Real Case Stories

In 1908, Sears issued its first specialty catalog for houses,  Book of Modern Homes and Building Plans , featuring 44 kit-house styles ranging in price from the US $360–$2,890. That's the equivalent of US $9,147-$73,431 today .  Cover of 1922 Sears Modern Homes catalog As Sears mail-order catalogs were in millions of homes, large numbers of potential homeowners were able to open a catalog, see different house designs, visualize their new home and then purchase it directly from Sears.  Sears reported that more than 70,000 of these homes were sold in North America between 1908 and 1940. In late 1918, Sears conducted a “race,” building two houses, a Sears Honor Built the pre-cut kit home and an identical house with no pre-cut lumber.  The pre-cut Honor Bilt Rodessa was the easy winner in this race, with 231 hours to spare (compared to the stick-built house).  Today, those two houses are still standing side by side as Sears struggles ...

Founded in 1851, Corning Inc. is one of the world's biggest glassmakers today. It boasts of annual sales of nearly $10 billion and billions in annual profits. Developer and manufacturer of the now ubiquitous Gorilla Glass , Corning is another sterling example of a "superstar" firm. Corning has had a rich history of working with innovators from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. In fact, innovation is one of the key values driving Corning's business strategy. Corning regularly invests a healthy 10 percent of its revenue in R&D ; to maintain and further it's technological leadership. And that's in good times  and  in bad. When the telecom bubble burst in 2000 and cratering fiber-optic prices sent Corning's stock from $100 to $1.50 per share by 2002, its CEO at the time reassured scientists that not only was Corning still about research but that R&D would be the path back to prosperity. Corning has continuously reinvented itself – moving fro...

The Bulova Corporation, formerly called Bulova Watch Company, is considered to be the pioneer of modern marketing techniques. Bulova Logo In 1926, when radio was a new phenomenon and not many understood the power of this new advertising medium, Bulova ran the first known radio commercial, "At the tone, it's 8 P.M., B-U-L-O-V-A, Bulova time". In the 1930s, 40s, Bulova were sponsors of all of the top twenty radio shows of the time. During this same period, Bulova became the first watch and clock manufacturer to start spending more than $1 million a year on advertising.  It wasn't a surprise, thus, when in 1941 television advertising became legal, Bulova produced the first-ever TV commercial. This 10-second commercial depicted a Bulova clock and the map of the United States with the live voice-over  "America runs on Bulova time." This ad cost Bulova all of $9 , which in today's money is $150 , and was watched by 4000 Americans. Apart...

When Arthur T Demoulas, the CEO of Demoulas Supermarkets was sacked by the Board in June 2014, the company was stunned when the employees went on strike to demand his reinstatement. What was even more shocking was when even the customers started boycotting the store in support of the CEO and suppliers stopped restocking the stores. source: wiki Market Basket protests What then makes employees, customers and even suppliers so loyal to a CEO in an age when only money rules. The CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas was perceived as a father figure. He was known for his ability to remember his employees' names, birthdays and milestones. He is also known to check on ill employees and asking about spouses and children of his workers. In this Boston Globe article one employee recollects the time he received a call from Arthur when his daughter had a serious car accident and was in the hospital. Arthur enquired about his daughter, whether the hospital was doing a good job and if they needed...

This HBR video speaks about a framework to lead a better and fulfilling life. It emphasizes that one should strive for excellence in all domains and not just in one. 1. Work 2. Home 3. Community 4. Self

This HBR video explains how Management teams can have a good productive debate and fight to get positive outcomes Teams that worked best embraced conflicts It highlights 6 points 1. Work with more rather than less information. A healthy supply of information can switch the focus from guesses & personal opinions to a debate on hard facts. 2.Enrich the debate with multiple options. Having only 2 options can split the groups into 2 teams. Teams that have multiple options can expend their energies then into coming up with creative solutions 3. Establish common goals 4. Inject Humour. It releases tension and promotes collaboration. 5. Maintain a balanced corporate power structure. 6. Resolve issues without forcing a consensus

Schumpeter's gale, is a concept in economics which since the 1950s has become most readily identified with the Austrian American economist Joseph Schumpeter who derived it from the work of Karl Marx and popularized it as a theory of economic innovation and the business cycle. src Wiki The "gale of creative destruction" describes the "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one". Companies that once revolutionized and dominated new industries – for example, Xerox in copiers or Polaroid in instant photography – have seen their profits fall and their dominance vanish as rivals launched improved designs or cut manufacturing costs. In technology, the cassette tape replaced the 8-track, only to be replaced in turn by the compact disc, which was undercut by downloads to MP3 players, which is now being usurped by web-based streaming services....

