Project Blast with Grainger’s Executives

If you plan to have Professor Miller for Competitive Strategy, be prepared to work hard and impress the executives who take their precious time to visit UIC. I recently had a memorable experience working with one of the best teams and meeting one of the most charismatic people that I’ve ever met, Mr. Court Carruthers, W.W.Grainger Senior Vice President and Group President of Americas.

Having done in-depth research on Grainger and Mr. Carruthers, I could not believe that I actually had this precious opportunity. Mr. Carruthers’ presence, coupled with Professor Miller’s high expectations of us, was a motivation for my team to put in our best effort to produce the best quality of work that we could. Fortunately, my team was made up of highly competent and competitive people who refused to settle for anything but the absolute best. Some important takeaways from this project, in my opinion:

• Choose your teammates wisely. This saves a lot of time and effort that could be used to get things done effectively and efficiently.
• Plan ahead. Set deadlines. Stick to them. One incident of procrastination could lead to a bottleneck which keeps the team from progressing.
• Diligently take notes of feedback. If you have borderline obsession with details and not missing anything like me, this cannot be stressed enough.
• Be absolutely prepared, especially for the final presentation. This is not like any other college presentation that you’ve done; C-level executives actually sit in the audience to watch you. They spare some time from their hectic schedule for you and without doubt, you want to respect that and deliver something worthy of their time.

With these tips, I am positive that your team would likely do well. Talking about Grainger, we learned a lot from Mr. Carruthers aside from research. He passionately talked about Grainger’s people-oriented culture, his long-term view for future generations, and Grainger’s competitive position which is increasingly challenged by mom and pop shops collectively and Amazon. He also discussed issues of global expansion since a lot of countries are not ready for Grainger’s model, the need for ongoing changes to the underlying thesis for emerging markets, and Grainger’s ethical practice when expanding in countries in which corruption is common. His view on this last issue was to follow the law and ethical principles in the U.S. even if Grainger has to forgo some of its business.

Also at UIC with Mr. Carruthers was Mr. Michael McGrew, Senior Director of Communication for Grainger Americas. He shared his career development, which started from a public relations job. He went on to spend 13 years with Grainger and became an expert in corporate communication.

About the guests:

Court Carruthers is the Senior Vice President of W.W.Grainger and Group President of Americas. He is primarily responsible for Grainger’s business operations in Canada, U.S., Mexico, and Latin America. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta, and a MBA from Queen’s University (Canada). He is a Canada native and has been in the U.S. for 3 years.

Michael McGrew is a Chicago native, having earned 2 degrees from Northwestern University. He was also on the Northwestern football team as a quarterback.