After reading the OD Application on "The Home Depot Corporation", I observed many negatives and positives in the organization. First I would like to mention the fact that Home Depot, was the number one home improvement chain in the United States at one point, so this shows that it was a demand for the business at one point. I 'm sure this was the primary measurement that the business was felling and that they needed to make some changes. This should have been a motivator to the organization to try to regain that spot again. In order to make a drastic change of this sort, they would have needed all hands on deck, throughout all of the layers in the company.
When Nardelli came aboard as CEO of "The Home Depot Corporation" he was faced with a huge task to drive the business back to a place of growth and leading the industry. So, there were many negatives in this organization. Home Depot was known as an unstructured and entrepreneurial culture. The business was setup
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One of the motto 's Nardelli believed in, is that "Leaders are the glue that holds the company together". He says leaders has the power to turn around a dysfunctional corporate culture. Nardelli started implementing changes by picking the low hanging fruit of the organization, which includes centralizing all purchases, so that he could take advantage of the buying power that they obtain since they are a very large company. Then Nardelli start working on the appearance of their stores, he made sure that they were clean and they modified the layout in the stores. He also had the stores to put up displays. With the new CEO in place they also changed the way that they do their hiring. Store managers no longer operate independently, they are now required to submit store data to headquarters and they began using metrics to measure their operations. I will admit, that cheaper labor is not always the answer, this can cause some problems in the
Home Depot provides an Introduction as a message for their employees’ only. By sharing the responsibility for protecting and advancing the company’s reputation and ethics as well as values, drive business strategies and activities. Home Depot provides straightforward information about operating principles, and expectations for Associates of The Home Depot to conduct themselves. (Home Depot Internal, 2008)
For this purpose, he would have to implement a carefully planned strategy to regain its lost customers and respect from the community. First of all, he has to reintroduce the previous approach before Hannah, the founder, retired. This means he would have to publicly apologize for his unethical decision making and improper treatment of his employees. To further expand the effect for positive results, he should also write a letter to or set up an interview with the local newspaper to get the community’s attention. In addition to this, he should also apologize for wasting Nafeeza’s time. Second, when hiring new employess, he should from now on treat them with respect and dignity, and he should not substitute the costs for employee benefits. To regain high quality work performance, he would have to, as mentioned before, reintroduce the old managerial approach that includes: incentives, improvement meetings, and more than minimum wage. Furthermore, he should refrain from shouting and directing offensive words at his employees, especially in public. Instead, he should from now on call out the employee making errors to meet him in the manager’s office, so they can privately discuss the work-related issues in a professional manner. By doing so, he will achieve respect from his worker, which ultimately results in positive feedback from his community. Lastly, he should immediately develop an innovated
In the early 2000’s Lowe’s was rapidly intensifying its presence nationwide. The company carried a varied assortment of home improvement products and catered to the needs of retail as well as commercial business customers. Lowe’s expanded their reach by acquiring a 41-store chain, Eagle Hardware and Garden, and engaging in a strategic alliance with HGTV to obtain a more profound existence in their market (Rouse, 2005). By 2004, Lowe’s operated almost 1,000 stores with plans to continue expansion across the nation (Rouse, 2005). The company has a core competency in helping customers meet their home improvement needs at a low price. In order to use this core competency to gain a competitive advantage, the company has focused on key functional strategies. To continue their success, Lowe’s must specifically focus on marketing, logistics, and human resource management strategies.
William Mistretta who took over as CEO after Julius Walls resigned has more experience in diverse management roles in the corporate world. Mistretta had around 25 years’ experience in doing corporate business while Walls only experience came from working in a chocolate company and briefly as a Marketing Director in Greyston Bakery Board of management. According to the text, Julius Walls had established a task-oriented system that worked excellently for the company. Walls had a good understanding of what he wanted from his employees. In addition, he expected them to be accountable for the quality of their actions. This system worked excellently and the corporation may be uncertain how the new CEO will fit in. However, I do not think the fact that the new CEO has more experience should be a concern. If anything, the new CEO, due to his vast experience will likely adopt the system and find ways to make it even better. His vast experience means he has witnessed
Home Depot was started in 1978 as a one-stop shopping for do-it-yourselfers. As the fastest growing retailer in U.S. History, Home Depot went public on NASDAQ in 1981, and moved to the New York Stock Exchange in 1984. By 1989, Home Depot had opened its 100th store. In 1994, Home Depot moved into Canada with the acquisition of Aikenhead’s, in 2001, they moved into Mexico with the acquisition of Total Home. Home Depot acquired The Home Way in China in 2006.
