Kroger Technology & Digital

James Gadrow

James Gadrow is an Advanced Software Engineering Manager at Kroger Technology & Digital, based in Cincinnati. He has extensive experience in software development and engineering, having worked at Kroger since 2019, progressing from Developer to his current managerial role since April 2022. His professional background includes roles in software development, project management, and technical leadership across various companies and technologies.

In an exclusive interview with Retail Tech Insights, Gadrow shares his invaluable insights regarding the developments in the retail industry, the prevailing challenges and possible solutions.

“I don’t care what it takes, put the right people in the right place to fix it” — These words that I was told were spoken by a senior Vice President which ultimately resulted in a change in my personal job responsibilities.

You see, there was a new feature in one of our applications that the business was trying to get out the door. This feature was going to reduce waste that was generated in the store by avoiding the printing of disposable labels and, instead, using ones that were permanent and reusable. This was going to contribute more positively to the environment and reduce time spent by our store associates since they would no longer need to be performing this mundane activity.

The problem was it kept failing spectacularly. The company had suffered millions of dollars in losses as a result. Our business team stakeholders were holding meetings sharing stories from our customers to help everyone connect to the human experience that we were impacting in a negative way. I remember one story came from a single mother who had just managed to leave an abusive relationship with her young son who was worried they wouldn’t be able to eat that week because of how she was impacted. Thankfully, our store leadership had done the right thing in that case. Her story was one of thanks as a result, but it was being used to underline the fact that it shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. That this is not the experience we should be providing to our customers.

I was in those discussions, because they were department wide. At the time, I was leading a few teams in our data platform. It was in no way related to those failures as our part in the process was at the tail end of everything. Sure, I took away some new personal understandings from it. For example, I used to think that the cost of failure for our systems was low before those meetings. “We’re just selling people groceries so if it goes wrong, it’s not like anyone dies or something, right? This isn’t launching rockets or creating defensive systems for the army or anything after all.” I remember saying those words at one point or another. But, other than that, this isn’t going to impact myself or my teams. Was I ever wrong!

A few years earlier in my career, I had worked as a developer in the team where those failures were taking place. I was one of the few remaining people in the company from when that team was incubated and the application was built. I was somewhat instrumental to its existing. In addition to that, I had begun making a name for myself in leadership already despite only joining the ranks of management 1 year prior to this event taking place. In my very first leadership role, I managed to take a team which hadn’t managed to perform a successful release in over 6 months and transform them into one which was able to consistently deliver successfully. And my leaders were also indicating that the staff who reported me displayed a trend of moving up the staff stack rankings. And I managed to do so while keeping my staff inspired and engaged.

So, when the time came when our VP uttered those words, mine was the instant suggestion from other leaders who reported to him on “who” needed to be leading that team. And, by the end of the following year, the team was firing on all cylinders. Heck, we were even being called out for the holiday season in the following year being one of the quietest years that leadership could ever remember having.

I know the story there was a bit anti-climactic, but there’s a reason for that. The story – itself – doesn’t matter. You see, there’s a constant that is running through it. Quietly bearing the responsibility for the positive outcomes but only visible if you know to look for it. That constant is my mindset and one that I urge you to cultivate within yourself!

I never set out to be instrumental to any of this. As indicated, I didn’t think that event was going to impact me in any real way other than being a story I could reference on why I needed to reassess the cost of failing in our responsibilities. What I always set out to do is to create value for others.

No matter what you think your job is, it is to create value for others. That’s why you are getting paid. It’s a big factor in why you get paid how much you are getting paid! The more value that you are creating, the more value you personally represent.

If you are always asking yourself why is this valuable? Who would pay me for this? How much is it worth? Then you end up making sure that you are always creating more value than your cost. If you can do this consistently, you are – in essence – printing money for whomever is investing that money into you. This is how you become a truly invaluable asset.

I invite you, re-read the story above. See if you can spot for yourself where value is being created. It’s everywhere in there and not just coming from me! I’ll give you one just to get you started. Those meetings that were being put together by our business partners. It provided value to me, personally. The cost per person for that meeting to the company was something like $80. Follow the story and see what that $80 investment in me led to. The difference between that investment and the outcome, that’s value creation.

There are more so many more. I invite you again to use the story above for practice! Train yourself to look for the value being created from the investments around you. Not just money, but time and other limited resources as well! It’s not magic, it’s not luck, it’s a skill. And as with any skill, it can be learned and mastered. Go and polish this skill within yourself! I genuinely want every one of you reading this to be successful in this! The more value we are all deliberately creating for each other, the better the world will be for all of us as a result!