitement because it was our first time in the building, and our employees looked like a NASCAR pit crew.”

Only those who have been in a Cabela’s store can fully appreciate what happened next. As trucks arrived with fishing lures, fly rods, and bait buckets, so did the first of a veritable Noah’s ark of taxidermy animals — deer, mountain goats, bears, lions, zebra, water buffalo, and dozens of other species. “We would have thousands of fishing rods coming in one door and full mounts of lions and rhinos in the other door, so it was quite a sight,” said Troy Gatti. “Everything in the building came through the back doors in receiving. Even the elephant came in three parts through the back end.” Space was at a premium. Thirty truck trailers were parked on the site as the team struggled to move into the not-quite-finished building.

Early in the process, Boldrick established a schedule of all-employee meetings every day at 7 a.m., noon, and 5 p.m. Part news broadcast, part pep rally, and a chance to introduce associates to one another, the meetings brought order to the chaos. “There was a lot of confusion,” said Vern Kidwell, a product specialist in the hunting department. “The meetings kept us whole and kept us going.” As work to set up the store spread from one department to another, the meetings also grew. In the early meetings, Boldrick simply shouted to the group. Then he progressed to using a bullhorn. Finally, managers moved up the stairs so they could address several hundred people at once. “Sometimes there’d be 500 or 600 people in the building, and it was working! The meetings were absolutely fantastic,” said Gatti. After the electrical work was finished, Boldrick used the store’s intercom system.

Boldrick and his managers used “show and tell” to familiarize the staff with each other and the merchandise.

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