WHERE WOULD THEY GET THE walleye?
The guy who was supposed to supply that species for the aquarium of the soon-to-open Cabela’s store hadn’t come through. So the store manager dispatched a couple of employees in a special truck to retrieve some fish. That would have worked fine, “but somehow they turned up the oxygen too high in the tank and over-bubbled the fish,” said Store Manager Mike Boldrick. “By the time they got here, we only had one little lethargic walleye.”
As if that weren’t enough, the bass also had to be popped. They had been fished from too great a depth, and their air bladders had expanded, so the extra air had to be vented to save them. Still, all that was simple enough, if fish were the only problem. But how could they get the small airplane to be hung from the ceiling up the stairs? Where could they put all the merchandise from the grand opening tent that couldn’t be set up because of the cement that wasn’t poured because of the record rainfall?
How could the managers stay awake in their 5 p.m. meetings when they were exhausted from 100-hour work weeks? Where were the three dozen radios to give to the spotters the fire marshal said were now required because the water tower was drained due to a broken water main?
And would it be okay if the president of the United States stopped by in, say, 20 minutes?
On August 12, 2004, Cabela’s opened a 175,000-square-foot showcase store in Wheeling, West Virginia. Dignitaries, customers, and employees — so many that the state patrol had to shut down the new highway exit — gathered to see the unveiling of a large statue in front of the store depicting a mother bear with cubs fighting off two eagles. Little did they know the challenges that Boldrick and his team of hundreds fought off behind the scenes to make that day happen. By marshaling a force of men and women who were committed to the mission of their new employer, Boldrick and his team of managers surmounted a staggering number of challenges to set a company record for the speedy launch of a new store. In doing so, they also created incredibly high levels of employee engagement under circumstances when morale might have collapsed.
Wheeling was the 10th “destination store” for Cabela’s, a nationally known catalog merchant of outdoor equipment, rapidly expanding its physical retail presence in the United States. In 1961, Dick and Mary Cabela launched Cabela’s as a kitchen-table business selling a package of fishing flies advertised in Sports Afield magazine. Cabela’s is now a $1.5 billion firm that in the last few years went public in hopes of out-distancing competitors such as Bass Pro Shops, Gander Mountain, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. A lot of hopes ride on each new store. Prior to its opening, the Wheeling store and its projected performance frequently came up in company discussions with Wall Street analysts. Boldrick and his management team were under no small amount of pressure as they prepared for opening day.
A 15-year retail veteran, Boldrick had been with Cabela’s only about two years when he was offered the chance to establish the Wheeling store. He impressed the managers he recruited as energetic, but calm under pressure. “This guy is genuine; he’s down to earth. He believes in this, and that’s what helps him sell it to everybody,” said Loss Prevention Manager Michael Rock. Boldrick warned prospective managers about the trials ahead and turned away a few who seemed intimidated. “You’re going to be working 12- and 15-hour days. You’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked,” he told them. “But you’re going to have more fun and see more accomplishment in a shorter period of time than you ever have.”
“We kind of vetted people through that interview process,” said Boldrick. “If people looked at me funny, then I knew that this person might not be up for the challenge.”
While the building was going up, Boldrick and his managers worked from trailers on the construction site and a nearby hotel, interviewing people for 400 front-line positions. For those who would be on the sales floor itself, outdoor experience was more important than retail experience. “You give me somebody who’s dedicated and has a love and a passion for the outdoors, and I can teach him what he needs to know about retail,” said Troy Gatti, receiving manager during the grand opening period. For many of the applicants, their hobbies had never been so useful to their careers. “What do you like to do on your weekends?” they were asked. “Where do you like to fish?” “What kind of shotgun do you like?” Applicants were sorted by their area of outdoor interest, and the best were hired in each until the departments were full.
Then came the hard part.
