Need two post minimum 350 words each (you can use the paper attached)Identify and discuss several global creative organizations using the criteria and descriptions in Ch. 10 and 11 of Mastering Leader

CREATIVE ORGANIZATIONS AND STRATEGIC CHANGE

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Creative Organizations and Strategic Change #2

While I was doing my research for my first post I was reminded of the plethora of businesses that call Minnesota home. Target, Best Buy, Mayo Health Care, the list goes on. However, not all of those appear, at least on the surface, to be “creative.” There is one however, with a global presence that has been around for almost one hundred years, diversified widely, and continues to adapt to an ever-changing global economy, environment, and culture. That company is General Mills. Yes, General Mills is also a Minnesota based company. Its roots go all the way back to 1856 in Minneapolis Minnesota. However, it did not formally become “General Mills” until June of 1928 when the founding company Washburn-Crosby formally merged with 26 other Twin Cities mills. (Mill City Museum, 2017)

General Mills has acquired brand loyalty globally with the manufacturing of breakfast cereals, baking goods, meal products, granola and grain based snacks. They’ve also diversified by manufacturing other brands such as Green Giant, Nature Valley, Bugles, Yoplait, Haagen-Dazs… the list goes on. (General Mills Success Story, 2017)

Okay, so what makes them “creative?” As early as 1941 General Mills started diversifying beyond food; using their brand loyalty to garner support for other initiatives.; like sponsoring popular radio series like the Lone Ranger and television shows like the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earpp, Tennessee Tuxedo and more. (General Mills Success Story, 2017)

But sure, this could be seen as little more good marketing; perhaps showcasing the creativity of the marking management team, but not a direct reflection of the creativity of the organization as a whole. However, in 1946 it launched and Aeronautical Research Division. They were developing high altitude balloons for the Navy. They also started making toys like play-doh, and helped to Develop ALVIN the deep see robotic submarine that explored the sunken Titanic! (General Mills Success Story, 2017) Talk about diverse and creative! The obvious critique however, is how are all these elements moving toward achieving a singular vision. To that end, I honestly don’t know.

There are some more current philanthropic initiatives that perhaps better serve the vision of the company.

“Innovation goes beyond new product development.  It includes everything from boosting the company's environmental sustainability efforts to finding new ways to connect our brands with changing demands.” (Responsibility, 2016)

The company highlights its global “responsibilities” such as:

• Reduce absolute GHG emissions across our full value chain by 28% by 2025.

• …Protect and establish more than 100,000 acres of pollinator habitat through 2021

• Fourth-largest U.S. natural and organic food producer

• CDP climate A-List

• …develop water stewardship plans for at risk watersheds…

• Second largest producer of gluten free products

• Introduced soil health roadmap to improve soil health…

(Responsibility, 2016)

Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure how these diverse platforms, goals and achievements clearly illustrate the creativity of the whole organization, but I do think it shows a larger more inclusive, environmentally and socially responsible vision for the company. Given their history of success in business and philanthropy, I’d like to believe it is creative management at the helm.

References

General Mills Success Story. (2017). Retrieved from SuccessStory: https://successstory.com/companies/general-mills

Mill City Museum. (2017). Retrieved from Minnesota Historical Society: http://www.millcitymuseum.org/timeline

Responsibility. (2016). Retrieved from General Mills: Making Food People Love: http://www.generalmills.com/en/Responsibility/Overview

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change Posting #2

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change Posting # 2

Over the weekend a creative example to a global organization occurred to me, Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace is found around the world, I used this while stationed in Germany to purchase military artifacts to collect. This is an interesting concept, that has an alternative approach to business. Individual people can post items they want to sell. While this may seem like eBay or some other type of online selling outlet, it is quite different. Keep in mind, businesses such as eBay and Amazon have been allowing individuals to sell items on their website as an auction or fixed price for years. However, Facebook Marketplace operates a little different.

First off, Facebook Marketplace may not be ran by a specific or group of individuals, yet it is ran by the people who use it. Yes, there are admins to ensure that certain illegal items are not posted, but in general everyone is their own business owner.

