What Got Us Here Will Get Us There

During a meeting today we were talking about opportunities and we were reminded of the incredible breadth of talent throughout our company. It made me recall of how I came to join Walgreens almost twenty years ago.

I started out my career in consulting.  During my first twelve years, I got to work in lots of different companies and be exposed to lots of different “corporate cultures”. My last five years in consulting was spent at Walgreens full-time working on SIMS. 

When I arrived at Walgreens, I had never considered working in “industry”; I was a diehard consultant.  I sort of had the attitude of Groucho Marx who once said that he wouldn’t want to join a country club that would accept him as a member.  At that point in my career and life, the ideal model for success against which to judge others was me and others like me.  That is, since I had been successful, other people had to be like me to be successful.

Thank goodness I got to spend those five years here.  During that time I was able to see firsthand how things worked and Walgreen people interacted with each other. I came to see how wrongheaded my preconceptions were.  I came to know that talent takes many forms. I saw people up and down the organization who did wonderfully creative things to make our company better in so many different ways whether it be how we pick a store site or how we pick orders or how to serve our customers.  In just about every area I saw people who did their jobs much better than I did mine. In all my years in consulting, I had never seen a company and culture like Walgreens.

At the end of the project as I prepared to roll off the project and move back to my new office downtown, I was approached about joining Walgreens. Up until that moment, I had never thought about working here but in an instance, I knew that this is where I wanted to be.

What was true twenty years ago is still true today. Certainly there have been challenges and probably none more than we face today. But our roots run deep and we have proven resilient in the toughest of times over the last hundred years. I consider myself fortunate to work with so many fantastic talented and devoted people. Thank you for the opportunity to serve with you.  And thank you for all you do to serve our communities and customers. We cannot say it often enough to each other.