The Eighth Element of Great Managing is captured by the statement, “The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.” As with the rest of the 12 Elements, the degree to which a team agrees with this statement is predictive of its performance on a wide array of measures, many of which would prove to be crucial to the opening of the West Virginia Cabela’s store. For instance, business units in the top quartile of Gallup’s engagement database on this element average from 5 to 15 percent higher profitability than bottom-quartile units. Mission-driven workgroups suffer 30 to 50 percent fewer accidents and have 15 to 30 percent lower turnover.1 Employees who feel connected to the mission of their company are also more likely to report that humor or laughter plays a positive role in their productivity.2
The strange thing about the Eighth Element is how extraneous it is to the job itself and the employee’s material well-being. The absence of many of the other elements — job clarity, the proper equipment, a match with one’s talents, consistent feedback — become real obstacles to actual production. It’s easy to see why they are required to get the job done. The same cannot be said for the Eighth Element, which is strictly an emotional need, and a higher-level one at that, as if the employee can’t energize himself to do all he could without knowing how his job fits into the grand scheme of things.
The data say that’s just what happens. If a job were just a job, it really wouldn’t matter where someone worked. A good paycheck, decent benefits, reasonable hours, and comfortable working conditions would be enough. The job would serve its function of putting food on the table and money in the kids’ college accounts. But a uniquely human twist occurs after the basic needs are fulfilled. The employee searches for meaning in her vocation. For reasons that transcend the physical needs fulfilled by earning a living, she looks for her contribution to a higher purpose. Something within her looks for something in which to believe.
Sometimes, this wrinkle in human nature causes people to elevate the most pedestrian of products, as they did in the odd document issued in 1922 by the Pacific Ice Cream Manufacturers Association that begins: “We believe in ice cream.”
They called it their “Declaration of Principles.” It ascribes lofty ideals to an unusually common product. “We believe,” it continues “in the great future that lies before the industry, because ice cream is the one product which contains all of the life-giving, body-building properties peculiar to milk, combined with a variety and palatability found in no other milk product.”3 Beyond the 1920s-style boosterism, the Pacific Ice Cream Declaration of Principles reveals a much deeper and older feeling, not about what it means to make and sell ice cream, but to be humans looking for meaning in the mundane.
From one perspective, ice cream is just ice cream, just one of many desserts, hardly worth glorifying. But to someone who buys the cream, runs the factory, agonizes over the right flavors, and gets a thrill out of seeing a little boy or girl savor a double-scoop cone, being in the ice cream business is a way to make a small contribution to the quality of life — the happiness — of their customers. So when Blue Bunny Ice Cream calls its flavor mixers “colossally creative artisans” who work not just in the small city of Le Mars, Iowa, but in “The Ice Cream Capital of the World,” making “America’s favorite treat,” most of them really mean it.4 People cling to greater purposes. Ice cream makers “believe” in ice cream.
Companies routinely adopt high ideals as part of their mission. Lowe’s Home Improvement stores aim not just to sell lumber and hardware, but to offer “practically everything customers need to build, beautify and enjoy their homes.”5 Kodak doesn’t just sell film; it “continues to expand the ways images touch people’s daily lives.”6 Kellogg’s aspires to do more than make cereal; instead, “we make the world a little happier by bringing our best to you.”7 Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand seeks to “dedicate ourselves to the quality and righteousness of our work, to work as a team so that we shall provide the best of services, to respect human values, and to participate to the best of our ability in our society and nation.”8
As in the Ice Cream Declaration of Principles, there are large dollops of marketing syrup in these statements. There is also a reason why such statements appeal to customers and, when backed up by the company’s culture, why they strongly motivate employees. Workers thirst for something noble in which to believe and invest themselves.
Claremont Graduate University Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi tells a story of teaching seminars on midlife crises to high-level executives, employing “the best theories and research results in developmental psychology.” The seminars were well received, but something was missing. “I was never quite satisfied that the material made enough sense,” he wrote. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi decided to try starting the sessions by reviewing Dante’s Divine Comedy, the more-than-600-year-old poem that begins, “In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the right way I had completely lost.” The professor hoped instilling his discussions with greater meaning would help with the teaching. “I was rather concerned about how the harried business executives would take to this centuries-old parable. Chances were, I feared, that they would regard it as a waste of their precious time,” he wrote. “I need not have worried. We never had as open and as serious a discussion of the pitfalls of midlife, and of the options for enriching the years that would follow, as we had after talking about the Commedia.”9
Stories like Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s hint at why quantitative studies are finding that the motivating power of salary, commissions, and even awards is limited. “The most recent evidence suggests that money is losing its power as a central motivator, in part because the general population is realizing, in greater numbers, that above a minimum level necessary for survival, money adds little to their subjective well-being,” wrote researcher Amy Wrzesniewski.10 It’s not uncommon for employees of highly engaged workgroups, from entry level to senior executives, to mention having turned down higher pay to join or remain with a company they believed would provide more meaningful work with a more enjoyable team.