Secondly, Facebook Marketplace is designed like a virtual yard sale. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. The marketplace allows for interesting settings to buy or sell items. As you log on, it shows most recent and trending items in your area. From there you can filter down what you are look for by selecting a location and then a radius, what price point, category, etc.

Third, the Marketplace is free. People are attracted to free and convenience. It is convenient by posting your items directly from your mobile phone. The marketplace provides suggestions such as descriptions and price points. Once an individual is complete, they can choose to add the posting into multiple groups on Facebook as well. This will maximize the audience.

What makes it so unique and successful is that it can pinpoint exactly what you are looking for and put you in direct contact with the person selling, or if you are selling, in direct contact with someone interested. Beyond items for sale, businesses can post advertisements, job postings, events, etc. Facebook Marketplace is a perfect example of a creative global business, it has gone beyond bidding for items as seen on eBay. Items can be bought/sold/traded as well as advertise business, local events, charity groups, honestly, the possibilities are endless. While its profit is made other ways such as charging to boost posts, Facebook has tapped into a creative way that users can do more on their application. The creativity originated internally with the ides, but now the creativity lies in the user.

Creative Organization and Strategic Changes #2

Creative Organization and Strategic Changes #2

Starbucks Coffee Company started in 1971, as a roaster and retailer of whole beans and ground coffee, tea, and spices in a store located in Seattle Pike Place Market. Fast forward to the present, Starbucks Corporations has grown beyond a single store to connecting with millions of customers every day offering a range of exceptional products that customers have the options of enjoying in the neighborhood stores, in the privacy of their homes, or simply on the go. Starbucks offerings include more than 30 blends and single origin premium coffees, handcrafted beverages, merchandise, and selected fast foods which includes bake pastries, salads, yogurts, oatmeal, and whole grain bowls to name a few. Starbucks also offers ground coffees and teas, as well as ready to drink Starbucks bottled drinks. With over 24,000 retail neighborhood locations in 70 countries, the coffee house is the picture of success. Starbucks has excelled over the years with the help of their employees who are also known as their partners. Starbucks partners are at the heart of the Starbuck experience. Starbucks mission: To inspire and nurture the human spirit- one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Starbucks values the following along with their partners, their coffee and their customers at the center:

• Creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome.

• Acting with courage, challenging the status quo and finding new ways to grow our company and each other.

• Being present, connecting with transparency, dignity and respect.

• Delivering our very best in all we do, holding ourselves accountable for results.

We are performance driven, through the lens of humanity.

Starbucks continue to dive performance through the market segment. Starbucks has managed to stay up with the upper-scale of the coffee market by competing on comfort instead of convenience. Starbucks shows execution by continuing to focus on its original product bundle that includes good coffee, quality service, and a nice environment to hang around. They keep their attention on paying attention to the details of great execution and service. Starbucks pushes innovations inside and outside of its stores by showing their customers how important and relevant they are to them. In doing so, Starbucks further enhanced the already world class digital technologies through the introduction of the mobile orders and pay apps and the soon to be delivery services as well as expanding their loyalty programs. Starbucks also pushes innovations through new social media. Starbucks social media strategy is constructed around their website and six social platforms to My Starbuck Ideas. This is a sure way to gain customer loyalty. The My Starbucks Idea website has been a huge success for culture change and adaptation. Starbucks have combined the concepts of change, experimentation, social media, customer engagement, and market research and made the results key components of both their brand as well as their marketing strategy. 

Reference

Starbucks Company Profile. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/starbucks-company-profile

 

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change

As a native Minnesotan, the first business that came to mind was 3M, formally Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. 3M has an uncanny ability to adjust and adapt to ever changing global market. Which according to Anderson and Adams is a reasonable indicator or a creative organization. (Anderson & Adams, 2016)

Let’s start with a brief history of 3M. I’m sure everyone is a familiar with their post it notes and reusable adhesive products. But, did you know that most of their most profitable products are the results of failures in other ventures? Their founding project was mining corundum to be shipped east for the production of grinding wheels, bear in mind this was still an age mill powered factories. They quickly discovered the originally purchased mine did not have corundum, but instead the mine’s mineral holdings were anorthosite, which was ostensibly worthless. There were some additional stumbling blocks which made it difficult for 3M to make or market quality products. (3M Science. Applied to Life., 2017)

