Tractor Supply’s Rob Mills on the CIO as chief growth officer

Rob Mills has been instrumental in driving Tractor Supply Co.’s rapid growth, profitability, and world-class customer experience. Mills joined Tractor Supply a decade ago as its CIO, and within four years, his role, influence, and impact had expanded significantly.

Now, as executive vice president and chief technology, digital, and corporate strategy officer, Mills has cemented himself as a key business leader at the $14 billion rural lifestyle retailer, which has come a long way since its humble beginning in 1938 as a mail-order tractor parts business. The company now employs more than 50,000 team members and operates more than 2,200 stores in 49 states.

Mills joined me on a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast to discuss his leadership journey and impressive track record as a business-, tech-, and customer-savvy executive. Afterwards, we spent some time focusing on the various ways he and his teams have helped orchestrate business growth. What follows is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Dan Roberts: Joy Brown, CIO of Boston Medical Center Health System and a Tractor Supply board member, notes that the company has grown substantially during your tenure and was curious about your ‘superpowers’ that have helped create so much value for Tractor Supply.

Rob Mills: Superpowers are strengths you also have to watch out for. First, I’m always eager to learn about the business. I ask a lot of questions, and I want to be out there in the field to really appreciate and understand what’s going on. So the curious learner in me is a superpower.

Another is capacity. I’ve had some amazing opportunities over the course of my career that have built resiliency and endurance. With that, I feel I have this capacity to take on difficult challenges, but I have to make sure that capacity doesn’t turn into signing up for more than we should. It also goes back to having clarity on the priorities of the organization.

Lastly, I am fundamentally a believer that you do not deliver tech to deliver tech. You deliver tech to enable and grow the business, and I think our business partners appreciate that. My peers on the executive committee are an amazing group of leaders. They know their business. I know enough where I can contribute to the conversation and help give simple direction on the technology solutions that deliver value.

They appreciate that I show up as an enterprise leader who thinks for the broader Tractor Supply business, and that I wear different hats and lead teams that deliver the enterprise objectives. I think from an enterprise view, then use my expertise or the functions I have responsibility for to help influence or drive data points into those conversations.

Your CEO, Hal Lawton, has commented on how well Tractor Supply did during the pandemic. How did the IT organization help create opportunities for that company growth to happen?

In 2017-2018, there was recognition across Tractor Supply that we needed to step up our game on the digital front. We made big strategic moves and investments with different convenience offers — buy online/pick up in store, curbside pickup, communication tools in the store — a variety of what I would call reasonable but big, strategic investments for the company. When COVID hit, those investments paid off. We were able to enable same-day delivery within hours. We were able to fully leverage buy online/pick up in store for all of our product categories overnight. We introduced curbside pickup and some of the nuances around car make and model and color leveraging our mobile app.

The way we did it was, we took feedback from our customers and our team members at all levels, combined the two, and came away with a strong understanding of what core capabilities were needed. The good news is, we had already set the foundation over the prior years, so we were able to leapfrog during those days.

You have to have a secure environment with strong operational stability. Those may be just the basics, but if you don’t have that, you have nothing. Whenever I’m speaking to the group, I emphasize their No. 1 priority is operational stability and security.

Then, on top of that, how do you build new capabilities, features, growth opportunities, and productivity improvements for the business? How do we use the mindset of agility and all the investments we’ve made over the years to leapfrog some of these new capabilities with speed? That’s how we did it through COVID, and we were able to pivot. We offered agility, we had strong collaboration, and we introduced a lot of new capabilities in a short time frame.

I’ve seen some organizations with similar pillars, but their execution was different, to the point where it became an excuse to not take risks. How do you find that balancing act?

A great example is, ‘Every time you patch a system will drive a risk.’ I can’t tell you the number of peers I will hear say, ‘We don’t like to patch because typically we’ll spend more time on patching.’ Well, let’s fix that. Let’s make sure we’ve got patching down strong. I’m taking this really elementary and basic, but something as simple as, how do you automate, how do you have good controls and governance and process — get that right and get that out of the way so we’re able to build that as part of our DNA and how we operate while the team is able to focus on delivering more enhanced value back to the organization.

