Undoing Home Depot's Demolition

Undoing Home Depot's Demolition PDF Author: New Word City
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0137056923
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
Bottom (and top) line: To turn Home Depot around, Frank Blake restoked employee morale, zeroed in customer needs, and focused on the core business. Best of all, he wasn’t Bob Nardelli. What can you learn from Blake’s story? Sell the project, not the product. Jump without a (golden) parachute. And never hold yourself above your people. At Home Depot, the days of caviar and roses are past. The CEO with the huge salary and outsized ego is gone. The world’s largest home-improvement retail chain has slowed its once-relentless pace of expansion almost to a halt. It has sold its 34 Expo Design Centers, 14 specialty stores, and other grandiose, empire-building acquisitions. What remains is a company with roughly 350,000 employees, 2,238 stores around the world, and sales of more than $71 billion annually. After two years on the job, Home Depot’s unlikely savior is still almost anonymous enough to pose as a shopper when he visits his stores. The story of how Frank Blake and his colleagues turned the company around is a tale with lessons for us all. It’s as if Blake had stopped an explosion in mid-blast and turned it around, nestling all the fragments gently back into place. New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

Undoing Home Depot's Demolition

Undoing Home Depot's Demolition PDF Author: New Word City
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0137056923
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 20

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bottom (and top) line: To turn Home Depot around, Frank Blake restoked employee morale, zeroed in customer needs, and focused on the core business. Best of all, he wasn’t Bob Nardelli. What can you learn from Blake’s story? Sell the project, not the product. Jump without a (golden) parachute. And never hold yourself above your people. At Home Depot, the days of caviar and roses are past. The CEO with the huge salary and outsized ego is gone. The world’s largest home-improvement retail chain has slowed its once-relentless pace of expansion almost to a halt. It has sold its 34 Expo Design Centers, 14 specialty stores, and other grandiose, empire-building acquisitions. What remains is a company with roughly 350,000 employees, 2,238 stores around the world, and sales of more than $71 billion annually. After two years on the job, Home Depot’s unlikely savior is still almost anonymous enough to pose as a shopper when he visits his stores. The story of how Frank Blake and his colleagues turned the company around is a tale with lessons for us all. It’s as if Blake had stopped an explosion in mid-blast and turned it around, nestling all the fragments gently back into place. New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

Sam Walton's Way

Sam Walton's Way PDF Author: New Word City
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132139227
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
It would be difficult to overstate the impact Sam Walton had on American business, specifically retailing. The standalone box stores he pioneered have quite literally changed the nation’s landscape. His innovations in supply-chain management and distribution totally reshaped the relationship between suppliers and retailers, and, for the most part, took wholesalers out of the equation. His insistence on low prices altered customers’ expectations of what they will have to pay for everything from socks to soda. Like few business leaders before or since, Sam Walton changed the world. Saturday, August 14, 1964 was a broiling hot day in Harrison, Arkansas--but the heat was the last thing on Sam Walton’s mind. For the 46-year-old Walton, this was a big day: the grand opening of his second Wal-Mart. He was going to make damn sure it was a big success. He’d planned everything. In the parking lot, he’d had two truckloads of watermelons delivered and hired a donkey to provide rides for the kids. He headed outside to greet his first customers. What he saw would make most entrepreneurs lose their cool: The watermelons had burst, and donkey dung littered the lot. Walton’s reaction was emblematic of his ability to rise above any challenge. He ignored the mess, smiled, walked up to the crowd, stuck out his hand, and said, “Welcome to Wal-Mart.” That focus on customers is Walton’s prime leadership lesson. But there are many others, beginning with his obsession with low prices--just the first step in a mission to deliver unbeatable value.... New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

Get Results, Not Salutes

Get Results, Not Salutes PDF Author: D. Michael Abrashoff
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132138999
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
Give people power to do their job and clear the decks of anything that keeps them from doing it, and leave your ego on shore. That’s the advice of D. Michael Abrashoff, author of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bestseller It’s Your Ship. Our ship, USS Benfold, was serving in the Persian Gulf in the 1997 Iraq crisis, and the entire U.S. fleet there was snagged in a giant communications snafu. At any moment, some 7,000 messages could go astray or just stop moving. Ironically, Benfold and many other ships were equipped with a new satellite system for launching Tomahawk missiles. But most radio operators hadn’t been trained to use it for anything besides launching missiles. Not so John Rafalko, who pored over its manuals and told me it could solve all our communications problems. I reported this to the admiral’s chief of staff for communications, who rejected the idea. With the fleet verging on chaos, I went over his head and told the admiral--who erupted, chewed out his subordinate, and ordered him to adopt Rafalko’s plan immediately. We flew John all over the Gulf to train other operators, and suddenly the whole fleet was communicating seamlessly. This radioman saved the Navy’s bacon: My only role was to listen and back him up.

