No Talent Leadership

Many of the managers at Home Depot have been at HD a LONG time. They have very deep connections and those connections are what run Home Depot. In spite of what Frank Blake and Marvin Ellison intend to do with the company there is an inescapable reality: the company of managers at Home Depot are not all good people. The ideal that makes Home Depot work is results first….and everything else ..after that. No exceptions. Employees, customers and everything included. This is why Home Depot fears unions so much. It is not to say that a union will be the solution. But the fact remains that the “Home Depot” values are a lie and they are there to simply say they exist. If you walk into any store the level of lying and cheating is astounding. It is so pronounced it is almost an art. Markdowns can be held and not processed, outs can be fixed by changing on hands, Radio Call Box can be rigged by simply “testing” them for a full day, VOC driven by getting everyone to fill out surveys. What cannot be rigged though is this: walk into any home depot and ask this simple question: Do you see behaviors that represent those ideals on the “value wheel”? In most cases the answer will be no. District Managers are completely nuts and have worked for Home Depot 100 years and know little or nothing about business, never the less people and leadership. RVP’s are so far removed from what they do they might as well as not exist and are completely a waste of payroll. The 3 Presidents are sadly there to just say we have presidents. These 3 layers of management collectively posses such a shallow business acumen they could not get hired at most companies doing 1% of what they are doing now. Just to ensure we never lose our sense of humor there is the Atlanta Store Support center that is filled with 1000’s of retail store and business wash outs that (1) could care less about anyone in the store (2) should have been fired years ago and serve little or no purpose other than to create processes that as Mel Brooks said “protect their phony baloney” jobs.
Sadly guys…no one is listening. The board is not listening. Frank Blake is not listening. Marvin Ellision is not listening and neither are the 3 presidents, the 19 Regional Vice Presidents or the 350 District Managers. The reason they are not listening is because as Alexander Hamilton, said "Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.". My observations have been this: any (if not most) people are draw to work for a company like Home Depot because they have to; they need a job. I think it would be a fair statement that those with great talent for business or management do not think in High School “yeah I would love to work in the concrete aisle for a few dollars above minimum wage at Home Depot”. Additionally the insane behavior displayed from hourly associates, department heads, assistant store managers, store managers, district managers and regional managers is due in many ways to experience (or lack of) and education (and again or lack of). Home Depot is so crock full of cronyism it is amazing it has thrived for 30 years. Case in point: Frank the CEO’s son was just promoted to Home Depot District Manager. Good job!