close window 
In taking over Kmart, executives at Sears Holdings Corporation decided they had to instill a winning culture in the company.
“When you deal with people who are making $8 or $10 an hour, reinforcing culture is very, very important,” said Bill Crowley, CFO and chief administrative officer, who spoke to the student-led Financial Analysis and Treasury Group at Hyde Park Center May 16. “When you deal with people who are at the top levels of the organization, you hope they don’t need that kind of help.”
Before its bankruptcy, there was no culture at Kmart, Crowley said. “The culture we created there was our culture,” he said. “It was a culture about making money, about testing, and about challenging. This is the culture we’re now trying to instill in Sears.”
At weekly meetings, company officials review every capital expenditure over $250,000 and every contract longer than one year, Crowley said. “We try to get people to act as if the money is their own money, which is an enormous thing. We fight every day to make money in our stores. It is really hard to compete with Wal-Mart.”
Sears is looking for “attitude and passion” over experience and ability, he said. “I think it’s generally true, but it was certainly true when we first came in and we were looking at who we would keep in the company,” Crowley said. “We look for people that come from a winning culture. Goldman Sachs is a winning culture. McKinsey is a winning culture. We pay for performance and we’ll pay people a lot if they perform. Rather than options, we try to focus on very significant long-term incentive programs.”
—Phil Rockrohr