Case Incident 5: Organizational Leveraging of Social Media

As you know, social media have transformed the way we interact. The transparent, rapid-fire communication
they make possible means people can spread information about companies more rapidly than ever. Do
organizations understand yet how to use social media effectively? Perhaps not. Recent findings indicated
that only three out of ten CEOs in the Fortune 500 have any presence on national social media sites. Many
executives are wary of these new technologies because they cannot always control the outcomes of their
communications. However, whether they are directly involved with social media or not, companies should
recognize that these messages are out there, so it behooves them to make their voices heard. Some experts
say social media tools improve productivity because they keep employees connected to their companies
during non-office hours. And social media can be an important way to learn about emerging trends. Andr
Schneider, chief operating officer of the World Climate Ltd, uses feedback from LinkedIn discussion groups
and Facebook friends to discover emerging trends and issues worldwide. Padmasree Warrior, chief
technology officer of Cisco, has used social media to refine her presentations before a test audience.

The first step in developing a social media strategy is establishing a brand for your communicationsdefine
what you want your social media presence to express. Experts recommend that companies begin their
social media strategy by leveraging their internal corporate networks to test their strategy in a medium thats
easier to control. Most companies already have the technology to use social media through their corporate
websites. Begin by using these platforms for communicating with employees and facilitating social networks
for general information sharing. As social networking expert Soumitra Dutta from Insead notes, My advice
is to build your audience slowly and be selective about your contacts.

Despite the potential advantages, companies also need to be aware of significant drawbacks to social
media. First, its very difficult to control social media communications. Microsoft found this out when the
professional blogger it hired spent more time promoting himself than getting positive information out about
the company. Second, important intellectual capital might leak out. Companies need to establish very clear
policies and procedures to ensure that sensitive information about ongoing corporate strategies is not
disseminated via social media. Finally, managers should maintain motivation and interest beyond their initial
forays into social media. A site thats rarely updated can send a very negative message about the
organizations level of engagement with the world.
Questions
1. Are the drawbacks of the corporate leveraging of social media sufficient to make you think its better
for them to avoid certain media? If so, which media?

2. What features would you look for in a social media outlet? What types of information would you avoid
making part of your social media strategy?

3. What do you think is the future direction of social media in business? How might emerging
technologies change your forecast?

Case Incident 6: Leadership Mettle Forged in Battle

In 2008, facing a serious shortage of leadership-ready employees at the store management level, Walmart
decided to recruit from the U.S. military. The company sent recruiters to military job fairs and hired 150 junior
military officers, pairing them with store mentors to learn on the job. The result: Walmart claims that its been
able to bring in world-class leaders who were ready to take over once they had learned the retail business
that Walmart could easily teach them. Other organizations that have heavily recruited from the military in
recent years include GE, Home Depot, Lowes, State Farm Insurance, Merck, and Bank of America.
Its not really surprising to see companies turn to the military for leadership potential. A long tradition of
books and seminars advises leaders to think like military leaders ranging from Sun Tzu to Norman
Schwarzkopf. And military veterans do have a variety of valuable skills learned through experience. General
David Petraeus notes, Tell me anywhere in the business world where a 22 or 23-year-old is responsible for
35 or 40 other individuals on missions that involve life and death . . . Theyre under enormous scrutiny, on
top of everything else. These are pretty formative experiences. Its a bit of a crucible-like experience that
they go through. Military leaders are also used to having to make due in less than optimal conditions,
negotiate across cultures, and operate under extreme stress.

However, they do have to relearn some lessons from the service. Some may not be used to leading
someone like an eccentric computer programmer who works strange hours and dresses like a slob, but who
brings more to the companys bottom line than a conventional employee would. Indeed, in some companies
like Google, there is nothing like the chain of command military leaders are used to. Still, most forecasts
suggest there will be an ample supply of battle-tested military leaders ready to report for corporate duty in
the near future, and many companies are eager to have them.
Questions

1. Do you think leaders in military contexts exhibit the same qualities as organizational leaders? Why
or why not?

2. In what ways not mentioned in the case would military leadership lessons not apply in the private
sector? What might military leaders have to relearn to work in business?

3. Are specific types of work or situations more likely to benefit from the presence of battle-tested
leaders? List a few examples.

Case Incident 8: Boeing Dreamliner: Engineering Nightmare or Organizational Disaster?

As a flight of imagination, Boeings 787 Dreamliner was an excellent idea: made of composite materials, the
plane would be lightweight enough to significantly reduce fuel costs while maintaining a passenger load up
to 290 seats. Airline carriers chose options from a long list of unprecedented luxuries to entice the flying
public and placed their orders well ahead of the expected completion dates. And then the problems started.

An airplane like the 787 has a design about as complex as that of a nuclear reactor power plant, and
Boeings equally complex offshore organizational structure didnt help the execution. Boeing outsources 67
percent of its manufacturing and many of its engineering functions. While the official assembly site is in
Everett, Washington, parts were manufactured at 100 supplier sites in countries across the globe, and some
of those suppliers subcontracted piecework to other firms. Because the outsourcing plan allowed vendors
to develop their own blueprints, language barriers became a problem back in Washington as workers
struggled to understand multilingual assembly instructions. When components didnt fit together properly,
the fixes needed along the supply chain and with engineering were almost impossible to implement. The
first aircraft left the runway on a test flight in 2009, but Boeing had to buy one of the suppliers a year later
(cost: $1 billion) to help make the planes. The first customer delivery was still years away.

If Boeing and industry watchers thought its troubles were over when the first order was delivered to All
Nippon Airways (ANA) in 2011, three years behind schedule and after at least seven manufacturing delays,
they were wrong. Besides the continuing woes of remaining behind schedule (848 planes have been ordered
but only 6 percent have been delivered), Boeings Dreamliner has suffered numerous mechanical problems.
After the planes technologically advanced lithium-ion batteries started a fire on one aircraft and forced
another into an emergency landing in January 2013, ANA and Japan Airlines grounded their fleets. The FAA
followed suit, grounding all 787s in the United States. The remaining 50 flying Dreamliners worldwide were
then confined to the tarmac until a solution could be found.

This looked like an organizational structure problem, both at corporate headquarters and abroad. However,
there have been so many management changes during the 787s history that it would be difficult for anyone
to identify responsibility for errors in order to make changes in the team or the organizational structure. For
the work done abroad, restructuring reporting relationships in favor of smaller spans of control to heighten
management accountability and tie suppliers to the organizational structure of corporate Boeing could be
considered. Or reshoring to bring manufacturing physically close to the final assembly site and under
Boeings control while centralizing the organization structure could be an option.
Questions
1. Do you think this is a case of the difficulty of launching new technology (there are bugs in any
system), or one of an unsuccessful launch?

2. What type of executive management structure do you think would be most conducive to getting the
Dreamliner past a component failure and back in flight? Is this a different structure than you would
suggest for fixing the ongoing manufacturing problems? Sketch out the potential design.

3. What organizational structure would you suggest to effectively tie in Boeings managers and
suppliers abroad? Sketch your ideas. (Goals for managers might include facilitating teams,
coordinating efforts, maintaining organizational transparency, and creating conversations.)