Why people gravitate toward a larger purpose is a mystery. One is unlikely to get an acceptable reason for it outside of places of worship (which may be why religions last longer than businesses). The need appears to be nearly universal. When respondents to a 1990 Gallup Poll were asked, “How important to you is the belief that your life is meaningful or has a purpose?” 83 percent said “very important” and 15 percent said “fairly important.”11 Belief that one is doing something meaningful is important to a person’s psychological and even physical health.12 It’s not necessary that managers understand why people need to dedicate themselves to an endeavor greater than themselves, only that they appreciate and work to fulfill this need.
Just how deep these connections go has surprised even professional researchers of “meaningfulness” in the workplace. In 1993, University of Utah doctoral student Melissa M. Koerner conducted interviews with health care workers who helped the underprivileged in an unnamed western United States city. As she talked to the physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners, and a doctor, she found their connection with their job bordered on feelings of “sacredness.” “The study’s original focus was to explore the nature of the relationship between health care providers and their patients; the presence of sacredness in the relationship was not initially an area of inquiry,” wrote Koerner. “However, during the investigation, anecdotes and comments with religious undertones were so prevalent among informants, that sacredness eventually became the centerpiece of the study.”
A 41-year-old nurse practitioner named Linda described how helping a family get through several crises created a deep affection for them and made her feel her job was important. “I met her family when her husband came in very sick. He ended up having pancreatic cancer and dying within about three or four months of the time I met him. She was pregnant with their first child. I took care of her little girl after she was born, and then I took care of her. I just really liked her. I enjoyed the whole family,” said Linda. “To be involved in the whole dying process, and the whole birth and life process of other folks — it makes you feel like what you’re doing is really useful and good.”13
Koerner found that patients and health care providers routinely mentioned many of the aspects of good service traditionally observed: responsiveness, empathy, and assurance, for example. “In contrast, when describing their most positive medical experiences, both provider and patient-informants’ descriptions often emphasized sacred, rather than secular, qualities,” she wrote. “They discussed ‘special relationships’ based on ‘real, deep, basic human connections.’ One told ‘a magical kind of story’; others talked about ‘really making a difference.’ . . . One patient-informant repeatedly used the word ‘weird’ to describe her unusually positive relationship with her health care provider. Both providers and patients viewed their best health care experiences and relationships as extraordinary, significant and meaningful.”14
It is not difficult to understand how health care workers could see their work as important. They are, after all, in the business of preserving lives, delivering babies, and directly improving the quality of life for their patients. Because of this, health care organizations typically have higher scores on the Eighth Element. So do schools, those working in the justice system, and environmental quality organizations. What’s puzzling is how someone working at a clinic or hospital would feel their job is not important. And yet some do: One-third of hospital workers give a low score to this element. Less than half of workers in any industry feel strongly connected to their organization’s quest.15
Equally surprising are the high percentages of workers in less than life-and-death careers who feel a strong connection to the goals of their organizations. In the Gallup database, one quarter or more of the workers in the retail trades, in finance, and in chemical manufacturing strongly agree the purpose of their company makes them feel their job is important. While it is somewhat easier to find a mission-inspired employee in stereotypically altruistic vocations such as teaching and healing, a sense of meaning in a job is less a function of the industry than of the work environment itself.
It can happen in any job, no matter how seemingly common. Recently a businesswoman reported that when she had a flat tire on the road, a Good Samaritan stopped to help her put on the spare. “I used to be a tow truck driver,” he said while loosening the bolts on the flat. “I miss it. It was great to be in a job where you knew every day you would get the chance to help people.”
Conversely, high-profile professionals sometimes find that perks and high pay are not enough. “I have been an experienced hire in consulting firms that have no culture,” the leader of an international strategy firm complained. “They have no culture because they are composed of experienced hires who have built no connection, commonalities, or common processes. They are, in fact, cultures of cohabiting independent contributors. . . . You do not feel that you fit because there is nothing to fit into.”16
A small group of sociologists specialize in the study of occupations they call “dirty work,” the messy, distasteful, or stigmatized jobs on the other end of the spectrum from the astronaut, doctor, athlete, and scientist answers kids commonly give to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Dirty work typically includes jobs such as sanitation workers, prison guards, hotel maids, shoe shiners, and psychiatric ward attendants.17 One might think that type of job would diminish a person’s self-image and be largely lacking in meaning.