The expectation was to say “Welcome to Walgreens” when they arrived and “Thank you and be well” when they left. If employees were not compliant with this, they were to be held accountable by the manager, which could include disciplinary action. Then came the memorization of beliefs. Each day, the store manager was expected to discuss the cultural beliefs throughout the day with employees and would ask them to recite them during mini meetings on the sales floor. After they recited the belief, he would ask them to give an example of the belief that they witnessed recently. If employees struggled with these changes, the GROW coaching for performance and engagement model was used. GROW stands for Goals, Reality, Options, and Way Forward and it is a format of questions used to steer the employee in the right direction so they can perform the job the way the company expects. The store manager felt that he had dealt with the change in culture to the best of his ability with the tools provided to him from the top of the company. Nevertheless, the reality was that the change did not really “change” much and the store manager found it hard to keep employees and lost many long-term team members as a result. The manager does not feel that the company did a good job in engaging team members of why they had to change, but instead just told them they had to or
“The Miles and Snow’s typology is based on the idea that managers seek to formulate strategies that will be congruent with the external environment” (64). There are four types of strategies that can be established under this typology that is, the prospector, the defender, the analyzer and the reactor. While prospector is innovative and risky, the defender is conservative and concerned with stability. I have mentioned above that HBC is now able to compete with premium brands retailer due to an acquisition of Saks Fifth Avenue, and yet they are not utilizing low-cost leadership as their main competitive strategy. Nonetheless, Daft and Armstrong showcases a perfect example of the defender positioning using HBC’s case. “HBC has carefully monitored its margins and spending, maintained its discount brand (Zellers) in order to successfully compete with Walmart, and survived as one of Canada’s only two national department store” (65). Then they further describe how HBC refurbish its brand, “HBC hired Bonnie Brooks in 2008 to revamp its brand”, “She dropped many underperforming product lines and brought in trendy product lines such as Coach and Top Shop” (65). This explanation also supports my
When people happy sales are up, if people are unhappy sales are down. Founder and CEO of Dotcom Distributions, Maria Hargety agrees, “No matter how big your brand becomes, your company is nothing without the people who make it run,” (Haggerty, 2015). Walgreens is one of the top drug stores in the company and yet this store is barely making an enough to stay open. Hargety is expressing that brand does not matter, what matters are the people behind the brand. As long as, employees stay unhappy, productivity will remain low. Another reason, behind low morale, is team members are opposed to change. For the most part, all the employees have been at Walgreens more than eight years. The employees still have the mind set of Walgreens eight years ago. Walgreens has evolved and employees have not. When change is announced it is instantly shot down by employees, they rather have it the old way. In many cases, the old way is easier but not the most efficient. There are many other benefiting factors to low morale in the work place but leadership is a root cause of unhappiness. Employees feel left out of the loop most of the time. Leadership fail to understand their employees as equals. Everyone should be treated the same from district manager to sales associate nonetheless, in many cases that is not way. The store manager controls the work load and the scheduling. When the store manager makes the schedule it
Home Depot is the brainchild of Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank and came about after both men lost their job in the home improvement industry in 1978 (Parnell, 2014). Home Depot has acquired several smaller home improvement stores in both the U.S. and abroad through the years which enabled it to position itself as the world’s largest home improvement chain (Parnell, 2014). Home Depot focuses on the do-it-yourself segment of the market and sells sells tools, construction products and services. Marketing is a strong point for the company. They are able to maintain a competitive advantage by keeping themselves available to their customers at all times. Home Depot has been using both online and offline marketing efforts. The internet has become a very useful tool for the company and part of the reason that they are leading the market in DIY stores. Home Depot currently provides DIY videos on YouTube and Vine that cover current topics that consumers are likely to be interested in. They also have social media pages on Facebook and Twitter, where they have a huge following. They provide online communities where actual employees answer consumer’s questions and provide assistance on
The founders hired a CEO to continue guiding the company on the path towards success but realized too late that they overlooked an important component. The CEO lacked the character and traits needed to positively develop and lead the company and its people. After facing a major decline in customer service and an uptick in employee turnover, The Home Depot realized that it needed to resort back to the basic guiding principles. They must choose a leader that buys into the same vision and philosophy that the company was built upon. The leader must behold the same values that were cherished by the founders and must be willing to invest in nurturing the culture, the associates and customers.
But, now the company is too busy focusing on making money and doing whatever it takes to achieve that goal. A solution for Smith to gain back the true purpose of the workplace culture for the company would be for him to
Nardelli became CEO of Home Depot in December 2000 despite having no retail experience. Using the "Six Sigma" management strategy from GE, he dramatically overhauled the company and replaced its freewheeling business process. He changed the decentralized management structure, by eliminating and consolidating division executives. He also installed processes and streamlined operations, which implemented a computerized automated inventory system and centralizing supply orders at the Atlanta headquarters.
|Business |The Home Depot, Inc. is the world's largest home improvement retailer. The company incorporated in 1978 in |
Second, the rapid development of the Home centers such as The Home Depot, with prices 30% less than the traditional hardware store made Black & Decker to lose market share to Makita. As per Exhibit 2 we could notice that in the home center channel that represent 25%of the trades...
Once Home Depot’s marketing plan contains a thorough description of the scissor lift, it will then focus on the branding, pricing, and distribution of the lift. The plan will also need to include a product branding and pricing strategy, as well as examine how the pricing strategy supports the branding strategy. In addition, Home Depot will prepare a distribution channel analysis from which it will create a distribution strategy, determine whether the company is going to use a push or a pull strategy, and how the distribution strategy fits the product.