You can’t go through much more change than Kroger Co. is now. The Cincinnati-based supermarket giant is integrating Harris Teeter Supermarkets Inc. after Kroger completed the $2.5 billion acquisition of that chain in late January.
But Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen is embracing those changes.
“Change is fun,” McMullen told me in a one-on-one chat about a half-hour before he spoke Thursday at the Network of Executive Women Cincinnati chapter’s executive officer panel. “It’s fun doing something that has not been done before. If it was easy, it would’ve been done before.”
McMullen joined Carolyn Tastad, global officer of customer business development at Procter & Gamble, and two other top executives on the panel. David Williams, CEO of Deloittte Financial Advisory Services, and Michele Buck, president of Hershey Co.’s North American operations, completed the group, which spoke to about 750 attendees at the Westin Hotel.
The theme focused on managing the changing marketplace, and McMullen and Tastad had plenty of advice.
Kroger is integrating Harris Teeter’s 227 stores with its own roster of 2,600 locations. Kroger employees have already taken Harris Teeter’s ideas about how to prepare each store for the upcoming week with ads and promotions and spread those across the chain, McMullen said. It doesn’t matter to him or the rest of Kroger’s associates where the ideas come from.
“For us, when you merge, you’re all on the same team,” he said.
He’s finding plenty of other opportunities to embrace change, too.
“The biggest surprise is probably the opportunity for Harris Teeter to grow the business where they are,” he said.
It can add stores in its current markets, such as Charleston, S.C., and build market share, he said.
It took that attitude of embracing change for Kroger to shift about a decade ago from focusing on its competitors to paying attention to what its customers wanted. That’s when its hugely successful Customer 1st strategy was born, placing customers at the center of every decision it makes. It has invested more than $3 billion a year in meeting customer needs. The results speak for themselves. Kroger has a streak of 41 straight quarters of generating same-store sales growth, a feat unmatched by other major supermarkets.
Tastad told me before the panel discussion that leadership plays a huge role in organizations’ ability to manage change and gain from it.
“I look for people with natural curiosity,” she said. “They tend to embrace change, and they surround themselves with people with talent. Those people who aren’t as curious resist change and like the status quo.”