Enter creative organization criteria here! 3M decided to make it platform of their business model to encourage employees to innovate and develop new products. This has become the core of their business since the early 1900s. (3M Science. Applied to Life., 2017) This innovation is constantly “expanding the pie.” (Govindarajan & Srinivas, 2013) How does 3M encourage innovation? The answers are too many to list. But in short, they apply a 15% rule wherein employees are allowed to spend 15% of their time pursuing and developing project of their own choosing. Additionally, 3M spends roughly 6% of its sales on research and development. Finally, they employ a cash rewards and utilize a dual-career ladder which enables scientists and engineers to move up a ladder without becoming managers. This unique idea enables 3M to keep good scientists and engineers in their field of innovation instead of management. Unfortunately, in manufacturing when top scientist and engineers are promoted, it is to a management position where they are generally not very successful. This often translates into companies losing good innovators only to gain poor managers. This is not the case at 3M. All of these strategies combined, along with a wide array of others, enable 3M to develop into niche markets and make their mistakes profitable. As was the case with the post-it-note. (Govindarajan & Srinivas, 2013)

One alternate view of 3M is perhaps its lack of overall vision. While they provide a creative working environment for their employees, there only real “vision” as an organization is to solve consumer problems and give their engineers room to innovate. As it pertains to solving problems, this seems to mimic the reactive traditions of Problem, Fear, Reaction. (Anderson & Adams, 2016) In fact, it has become part of their narrative that they’ll present and engineer with a problem, allow him to research a solution for two years, realize it can’t be done, pull the plug on the project, put the engineer back to work on something else but still allow him 15% of his time to work on the original project or some offshoot of that. This is how Scotch Tape came to be. (Govindarajan & Srinivas, 2013) While I applaud their devotion financially and culturally to providing this creative freedom to their engineers, it seems like a terribly ineffective use of resources and could easily digress from the company’s vision… which may explain why it doesn’t seem to have a clear vision. (Chiemelie & Olajide, 2013)

References

3M Science. Applied to Life. (2017). Retrieved from 3M Story: http://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/3m-science-applied-to-life/

Anderson, R. J., & Adams, W. A. (2016). Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Chiemelie, I. B., & Olajide, I. (2013, November 28). Crtitical Review of the Strategies Behind 3M's Success . Retrieved from Iloka Benneth Chiemelie : http://ilokabenneth.blogspot.com/2013/11/crtitical-review-of-strategies-behind.html

Govindarajan, V., & Srinivas, S. (2013, August 06). The Innovation Mindset in Action: 3M Corporation. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review : https://hbr.org/2013/08/the-innovation-mindset-in-acti-3

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change #1

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change #1

Organizational creativity defines the ideas, values and understandings relating to organizational transformation, organizational design, and organizational dynamics resulting from an exploration of creativity in the workplace and subsequent exploration of our individual inherent creativity (“Organizational creativity”, n.d.). 

CVS Health Pharmacy

CVS Health, formally known as CVS Caremark Pharmacy is an innovative retail pharmacy company that strives to reinvent pharmacy with one simple purpose of helping people on their path to better health ("Our Story, Purpose Statement & Values| CVS Health", 2016). Within the last four years, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Larry Merlo, made a couple of strategic management decision to change the way CVS Health perform their business by banning the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products, become a smoke-free work environment, and rebranding their corporate name.

Why CVS Health is Considered Creative

Banning the sale of tobacco products, becoming a smoke-free work environment, and rebranding the company’s name is only the right thing to do as it aligns with CVS Health’s purpose: Helping people on their paths to better health, mission statement: “Striving to improve the quality of human life”, and CVS Health’s values: Innovation, Collaboration, Caring, Integrity, and Accountability.

Alternative Views

Mr. Merlo knew the effect of ending the sale of all tobacco products from all its stores would have an enormous impact on the annual sales, however from a business perspective, he also considered the huge impact these changes would have towards people health in the long run and it was the right decision to make. Along with banning the sale of all tobacco products, CVS Corporation became a smoke free work environment. Becoming a smoke free work place for its employees made a tremendous difference on how its customers, patients, community supporters, and employees viewed CVS Health. Mr. Merlo strongly believe this strategic move aligns the company for an expanded role in providing healthcare services beyond the ordinary retail pharmacy business model (Cheney, 2014). This change allows CVS Health to stand proud and confident in knowing that they are delivering products and services and enabling people, businesses, and communities to manage healthcare.