In the 1990s, when Jack Welch faced some tough decisions about how to exploit the Internet, he chose experience as a solution to the biases he might have. He hired a personal Internet mentor who was more than 25 years his junior and encouraged his top managers to do the same. Warren Buffett recommends extra challenge as a solution to biases that arise during acquisitions. Whenever a company is paying part of the price with shares, he proposes using an “ adviser against the deal ,” who would be compensated well only if it did not go through . source: Mckinsey article on How to Test your Decision Making instincts

When the 75 members of Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Advisory Council were asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was nearly unanimous: self-awareness. src  HBR article Also read about Vasella, CEO of Novartis who built an entirely new Novartis culture centered on compassion, competence, and competition. He did this because of his health issues during his childhood and the trauma he went through during his treatments. When he was 8 years old, he still remembers the pain and fear when the nurses held him down during the lumbar punctures to prevent him from moving. One day, a new physician arrived and took time to explain each step of the procedure. Vasella asked the doctor if he could hold a nurse’s hand instead of being held down. Vasella recalls “The amazing thing is that this time the procedure didn’t hurt,”. “Afterward, the doctor asked me, ‘How was that?’ I reached up and gave him a big hug. These human gestures...

Why is Feedback only synonymous with Negative? Why do we give only Negative Feedback? It's very common to see people get very defensive when someone gives a feedback which is perceived as Negative. One tends to lockdown and get into a counter offensive mode whenever such feedback is given. This very often results in promoting a culture where people don't openly discuss issues. This author,Sonia Di Maulo  proposes a 3+1 feedback model. For every One opportunity for improvement, 3 positives need to be highlighted first. They key to the 3 positives is It builds Trust and Collaboration It increases engagement

MIT's Richard Locke researched  2 Nike tshirt factories in Mexico. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. Plant 1 gave workers complete freedom to decide production targets, team organization and managing production plants and schedule. Employees work in teams and are also responsible for routine maintenance of equipment. Jobs are rotated and they value knowing how to perform a variety of operations and claimed that this opportunity to work on several operations plus in teams significantly improved working conditions. Every morning, the supervisors communicate to each team the style and quantity of products they need to produce. The workers would get together and discuss amongst themselves how much they can actually produce and then meet with the supervisor and agree on the production target f...

In his book "Persuadable",  Al Pittampalli talks about how great Leaders are those who are open to listening to others' opinion and allow themselves to be Persuaded. Alan Mulally, the vaunted CEO who saved Ford Motor Company, is, for example, exceptionally skeptical of his own opinions. Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers, insists that his team ruthlessly second-guess his thinking. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, seeks out information that might disprove her beliefs about the world and herself. One Nobel Prize-winning scientist discovered the cause of ulcers by bravely doubting his own entrenched beliefs. In 1971, Phil Knight the founder of Nike favored "Dimension Six," as the name of his company but his 45 employees thankfully laughed that one down. Then Jeff Johnson, '63, a fellow running geek, proposed a name that came to him in a dream: Nike, for the Greek winged goddess of victory. The company paid $35...

HiPPO - Highest Paid Person's Opinion is an affliction that affects most organisations. Managers tend to throw the weight of their designations on their juniors by asserting their will even though the subordinates may have a better perspective. This results in a culture where the workforce gets into an execution mode throwing away their thinking hats. A famous quote from Jim Barksdale, Netscape CEO is “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” The most famous case is of Ron Johnson  who was Sr VP of Retail operations at Apple and was responsible for the success and launch of Apple Stores.  He was appointed CEO of JC Penney in 2011. Buoyed by his success at Apple, he had complete disdain for the competence of JC Penney staff or their culture. He frequently mocked Senior executives in public, ridiculing them for their decisions.  He relied on his gut rather than data and bull dozed his way through implementing his mandat...

