Part 2: Leading Organizational Change

Contrasting Companies:

1. Sharper Image (losing Company)

2. Apple Inc.

When it was founded:

1. 1977

2. April 1, 1976

Founder:

1. Richard Thalheimer

2. Steve Jobs

Quick Description

1. Sharper image became of the pioneers stores of high end electronic products, it became famous for its high end electronic shinny products made in japan. It grew to a $760 million publically traded company with 196 stores in the most expensive malls in America and overseas. High competition from other local stores like Apple Stores, Bookstone, Radio Shack, Macys, and a law suit from Consumer Reports finally took the company in 2009 to file bankruptcy and eventually liquidate.

Sharper image made its debut as a small mail order business in 1977 while Thalheimer was going to law school. He took $ 1000 us investment and started marketing a line of high tech digital watches targeted to runners. He sold out his stock before his credit card payment was due. He liked the idea and keep advertising and using short credit lines to finance this start up. Within years he was mailing eye catching catalogs of products that were interesting and must haves for the growing upscale man between 25-44 years old.

Sharper image iconic air filter was the product that took them to the top of the retail and catalog world. Their stores boasted high price gadgetry that included $ 7,000.00 high tech massage chairs, $8,000.00 replica Coca Cola vending machines, suit of armor that sold for $ 3,800.00. These shinny and nice looking products drew 1000’s to their stores. Most people will leave with equally shinny but less expensive anti fog shaving mirrors, phone cases, battery charger etc.

Sharper image demised was the result of having all their eggs in one basket. The Ionic Breeze filter accounted for 35 % of their sales and being challenged and then suited by Consumer reports on the veracity that the filter worked as pitched proved to be the last nail in the coffin.

2. Apple, Inc. (Apple) is an incorporated entity that designs, manufacturers, and markets mobile communication along with media devices that include music players, related software, networking solutions, digital content and applications, etc.. In 1977 Steve Jobs had a vision of bringing the world a related piece of engineering for personal use that everyone can use and enjoy. The idea was to integrate what a person was thinking into a real time computer screen while maintaining a competitive edge over the competition such as Microsoft and Dell.

Over the years Apple has lost sight of their original ideas, while overcoming management and CEO’s alike that squashed ideas coming directly from Steve Jobs due to millions of R&D finances, yet over time, this failed organization recovered and has revolutionized the media market. This organization came from a small operation from Steve’s parent’s garage, to a multitrillion dollar hub of information and creativity.

Today, Apple offers a vast array of products that are competitive in today’s current market pertaining to image, creative trending, pricing, and technical need from either a personal computer at home to the educational platform. All of which are products that shape the minds of generations old and new.

Mission Statement

1. Sharper Image Mission statement “Our Company’s mission is to share this enthusiasm--to share the fun of discovering all kinds of exciting, well-designed, and technologically advanced products. As The Sharper Image has grown, my passion for new products has grown, too, and today we are an international icon innovation--a unique kind of specialty retailer that represents the highest standards of customer service.”

2. Apple’s Mission Statement for 2013 reads “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.”(Blodget, H. (2013))

Leadership Style

1. Sharper Image. Richard Thalheimer autocratic leadership did not help stopping the demise of the company. Once a great style while the company was starting to grow, became one of the reasons that it failed. There was a high turnover of top level executives and leaders. Some employees labeled Thalheimer as a harsh boss that it was difficult to work for. Authoritarian leadership according to Kendra Cherry (psychology.about.com)“Characterized by individual control over all decisions and little input from group members. Autocratic leaders typically make choices based on their own ideas and judgments and rarely accept advice from followers. Autocratic leadership involves absolute, authoritarian control over a group.”

As the company grew, the autocratic leadership was the best recipe for success. Thalheimer traveled to Japan, Hong Kong and other high tech meccas to look for high tech visually attractive products that he would like to own. A one man decision with good taste was the right strategy. As the company grew, keeping the control and not changing with the environment proved to be the poison. The company needed new leadership and fresh ideas.

2. Over the course of many years, the leadership styles and CEO’s have changed hands in efforts to stay competitive to Steve’s vision of the company. It is very known that Steve Jobs was difficult to work for, his hard-nosed leadership style ruffled the feathers of board members and employees alike to the point of kicking him out of his own company. Steve’s ideas were innovative, seemed unnecessary at times, yet the ideas we’re for the greater good of the consumer.

The current CEO of Apple, and the predecessor Tim Cook believes in multiple visions of leadership styles that include the importance diversity of leadership due to the ideas of being your own person verses trying to be someone else. Transparency is their supplier initiates an innovative supplier responsibility in products which sets the bar high being in a public space. The consideration of Apple’s size and identity is always classified in the leadership style while doing the smaller things better than the competition. This means to keep things simple and focus on the important sellers of the organization verses taking on too many products. The final things are being assertive to the consumers needs such as reading their thoughts upon products while taking their concerns into account. Finally admitting when you are wrong. This allows the organization and consumer to know Apple is human, and not the going to stand by their faults and victories.

Collectively this type of style is of democratic leaders, which include the ideas of the consumer while staying humble to the organization. Luckily, Steve created this organization with the hopes of being the best at what they can accomplish in all facets of the organization. While they have stumbled, they have succeeded in many ways to the current consumer as well.

Organization and culture of the company

1. There were several reasons why the Sharper Image Company failed, but the main reason was that the company failed to change. As the company started to see signs that it was losing market share and revenue, they needed to do an incrementally shift of their culture, include new products, new ideas, not having all your eggs in one basket. The company needed to innovate and accept that new players were getting into the market. Eva woo of Business week wrote “ The company failed to transition to a set of alternative products, as the one-time flagship product sales fell, said Joan Storm, retail analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. The troubled product, the "Ionic Breeze Quadra air cleaner," had seen negative reviews claiming the product was "ineffective" by Consumer Reports in 2002 and 2003.

2. Apple is ruthless, plain and simple. These are the ideas of every CEO in the world that looks down upon an organization with more than 50,000 employees and annual revenue approaching $100 billion grow 60% a year. The culture stems from Steve’s ideas of a series of weekly meetings in which sets the tone for the organization. This allows the powers that be a chance to collective create ideas that will work for the organization. Such meetings can be broken down by day, or departments, but the goal is to create an environment where communication is relayed throughout the entire organization from the CEO down to the entry level intern.

Simplicity is talked about daily by Apple’s organization structure. This allows the organization to take a successful product and make it better than it has in the past by ways of being smaller and holding more power, music, data, or whatever they are currently trying to achieve. One thing that works to the benefit of Apple’s organizational structure is the lack of P&L, the idea of a managerial hierarchy is frowned upon while only having one person associated with the gains and losses of the entire organization. Many people are associated with the results of sales and losses, yet this keeps things simple which baffles the minds of corporate structure (Lashinsky, A. (2011)).

· Elliott, Stuart, "A New Campaign Is Trying to Restore Sharper Image's Edge," New York Times, September 6, 1996, p. D2.