Arizona State University Professor Blake Ashforth thought that among those doing dirty work he would find a subculture of depressed and angry employees. Instead, he was surprised at the strength of their drive to make their jobs meaningful. These workers often throw off the social stigma and see the everyday value of what they do. “When somebody’s stopped up,” said one septic service owner, “they’re pretty happy to see you.”18 One woman told a New Jersey newspaper she quit a personnel job she’d held for seven years so she could work at an animal shelter, despite the fact she must euthanize many dogs and cats. “The paycheck (at the old job) no longer was enough. I wanted more,” she said. Because of the heartbreak, “there are days I go home and hug my dog for dear life. Every single day you come back fighting again.”19 A corrections officer told The Wall Street Journal he knows “it’s not smart” to work in a prison, but likes the mission “to protect the public and protect your coworkers and protect the inmates from themselves.”20
There is no such thing as an inherently meaningless job. There are conditions that make the seemingly most important roles trivial and conditions that make ostensibly awful work rewarding. “One implication of the motivated and socially embedded desire and search for meaning is that any task, job, or organization can be imbued with meaningfulness. The desire spawns the reality,” wrote Ashforth and fellow researcher Michael G. Pratt.21
One view of this phenomenon separates people’s views of their employment into three categories. The least engaged group sees their work as simply a job: a necessary inconvenience and a way of earning money with which they can accomplish personal goals and enjoy themselves outside of work. The second group sees their work as a career. They enjoy the increased pay, prestige, and status that come as they work their way up the corporate ladder. The third group considers its work “callings.” “In callings, the work is an end in itself, and is usually associated with the belief that the work contributes to the greater good and makes the world a better place,” wrote researcher Amy Wrzesniewski.22 As with Koerner’s research on “sacredness,” the term “calling” doesn’t necessarily have a religious definition. Each person filters the world through his own lens. “It is the individual doing the work who defines for him- or herself whether the work does contribute to making the world a better place,” she stressed.23
No matter how the employee makes sense of the world and her role in it, if she sees a connection substantial enough to consider her work a calling, she gets more out of work and the organization gets more out of her. “Only for those with callings is work a wholly enriching and meaningful activity,” wrote Wrzesniewski.24 Because of this connection, they more strongly identify with the team, have less conflict, trust management more, are more committed to the team, work through things better, and put in more time at work, whether compensated or not.25 Here, too, the job itself doesn’t determine its meaning. “A schoolteacher who views the work as a job and is simply interested in making a good income does not have a calling, while a garbage collector who sees the work as making the world a cleaner, healthier place could have a calling,” wrote the professor.
The data do not indicate that every employee wants his or her job to be filled with cosmic interactions. For many, it will be enough knowing their work helped the company make a better batch of cattle feed, deliver millions of packages on time, or sell a new line of clothing. However, having large proportions of employees who are there just to draw a paycheck and who don’t care about the larger purpose of the business can be a tremendous drag on retention, customer attitudes, safety, productivity, and — ultimately — profitability.
In general, and contrary to many senior executives’ overestimation of their influence, companies do not have a homogenous culture. Company leaders don’t have as much influence on workers as do front-line managers. The Eighth Element is the most dramatic exception to this trend. How executives feel about the company’s mission is strongly correlated with the assessments of mid-level managers. How those managers feel about the Eighth Element is strongly correlated with the assessments of front-line employees. Unlike most of the other Elements of Great Managing, this one cascades from the top down, losing strength along the way, but is still closely tied to how much commitment to the corporate mission exists at the top.26
The second half of the Eighth Element statement — “The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important” — requires more than just persuading employees that their employer is in a worthy line of business. The most highly motivated and productive employees push hard because they feel their work makes a difference to attaining those worthy goals. Despite the high correlation between senior leadership and front-line commitment to the mission, more than any other element, this one loses the most power along the way. While two-thirds of executives in a typical company strongly agree with the mission question, less than one-third of street-level associates do. The employees are plugged in, but they frequently find little juice reaches the outlet by their cubicle. Given that a customer is far more likely to see a front-line worker than a member of the senior team, this loss of power makes it difficult for an enterprise to convey its passion to customers.