Get the core strong, and it allows us to shift to more of the enablers.

You’ve been a member of the B&G Foods Board since 2018. Their CIO, Chris Colla, said he’s amazed at how much you know about the digital marketplace. How has that come about?

I’ve always had this digital mindset, even launching website properties back in the mid-90s early in my career. They’ve evolved a lot over the years, but what it comes down to is, digital is not just tech. It’s all the components of the business, customer, and team member experience coming together. You have to think about that end-to-end journey and what it looks like for your customer and your organization. Where you have gaps in knowledge, go and learn, ask questions, get involved.

At Tractor Supply, we work to make sure we’re getting the right customers with the right intentions hitting our website to drive a level of efficiencies, and that it’s the best experience while you’re on our digital properties. We view our digital properties as a front door to our stores. The first time a customer gets introduced to our brand could be through tractorsupply.com. Our goal is to make sure it is the same welcoming, high-energy community feel so that when you walk in the store, you’re taking that digital experience into the store, and vice versa.

Can you talk about how you are helping Tractor Supply win with data and analytics? What opportunities are you seeing with generative AI to help drive continued growth?

A few years ago, we took a hard look at data and said we really need to focus on data governance, stewardship, and ownership of data. That’s not necessarily a tech thing, but how could we be a champion of that, putting those structures in place. Then on the technology side, how are we building out tools and capabilities that will enable the business to do what they want to do and create more self-empowerment.

AI and generative AI have accelerated the journey. We’ve been playing in AI for years, from replenishment of goods going into the store to forecasting sales to merchandising needs, etc. But for gen AI, it’s about creating content and insights for the business — and enable the business to take those insights and turn them into action.

We’ve done a good job over the last couple of years laying the foundation. We knew, no matter with AI or gen AI or whatever’s next, data was core to everything we needed to do. When you think about the power of our Neighbors Club program, with 37 million plus customers, we have a lot of insights around how they interact with our brands and the products they need. So how do you use that information to personalize their experience, not just on the website or the mobile app, but in store and also help influence product innovation? That’s where I get really excited.

One of the things I hear from my peers all the time is, how are you cost-justifying your data foundation? Well, one, we built it over the years, so it’s not a massive investment now. And two, we’re solving problems.

Tractor Supply has earned many accolades for being a best place to work. How has the company’s focus on human capital contributed to the growth of the company? 

We view our people as team members who are part of a larger purpose, servicing the community and our customers. We have a lot of focus internally around how we can improve customer experience. From in store to online, we’re relentless about customer satisfaction. And we take the same approach with our team members. We listen to find out where are the things that we could do better and improve on, and where are the things we do well and let’s make sure we don’t break but improve and build upon.

It starts and stops with our values. One thing I admire so much about Tractor is we don’t just live by the values on a good day. We live by them on a bad day, too. And we use these values to help drive focus for our team members, our purpose of the business, and, at the same time, how we can enhance that team member experience. And we take that feedback and act upon it, which ultimately drives credibility.

For a lot of companies, values are just a poster on the wall. How do you make them a living part of the culture?

It starts with the board and goes all the way down throughout the organization. We live and practice the values and mission in every meeting. When we’re doing a tech town hall, we will start off talking about a core value and what it means for the team. We’ll share a team member experience or a customer experience and how that experience enabled and helped a team member or customer, or where there might be opportunities to improve it and even make it a better experience.

So it’s about ensuring you’re truly walking the talk. The second area is, we’re a culture of listening, and we work hard at making sure team members feel valued and recognized. We might have ideas or solutions, but we go out to our customers, our team members in the field, our team members at the store support center to seek input on how we’re thinking about a problem. It goes back to one of our fundamental beliefs: ‘You are empowered.’ Every team member is empowered to do right by the customer. If you start with that kind of mindset, it comes together.

For more insights from Mills’ strategic leadership playbook, tune in to the Tech Whisperers podcast.