Near the end of 2014, Mr. Merlo made the announcement that CVS Pharmacy’s corporate name would officially change to CVS Health. This change not only marks history, but it also made a huge impact on the way healthcare is delivered today. It aids in increased access, reduces cost, and improves in the quality of care ("Our New Name| CVS Health.com", 2014).

References

Cheney, C. (2014). Behind the CVS Health rebranding strategy. Retrieved from

http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/leadership/behind-cvs-health-rebranding-strategy##

Organizational creativity. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.organizationalcreativity.info/

Our new name |CVS Health.com. (2014). Retrieved from

http://cvshealth.com/newsroom/our-new-name

Our story, purpose statement & values |CVS Health. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.cvshealth.com/about/purpose-statement

Creative Organization and Strategic Change 2

Creative Organization and Strategic Change 2

After reading through chapter 10 and looking over all of the different diagrams in these chapters it makes a lot of sense that a creative business model would be beneficial for many companies. I think that one reason this model works is because they are focused on new and creative ways to reach the vision of the company. I also think that since there are so many younger people coming into the work force so each company needs to keep up with the times. With Facebook and so many other social media sites being used this is a way for the younger generations to be creative and help out many companies. I know that I have seen more and more pages for local businesses. I think that this is a way for them to stay in touch with customers and it allows them to be more open and creative. When I managed a coffee shop we had an employee who specifically had to do all the postings to the company Facebook page and they also had to make all the updates to the website. I found that it was very surprising that there were so many people who would look at the Facebook page. The company added a coupon to the page with a special code word that had to be told to the cashier in order to use it. It was only posted on the Facebook page so that the owners would know where the customers were looking the most. I found this to be very creative and it helped spread the word about our business. Just like Google the coffee shop was looking to employee many millennials since they were a part of the new and upcoming ideas. They are more of a tech savvy group of people since they have grown up with it. I think that millennials are forcing more and more companies to change the way that they advertise, who they advertise too, and what they are promoting. These millennials are helping companies become more innovative. Google and Virgin have the right idea to ask all the employees what they can do to be more creative and getting feedback from the people who use up and coming items daily.

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change 1

Creative Organizations and Strategic Change 1

One organization that I can think of that uses creative organization is Lego. Lego has been around since 1932 and some of their toys can be found in almost everyone’s homes. Even though these toys are so popular there was a time when the company had a decrease in sales which lead them to layoff so many employees it almost destroyed the company. Lego had to come up with a new plan to help revive the company. “Instead of locking its creativity into its products and marketing, LEGO integrated creativity into all of its processes” (Vennli, 2014). The first idea was to use a design process called D4B or Design for Business which helped them stay in touch between innovation and the business plans. The second idea was what they called a Shared Vision that helped rebuild the company’s brand identity as a creative toy-manufacturing enterprise. These two ideas created the vision that both the creative and business sides were headed in the same direction and had the same end goal. Their belief was when innovation gets out of control, it disconnects from the company’s strategy, leaving a gap between business and creativity, resulting in sales losses (Vennli, 2014, para. 4). Since Lego was willing to use some creativity they could bring the company back from an almost total loss. The Design for Business model links Lego’s objectives and design strategy together to achieve the corporate goals. This allows for more employees to be on teams and helps the collaboration process. Using the Shared Vision that linked the business side with the creative teams allowed Lego to connect the entire company and helped increase the revenue. Lego has seen an increase every year since they have changed and allowed corporate and design areas to be in the right places. This just goes to how that if a company does not allow the creative side to incorporate into the rest of the company then it could be a major downfall. If an organization has a creative way to deal with certain situation, then they will have more of a beneficial outcome.  

Reference

Vennli. (2014, August 12). How LEGO Continues To Pave The Path Of Creativity And Innovation. Retrieved from http://vennli.com/how-lego-continues-to-pave-the-path-of-creativity-and-innovation/