So at the same time that Mike Boldrick was trying to schedule electricians to wire the new Cabela’s store, he needed to ensure the desire to be “the world’s foremost outfitter” was fully transmitted to every member of the Wheeling team.
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. Employees were encouraged to stand on a ladder during the meetings, introduce themselves, display a product, and talk about what other items would be sold with it. In one of those meetings, Boldrick sparked a little competition among the departments by asking which department would be ready for the grand opening first. “Who’s going to be first?” he yelled from the mezzanine.
“We will!” proclaimed Travis Glover, the assistant sales manager in the firearms department.
“Did you hear that?” said Boldrick. “Travis said he will wear a dress and do shopping carts the first day if you beat him.” Although Travis’s department lost, he wasn’t held to the statement, “because he didn’t say that; I said it,” said Boldrick.
Although the store was progressing quickly, not everything was going according to plan. “We must have had 90 percent of the electricians in Ohio County working on the building,” said Boldrick, but the wiring and lights were not finished. Large lifts for installing track lighting had to be moved through the departments, so the merchandise had to be moved. “We were handling some of the merchandise two or three times,” he said, doubling and tripling what was planned. Meanwhile, the merchandise kept arriving. Before the fishing department was fully in place, hunting products were being unloaded. Employees were doing all they could to keep up. “When you had your two days off and came back, you wouldn’t believe how much the store had changed. Mountains were moved,” said Kidwell.
As other departments fell into place, the clothing areas still had a long way to go. “We didn’t have carpet,” said Sacks. “Our kiosks weren’t set up. We were the last ones to get our product — thank God — but we were also the last ones to get done. We had no electricity in our department. It was frustrating for us because we wanted to get our employees used to the computer system, and we couldn’t get anything up and running.”
Shane Etzwiler was senior merchandising manager over apparel. He recalled they were about halfway through the four-and-a-half weeks of store preparation when the clothing began arriving. Had there been more time, the camouflage clothing, pants, ski jackets, and other articles would have arrived at a measured pace, with time to take inventory of what had arrived and what additional items were needed. “Instead, they just bombarded us with it all at once,” said Etzwiler. “How do you get through two hundred black collapsible containers of [unsorted] merchandise, and then the next day get through another hundred, and the next day another hundred, and the next day another hundred?” It was too much. “Eventually we had 250 black collapsibles of clothing merchandise in the back room. It was like ‘Holy smokes!’ ”
Etzwiler needed to travel to Owatonna, Minnesota, to close the sale of his home there. He left instructions about how to plow through it all but returned to find little progress and now even less time. “I’m thinking, we are in deep doo-doo here,” said Etzwiler. “So basically, I just pulled the team together and said, ‘This is the game plan; this is what we’re doing going forward.’ ” Only by concerted teamwork and a two-stage process of sorting the merchandise did they get back on schedule.
As they moved into the home stretch, the pace was wearing down the managers. Boldrick was getting six hours or less of sleep each night. Many of the managers were working 100 hours a week. Etzwiler and Boldrick decided to ease off a bit. “I told Mike, ‘We’re killing the managers. Let’s change it; let’s do some things,’ ” said Etzwiler. “In the five o’clock meeting, you’d see some of them starting to drift off,” Boldrick recalled. “I went to my senior managers and said, ‘Schedule everybody a half day off, and I want to try to give everybody a full day off before we open.’ ”
Boldrick himself decided to head home at 1 p.m. on a Saturday for some badly needed sleep. An hour later, he was dozing off when he got a call from the store’s marketing manager. “I’m sorry to wake you up, but I just got a call from the head of the advance team for the White House. He’s stopping by, and he said maybe the president wants to visit sometime later.”
“I better come in,” said Boldrick.
“We can handle it.”
“No, I’ll come in.”
Boldrick got onto the interstate to find it filled with traffic. Police were closing the exits, forcing cars to drive past the Cabela’s exit. On arriving at the store, Boldrick was greeted by four Secret Service agents and the “advance” man. “Mr. Boldrick, the president of the United States wants to come visit your store,” said the White House official. “Would that be all right with you?”
“Well, absolutely,” said Boldrick. “When?”
“In about twenty minutes.”