In this HBR article  , the author talks about using Structured Debates as a technique to eliminate Groupthink. One strategy that can significantly help teams avoid the dangers of Groupthink and successfully respond to emerging threats and opportunities is to create structured debates. This is done by randomly assigning different team members to argue opposing points of view. Structured debates can provide an opportunity to rigorously discuss and dispute interpretations of current trends, as well as future predictions, in a kind of organizational “safe mode” that enables teams to explore external risks without putting individual members of the team at internal risk. Randomly assign different team members to argue opposing points of view. Then, at a team meeting , set up a debate with scenarios such as: “Our organization’s mobile app will be obsolete within two years. Here’s what will replace it, and here’s what we need to do now to survive and thrive.” Ask half the team to argu...

Kim Scott, ex Googler and now a coach speaks about Guidance and in her view it is the single most important part of managing people. "Apart from giving Guidance it's also important to receive it. Guidance which is basically Praise and Criticism is feedback. She speaks about a tool called Radical Candor. To explain Radical Candor she speaks about an incident in her career. During her early days at Google, she had to make a presentation to the founders and the CEO. The presentation went off very well and Eric Schmidt was ecstatic. After the meeting was over, her boss Sheryl Sandberg walked her back to her office. She spoke about 4 or 5 points about the presentation that she liked and while she was speaking Kim felt that there was something amiss and a criticism was around the corner. Finally Sandberg said "But, you said 'Um' a lot during your presentation". Kim was relieved and said "Ah! No big deal, I know I do that". Sandberg: "Was it ...

Often when employees have issues related to work, Leaders offer advice and suggestions. Employees get intimidated by the suggestion and often tend to go by the boss' recommendations. The pitfall of this is that it results in a culture where employees shy away from taking decisions and keep escalating it to their bosses. In this McKinsey article , the author cites an example of a Leader who uses the principle of "Extreme Listening"  which results in creating a space for people to do their own best quality thinking.  The Leader used this technique with an employee who came to her with a problem. She kept asking "what else?" and kept nudging him for a solution. Within 5 minutes he solved the problem himself.  Very often Leaders try to prove their own competency in the eyes of their subordinate and feel that it is their duty to put in their 2 bits. But this may end up intimidating people instead of bringing out the best out of them.

Winning the battle for market leadership is at the heart of competitive strategy. Overtaking the market leader has often been termed “dethronement” in prior literature and is considered a key managerial objective ( Ferrier, Smith, & Grimm, 1999 ;   Smith, Ferrier, & Grimm, 2001a ).   Management scholars across different fields have shown that imitating leaders can be an effective way for followers to catch up with and surpass the leader ( Posen, Lee, & Yi, 2013 ). However, less attention has been given to the possibility of leaders imitating competitor moves and to the performance consequences of such a strategy. This is surprising, since leading firms do leverage imitation strategies in attempts to defend their leadership. For example, Apple, the market leader in smartphones for a number of years, imitated the moves made by Samsung in offering larger screens for iPhones two years after Apple’s chief executive officer (CEO) publicly stated that phones w...

In his book "  Power  :Why some people have it and other's dont", Jeffrey Pfeffer talks about how important it is to understand Politics and Organisation Dynamics. He cites a few examples on how high performers were forced to leave their organisations because of politics In 2004, the Miami-Dade county, Florida, school board hired former New York schools chancellor Rudy Crew as superintendent to help a struggling school district. During his tenure, the disctrict was a finalist in the board prize for urban education 3 years in a row. He was also awarded the National Superintendent of the year by the American Association of School Administrators. However, within 6 months of receiving the award, he was forced to quit by the School board. The book talks about how people live in the fallacy that we live in a Just-World and do not recognise the intrigues of the real world. In another case, Jim Walker who was hired to build Nomura Securities' Asian operations was a cha...

When Lou Gerstner joined IBM in 1993, he was depressed. In the first few weeks into the job he would sit through 8 hour presentations and understand nothing!  Source: Harvard Business Review One of the measures that he took was that the executive team abandon slide presentations and submit plans injargon-freee prose.   Source: Mckinsey, Leadership in Context