President and CEO of Walmart (2000–2009) Member of Pilot Company Board of Directors
MY FIRST MEETING WITH MR. HASLAM—or Big Jim, as I call him—came at a White House Christmas dinner during the Bush administration. My wife was seated at one table, and I was seated at another next to a tall gentleman from Pilot Corporation, which I assumed was some kind of aviation company. It was not.
My father started out on Route 66 in southeast Kansas with one gas station. Many years later, he retired with two. Since it is in my family history, I’ve always had a natural interest and affinity for the business. Discovering that Big Jim owned over five hundred gas stations was quite an enjoyable experience that made me think about how different my family would be if we had opened this many gas stations. Needless to say, we had a great visit, and I really enjoyed our conversation together—but I had no idea I would ever have a real relationship with him or his company. I was just very impressed with the kind of person he was. It was evident he was the real deal.
Years later, Byron Trott and BDT Capital Partners made an investment in Pilot, and I was asked to be the observer on the board because of my association with Byron. Of course, this jogged my memory of Mr. Haslam and it remains such an interesting coincidence that I met him at the White House only to end up having a deeper connection with his company and his family.
As we began to work together, it became apparent to me that Big Jim had a uniquely positive outlook on life, business, and everything in between. However, I think there are times when a person is especially positive or has a great sense of humor that it becomes all too easy to miss the depth of that person, including his or her ability to lead and manage. He may be positive, but Big Jim also has a natural leadership skill that makes people want to follow him.
His leadership acumen causes people to want to invest not just money in him and his company, but to also invest themselves in the company to make it better. You really see this when you witness him interact with the individual managers, district managers, operations team, and anyone else on the Pilot Company team. There is such an evident sense of respect and admiration that every team member has for him.
At the board meetings, Big Jim can definitely lighten the atmosphere, but he can also start a meeting on time and end a meeting on time. He does not mess around when it comes to getting the business of the company done with efficiency and excellence. You cannot create a company of the size and with the success of Pilot Company without having an uncanny ability to galvanize various points of view and various interests into cohesive action among the teammates. Big Jim certainly has been able to do this, which is no doubt reflected all the way back to his sports career when he developed this affinity for teamwork. And yet, within this teamwork, he has always been acknowledged for his outstanding individual performance.
However, nothing has taught me as much about Big Jim as his reaction during a difficult time when the company was accused of misbehavior in its dealings with customers. Ultimately, he admitted that the company needed to make changes, but the most interesting thing to me was Big Jim’s genuine attitude of sadness during this time. He had worked so hard to create a company deeply rooted in doing the right thing and treating people with respect. The accusation obviously affected him, but having to acknowledge that people in his company had behaved in a way that was so different from what he stood for was very difficult for him. This revealed so much about his character and his expectations regarding the character of the whole company. I think this says a lot about him as a human being. His mode was never to cover up or protect. Instead, he focused on the fact that the company had to be better than this because this was not what they stood for.
My first impressions in the White House were accurate. Big Jim is a really good guy with a positive outlook and a great sense of humor, but he is also a man of deep character and leadership. In other words, one should never underestimate his skills just because he can add a smile to the discussion. You cannot create a company of this breadth and scope without possessing the ability to be serious when you need to be serious… and Jim Haslam is serious about the right things.