Because of all the work to prepare the store for its opening, there were about 100 pallets of construction material near the front door, right where the president would enter. “You never saw people move a hundred pallets faster in your life,” said Boldrick. Passing through between campaign stops, President Bush arrived even sooner than expected. “Sure enough, his buses pull up, and he came walking out and met me at the door,” Boldrick said. “We shook hands, and he went through the crowd, shook hands, and signed autographs. He was here about twenty minutes.”
“We’re at war, and they’re asking him questions about things,” said Rock. “Just to witness and take in the whole entire thing — it was an awesome spectacle to behold,” said Rock.
Presidential visit or not, the store still had to meet its opening date. “The press releases were out. Everything was out. That was the date we had to live by,” said Boldrick. But events beyond their control were conspiring to make it tough. Record rains meant they didn’t have a parking lot or cement walks in front of the store until very near the end. The electricians were behind. Inventory scanners weren’t working. The town drained the water out of the water tower, so the building did not have the water it needed if there should be a fire. The 680 pieces of taxidermy had to be secured in place. Through sheer hard work and teamwork the Wheeling employees pulled it off. One of the key drivers turned out to be the engagement of the employees. “It wouldn’t have mattered if the building had fallen down on us. We would have propped up a corner and started selling because of how well they treated us,” said Kidwell.
Cabela’s mission statement reads: “As the world’s foremost outfitter, we passionately serve people who enjoy the outdoor lifestyle by delivering innovation, quality, and value in our products and services.” When the employees of the Wheeling store were surveyed by Gallup on the 12 Elements, their connection to that mission stood out. More than 60 percent strongly agreed that the “mission or purpose of Cabela’s makes me feel my job is important.” Fewer than 10 percent of workgroups in Gallup’s database give such strong scores on the Eighth Element. Those who work at the Wheeling store say that their mission and drive come from hiring people who love the outdoors, then managing them to bring out their best.
The Wheeling team members say that they pushed so hard to make the opening date because they were eager to work in a store that matches their own enthusiasm for outdoor recreation. “It’s not just a job to them,” said Rock. “It’s something that they like to do outside of work, so work is like a playground to them.” Photos of outdoor adventures adorn nearly every office and cubicle in the staff offices at the store. Ask almost anyone why they like working there, and they wax poetic about family memories of outdoor activities. “It’s a bond,” said Sacks. “My grandfather was always the most important person to me. That’s what we did. We fished together. Every Sunday, we’d go up to the lake together. If you enjoy what your family enjoys doing, you’re going to spend a lot more time together. That’s what I get out of the outdoors.”
You don’t have to prod Tabatha Klug much to get her to talk about her hunting experiences. “I shot my first doe when I was seven,” she said proudly. One day, she showed off a beautiful mounted turkey to a coworker, the 681st piece of taxidermy in the store. She not only shot it; she also did the preserving and mounting. Klug seems to take particular pleasure in surprising male customers who don’t anticipate that she has, for example, shot a moose in Alaska or landed the longest gar in West Virginia. Men sometimes challenge her. “What do you know about camo? You’re a girl,” they say. “What actually are you looking for?” she replies. “I’m sure I can help you.” After she gives them some expert advice, their impression begins to change. “They ask me how I know so much about the camo,” said Klug. “Well, I hunt, I fish, and I’m a licensed taxidermist.” In a few cases, they ask her out. “They actually want to take me home. They ask me if I’m married.” She is, she hastens to mention.
A shared passion about their outdoors lifestyle and their new employer kept the Wheeling team moving through hundreds of difficulties. “When you’ve got engaged employees, they’re trying to drive [the business] for you, and there’s a lot less coaching and time out on the floor training,” said Etzwiler. “They’ve got the buy-in that Cabela’s is a great place to work.”
The Wheeling team met its deadlines. The store opened as planned. “We had a certain sales number we wanted to hit that very first day of our grand opening, and we just crushed it,” said Etzwiler, who has since been promoted to store manager. “It was like, ‘Yeah, we’re flying here now!’ ”
Dead fish. Sleep deprivation. A lack of working scanners, computers, and water. An unassembled elephant. All these bring fond memories to Boldrick, who, since the store’s opening, was promoted to become the company’s second regional manager. “It was fun,” he said. “I never doubted we’d do it. It was the most fun I’ve had in a job. I’d do it all over again.”