Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that mine the Be Epic Podcast for lessons and insights that students and practitioners can apply to their lives as business leaders.
J.K. Symancyk was a young executive overseeing a project in Mexico when he discovered a leadership principle that would serve him well for decades.
“I had to really develop a style that was able to still exercise authority without having to be an expert in everything,” Symancyk said on a recent episode of Matt Waller’s BeEpic podcast. “If I think about all of the experiences that I had at Walmart, that one probably I carry with me in my role today more than anything.”
Symancyk’s epiphany from his Mexico experience was particularly relevant to him because of the circumstances he found himself in as a relatively young leader. But given the speed of change, the influence of new technologies, and the need to create teams with specialized expertise, very few leaders of any age today can take a been-there-done-that, know-it-all approach. In other words, modern leadership often puts you in a position of authority over people who know more than you do.
Symancyk, who became CEO of PetSmart in 2018, graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1994 with a theatre degree, then began his business career with Walmart and Sam’s Club. His international experience as a merchandise coordinator and his fluency in Spanish helped him land an assignment in Mexico, where Sam’s Club planned to open fresh meat and produce departments. But he had no experience with fresh foods, so he had to quickly learn things like how to set up produce distribution systems and meat departments.
“I was learning on a Tuesday what I might be trying to teach somebody on a Wednesday,” he said. “Not at all qualified, but it was such a fast education.”
Symancyk was teaching Walmart’s business models to people who knew much more about the fresh food business than he did. In fact, he said, some of them “had more years doing it than I had years on the planet at that point in my life.” So he had to balance his role as a teacher with his willingness to be vulnerable enough to learn from others, and that has benefited him as he has moved into new positions with Walmart and on to executive roles with Meijer (where he eventually became president), Academy Sports and Outdoors (president and CEO), and now PetSmart.
“It was probably one of the best training grounds for now being in a position where, ultimately, I end up having to make a lot of decisions where I have to lean on the expertise of people who are much deeper in the subject than I am,” he said, “and know how to exercise judgment when I may not have the time to go as deep as I would love to go on some of the subjects that I have to weigh in on.”
The experience in Mexico helped Symancyk understand what he’s come to see as “four axes” of effectiveness in leadership.
Talent. The best leaders are good at identifying and developing talent, Symancyk said, and then “really putting it in position or supporting it in a way to let it have the maximum impact.” Sometimes that involves coaching people, he said, but at other times it’s more about “getting out of the way and really clearing the path so that people can do what they’re there to do.”
Focus. Leaders and their organizations can’t do everything that’s worth doing. Symancyk points out that most organizations have “more priorities than resources to accomplish those priorities.” So a leader has to determine what two or three priorities matter most and then put the weight of the organization’s efforts on what’s most important.
Judgment. The higher up a leader rises on an organizational chart, the more that leader deals with challenges that don’t have a clear right or wrong answer. Instead, Symancyk said, your decisions are “measured on a whole different set of intangible and sometimes murky set of variables,” and that makes sound judgment vital to leadership. Fortunately, he believes, judgment is something leaders can develop and improve over time.
Influence. This is a true mark of a leader, and it’s not dependent on having a title or positional authority. “One of the things I learned really well at Walmart was this idea that you can be accountable for something without having direct responsibility over it,” Symancyk said. “If you see something where you can make an impact and you can help shape the outcome of it, it really is incumbent upon you to find a way to influence that and to make it better. That ability to influence is one of the healthiest things I think you can develop amongst your leadership across a company.”
Symancyk has excelled in those four areas of leadership in large part because of his willingness to say yes to opportunities, especially those opportunities that took him out of his comfort zone
“When people came to me with opportunities, particularly if they were people I respected, saw as talented, had invested time in me, then generally, even if I wasn't comfortable, I said, ‘Yes,’” Symancyk said. “There was not a master plan that took me down (my) path, but certainly as I got exposure to (retail), what started for me as a job before I went to law school or thought about doing something different, I really kinda stumbled into something that I felt like fit me and that I had passion for and more than 20 years later, I'm still doing it.”
