Michael Duke: Running The World’s Largest Retail Store

Michael Duke is the president and CEO of Wal-mart, the world’s largest retail store chain. It is so huge that its performance is a bell weather for the U.S. economy. To be able to head such a large organization means Duke comes with exceptional skills. He certainly does and proven in his work performance.

Unlike other CEOs Duke did not graduate from an ivy league school or hold an MBA degree. He does have an industrial engineering degree from Georgia Tech which he has applied quite successfully in his professional career.

According to Duke his career path was guided by the advice he got from a high school physics teacher who told him to go to Georgia Tech and get an industrial engineering degree. His teacher also advised him not to get into the manufacturing industry but the service industry since that’s where the future lay.  Considering it was 1967 at that time it was quite a forward looking advice.

He did follow the advice and after getting his college degree worked for Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta.  In his early years he learned to manage stores and after 10 year moved on to logistics. Rich’s later became Federated and May Department Stores. He worked for that company for 23 years.

He was hired by Wal-Mart in 1995 to handle the company’s logistics. Being such an enormous company logistics is an integral component of what defines Wal-Mart as an efficient and successful company. Duke went about and made further improvements to the logistics component.

In 2005 he was appointed vice chairman and led Wal-Mart International.  With Duke’s guidance the international business became a fast growing segment of Wal-Mart with 3,500 stores and 680,000 associates in 15 markets outside of the contiguous U.S.  This segment of Wal-Mart is a behemoth in its own right having annual sales of almost $100 billion in 2008 when Duke was heading it.

In February 2009 he finally got the top post of president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.  Perhaps Duke’s high school physics teacher never imagined how far and high his accomplishment would be.