Ray Kroc's Way

Ray Kroc's Way PDF Author: New Word City
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 013707932X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
From soda jerk to billionaire restaurateur, Ray Kroc exemplified American entrepreneurship at its best. In a fascinating career of building McDonald’s into the world’s biggest human food chain, Kroc adhered to certain virtues he considered indispensable for success--passion, persistence, simplicity, trust in frontline employees, partnering with suppliers. Plus: Smile, smile, smile. Here’s what you can learn from his amazing record. You may not want to share this information with your teenagers: Ray Kroc--the visionary behind McDonald’s and one of the most successful entrepreneurs in American history--was a high school dropout. And the man who changed the way the world eats didn’t open his first restaurant until he was in his fifties. Clearly, Kroc didn’t follow the book--he wrote a new one. The saga of his ascent from paper cup salesman to one of Time magazine’s 100 most important people of the twentieth century is a vivid lesson in leadership, drive, and common sense. Ray Kroc was born on October 5, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago. His family originated in Bohemia, now a major region of the Czech Republic. New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

How McDonald's Got Its Groove Back

How McDonald's Got Its Groove Back PDF Author: New Word City
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0137056885
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
How do you rejuvenate a tired brand with a world-wide franchise? McDonald’s comeback offers lessons for leaders everywhere in focusing on what their customers really want. McDonald’s hit bottom early in 2003. Sure, it was still the biggest fast-food provider in the world. But the stock collapsed after the company reported its first-ever quarterly loss. Battered by critics, nibbled at by new competitors (Subway, Sonic, Quiznos), undermined by overbuilding and a failure to adapt to changes in consumer habits and tastes, the giant was out of breath and sagging over its belt. Behind the scenes, though, a turnaround had begun. A new team of leaders was out to rejuvenate the core brand, shed irrelevant activities, and adjust McDonald’s operations to what the customer really wanted. The story of how they did it holds copious lessons for any business faced with bringing new life to a lagging brand. It demanded changes in every phase of a worldwide enterprise with $23 billion in sales, 31,000 restaurants, and fully 1.6 million employees. But the new McDonald’s team had patience, determination, and a “Plan to Win”.... New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

How to Build Customer Confidence

How to Build Customer Confidence PDF Author: Fred Wiersema
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132144484
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 14

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Book Description
To earn and maintain your customers’ confidence, you have to do more than deliver a satisfactory product or service on time. It takes a deep understanding of their needs and a clear commitment to their success. How can you earn your customers’ confidence? Show your commitment to their success. Zero on the problems they don’t know they have. Demonstrate your competence. Stay relevant for the long term. You know your customers are crucial to your company’s success, but are you crucial to theirs? I often ask business leaders that question. Many haven’t given it much thought. Others have, concluding that their outstanding, attractively priced products must be of great value to customers...but, no, they’ve never taken the time to find out if their customers agree....

Keeping It Honest, From Kitchen to Coca-Cola

Keeping It Honest, From Kitchen to Coca-Cola PDF Author: Seth Goldman
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132144433
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
Seth Goldman, cofounder and TeaEO of Honest Tea, America’s leading organic bottled tea maker (favored by President Barack Obama) analyzes his decision to make a game-changing deal with Coca-Cola. Can a fast-growing, organic start-up connect with a corporate giant and retain its own soul? Here’s what you can learn from his experience. In the world of start-ups, there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. One founds a business in order to sell it early and get richer quicker. The other establishes a brand and nurtures it. I am the nurturing type. My goal has always been to make the Honest Tea brand stand for authentic, healthy, organic products; a brand that customers trust and love. My partner, Barry Nalebuff, and I knew that we wanted to build a company with staying power, and that to do so, we’d have to keep control of the enterprise. Then, once we were ready to take it to the next level, we did our best to structure an arrangement where we could keep Honest Tea, well, honest. In essence, that’s our story. But as with any good story, there have been many twists and turns along the way.

How to Get Your Crew to Take the Wheel

How to Get Your Crew to Take the Wheel PDF Author: D. Michael Abrashoff
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132144530
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
How do you get people to take initiative? The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bestselling author Captain D. Michael Abrashoff says the answer is: One, build their confidence by giving them an unexpected opportunity to shine. Two, encourage challenges to established wisdom and authority. Three, keep increasing expectations.

Henry Ford's Way

Henry Ford's Way PDF Author: New Word City
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132474832
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
Henry Ford’s vision of a car for Everyman and a living wage for his employees created the middle class and forever changed America. But the deeply flawed genius got lost in his own new world. Among the lessons you can learn from his life: Make yourself stand out. If you find a diamond, don’t throw it away. Don’t neglect your opportunities no matter how remote. Understand your weaknesses. When you do recognize your mistakes, don’t punish the world for them. Henry Ford was far from the only inventor chasing the horseless carriage at the turn of the century, and it took him three decades after his encounter with the road roller in 1876 to roll out the Model T in 1908. Even then, he had to outmaneuver his financial backers to pursue his vision of building a car for everyone. Sooner or later, of course, someone else might well have done it. But the world is what it is because of Ford’s patient, dogged determination. If you have a big idea, don’t give up on it. New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

Changing a Troubled Ship's Course

Changing a Troubled Ship's Course PDF Author: D. Michael Abrashoff
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0137038747
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
Figure out what’s wrong, enlist your people in the cause of fixing it, persuade them to take ownership, and never declare victory. That's the advice of D. Michael Abrashoff, author of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bestseller It’s Your Ship, on how to turn around any organization. The Atlanta Falcons hit rock bottom the day a tornado ripped off half of its stadium’s roof. By then, their charismatic quarterback, Michael Vick, was in prison for leading a dog-fighting ring. Their coach, Bobby Petrino, had defected in mid-season to college football. They’d won only four games in 2007, losing 12. They weren’t just defeated; they were demoralized, beaten, losers. It was up to their owner, Arthur Blank, cofounder of Home Depot, to turn this sorry situation around. And in one of the deftest performances I’ve ever heard of, he did. By the end of 2008, the Falcons had gone to the playoffs with an 11-5 record. Their new coach, Mike Smith, was NFL Coach of the Year. Their quarterback, Matt Ryan, was NFL AP Offensive Rookie of the Year. “This is the season of miracles,” Blank said. But the miracles all traced to the careful moves he’d made....