Home Depot
Home Depot
Home depot has been in the business of home appliances since 1978. The company performed well after its incorporation until the nineties. The performance was dwindling due decentralization and standardization. Employee discipline went down because of lack of a central locus of control. There were poor performance standards from the employees. Performance of the organization continued to diminish up to the year 2000. This year so the organization’s overhaul in its leadership and structure and the appointment of a new CEO, the new chief executive officer came up with new strategies for restoring the organization’s lost glory. These strategies included decentralization and standardization. My opinion about the leadership move here is that decentralization and lack of performance standards can adversely affect an organization’s performance.
Decentralization of operations places an organization at a management crisis if there are no relevant controls to the decentralized operations. Secondly, lack of performance standards predicts a downfall to an organization. There should be set minimum expectation from every employee. This was one of the paramount reasons why the organization was underperforming in the nineties. The new management put in place performance standards and within a short duration the organization performance shot to a new level high. The manager also focused on the customer; the company came to be known as the people’s business. This is a strategy highly essential for excellence in organizational performance. In my opinion, the home depot organization should value the customers as the most paramount stakeholders.
Regular customer surveys should be conducted to establish the customer’s opinions about the organization. If the organization establishes a complaint among the customers, it should move swiftly to rectify the customer concerns the customers are the determinants of the performance of the organization. The move by the organization to establish considerable autonomy in its branches was a staunch calculation. Managers of the different branches from different areas understand their markets better than the CEO. They understand the strategies which they can implement to win a significant market share for the organization. However, decentralization should come with stringent controls from the central office. Operations of the decentralized branches could easily run over board if there is no keen control from the head office. In 1999, the organization recorded an all times high in revenues due to centralization and standardization. The organized brought about centralized merchandizing and centralized supply chain. In addition to the moves made by the organization, it should also be keen to ensure that all its operations are in line with today’s trend in information technology.
Electronic commerce is a backbone to trade today. The organization should ensure that it has all the infrastructures that will propagate it to high competiveness. The company should also reconsider its human resource regulations. The staff should have the qualification and talents that will enable it achieve a competitive edge in the market. With other giant competitors in the global home appliances market such as Lowe’s, the organization should ensure that its talent is in line with its strategic goals. Organizational poaching is an emergent aspect among today’s organization. The organization should implement HR strategies such as motivation for its employees to retain its aptitude from competitors. My question to the CEO is what strategy is in place, to keep the organization at the competitive edge in future.
Work cited
Alverez, J.B, Ton, Z. & Johnson, R. Home depot interconnected retail. Harvard business school. (2012)
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