Soderquist Remembered as a People Person

The successes of business and civic leader Don Soderquist were many.

He was a significant influence on the growth at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., part of the team that grew the retailer from $1 billion to $244 billion in sales.  He joined the company in 1980 as executive vice president and was appointed to chief operating officer in 1988, where he served until retiring in 2000.

Soderquist also served on the board of trustees at John Brown University in Siloam Springs from 1982 until 2009, and served as the board’s chairman from 1991 until 2002. The strength of the school today — JBU is consistently rated among best colleges in the south — is often attributed by school supporters to his leadership, and JBU has formally shown Soderquist its appreciation on three different occasions: in 1993, with an honorary doctorate; in 2005, by naming the new business building, the Soderquist Business Center; and in 2014, by dedicating the Donald G. Soderquist College of Business, honoring Soderquist’s life work in developing people and practicing ethical leadership in the business world.

In 1998, Soderquist partnered with JBU president Lee Balzer to found Soderquist Leadership, a development center focused on Soderquist’s favorite topics — business ethics and leadership. The center has served more than 50,000 people in the last 18 years.

In all of those endeavors, there was one common thread: Soderquist had a genuine interest in people and their success.

“I always tell people that he has an irrepressible optimism,” said Chuck Hyde, CEO of Soderquist Leadership. “The idea of the human spirit and potential and what people are capable of … it just lifts him up. I saw that play out so many different ways in each of those three contexts.

“[The advertising slogan] ‘Save Money. Live Better’ at Walmart is fairly new, but it’s not new in terms of what the company has always been about. It’s always been about lowering the cost of living so people could raise their quality of life. When you look at higher education at JBU, that’s a people-driven motive.

At Soderquist Leadership, it’s a people-driven motive.

“You look at the success of all three organizations, and not to necessarily put us on par with Walmart, but when you look at what we have been able to do, that was the common thread from where Don was coming from.”

Soderquist, who was inducted into the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame in 2010, died July 21 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, surrounded by his wife, JoAnn, and children. He celebrated his 82nd birthday Jan. 29.

Hyde said Soderquist died two days after undergoing a heart procedure at the Mayo Clinic. He declined to discuss specifics on what the procedure was for, deferring to the family’s privacy.

“He was told he needed to have a procedure during the checkup. It was planned, and it was successful,” Hyde said. “The report that we had gotten was that [the procedure] did what it needed to do. There were other complications after that.”

A memorial service was held July 29 at Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas in Rogers.

 

Culture Keeper

When Walmart founder Sam Walton succumbed to cancer on April 5, 1992, Soderquist took on an added, albeit unofficial, title — “keeper of the culture”. The designation meant that Soderquist knew the importance of preserving the retailer’s unique (some say folksy) corporate culture, even in the face of massive growth.

“While Walmart is considerably larger now than when I joined the organization, this is the same company Sam Walton founded,” Soderquist said when he retired. “We have a unique culture that encourages people to accomplish extraordinary things together. We also have a culture that urges us to respect and care for one another, like no other company I have ever known.”

Bobby Martin of Rogers, a 15-year Walmart executive who was president and CEO of Walmart International from 1993 to 1999, said Soderquist was clearly the loudest voice beyond Sam carrying the torch of the culture.

 “He was very inspiring and effective in spreading the culture,” Martin said. “He really was the keeper of that flame. And even after he’s gone, he’s one whose voice will be inside the halls of Walmart forever.”

Mike Duke, president and CEO of Walmart from 2009 until retirement in 2014, called Soderquist a great leader, personal mentor and great friend.

Soderquist, Duke added, was the ultimate example of Walmart culture and values.

“He will be missed, because we loved his positive enthusiastic voice, but his legacy will impact future generations,” Duke said.

Soderquist, who was born in Chicago in 1934, began a successful retailing career with Ben Franklin Stores in 1964. He eventually became the company’s CEO in 1973.

In 1980, after a decade of rebuffing Sam Walton’s recruitment, Soderquist finally relented and took a job at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville.

He was executive vice president of administration and logistics from 1980 to 1985, executive vice president of operations and administration from 1985 to 1988, vice chairman and chief operating officer from 1988 to 1999 and senior vice chairman from 1999 to 2000.

“Don was a strategic kind of thinker; that’s why Sam went after him, obviously,” Martin recalled. “That’s why he and David [Glass] were such a powerful combination behind Sam.”

Martin said that Glass, Walmart’s CFO (1976-1984), president and COO (1984-1988) and CEO (1988-2000), and Soderquist were a formidable C-suite combination during Walmart’s growth years.

“They were almost complete opposites in some ways, but the combined strength of those two was very powerful,” he said. “Don’s part of that was, no matter how serious the topic, how serious the time, in any situation he could keep the right amount of levity. He would keep the fun and high spirits going inside the company. It was a constant, really, with him. He was just that way. Being self-deprecating was part of the culture that he taught.”

 

Enduring Legacy

Hyde’s association with Soderquist dates back to 1984, when he moved to Rogers as a teenager, and became friends with Soderquist’s son.

“The first several years of my relationship, he was just Jeff’s dad,” he joked. “If you’d ask any of us back then what Jeff’s dad does, we’d just shrug our shoulders and say he works for Walmart.”

Hyde’s first professional exposure to Soderquist was at a leadership conference in Siloam Springs in 2001, while working for Kimberly-Clark Corp.

By that time, he’d figured out that Jeff’s dad was a pretty big deal, but the character was still the same.

“I remember sitting in that theater thinking this iconic leader was the exact same person I had known; he didn’t have a switch he flipped on and off,” Hyde said. “One of the best compliments I can give Don was he was the same person no matter who he was with or where he was.”

Hyde joined the nonprofit in 2005 and assumed a leadership role in 2008, eventually becoming CEO in 2010.

He said he and Soderquist often talked about the center not being too dependent on its namesake, in order for it to ensure its long-term success.

“Don has been involved in very select ways, but it’s a very small percentage of our overall business,” he said. “Many of our customers don’t know him, or have never met him. And, because he’s been retired long enough from Walmart, many of them don’t really have a feel for who he is and what he did in that professional career.

“But that’s just like he wanted. Knowing that one day he wouldn’t be with us, he wanted this center to continue and we think we are positioned to grow and do amazing things and honor that intent that he had for us.”