Leadership and motivation
Case Study
Best Buy
Student’s Name
Institution
Introduction
The concepts of leadership and motivation are applied in business operations and management to improve the performance of a business. Motivation is described as a goal-oriented, which provides help to business to achieve its goals and objectives. It makes individuals or employees work extra hard to meet certain parameters set and therefore, the application of motivation is common in business worldwide. A manager or leader must possess the right leadership characteristics for an individual to activate motivation. For the success of a business, both employees and managers or leaders must have leadership and motivation characteristics for a business to realize growth CITATION Jen15 \l 1033 (Wieczner, 2015). The concept of motivation includes actions or activities which influence employees to work. In business, it is important for leaders to ensure that the business needs and employees’ needs are merged or harmonized to steer the growth. The employees are supposed to understand the goals and objectives of the company for a good performance. It is important to make sure that businesses and employees have the same morals and ethics. Employees should be trained to the standard required by the company and encouraged to work towards meeting the goals set CITATION Mck14 \l 1033 (Mcknon & Patterson, 2014). The provision of these aspects is not easy and only an individual with leadership quality can influence these elements of business operation for the efficient performance of a business. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine how leadership and motivation is applied at Best Buy store and the kind of impact it created for the business. It also investigates the model or the methods of leadership and motivation applied at Best Buy.
Best Buy Store
Best Buy is one of the American leading electronic stores with several stores in the country. It was originally established by James Wheeler and Richard Schulze in 1966 just as an audio specialty store known as Sound Music. For the last decades, the company has grown to be one of the largest electronic stores in the United States. The goal and objective of Best Buy are to provide efficient and customer-oriented services to all its customers. The company has thrived in the market for decades, though there instances of challenges regarding the management, which had to be addressed. In 2014, Best Buy went through a makeup phase to prompt the company to profitability. The company made several changes in leadership structure and brought in a new CEO to steer ahead of the troubled company to provide and therefore, several actions were taken to ensure that specific goals and objectives were met. The company has had worsened performance in the market and the best, and therefore, its leadership and motivation strategy has ensured that it remains relevant to its core objectives and gain profits in the market. The company is managed by the CEO, who is the president of the company. It has a board of directors who is in charge of making major decisions regarding the operations of the company. It has a management team and the staffs and therefore, it has a clear organizational structure.
Application of leadership and motivation: Quantity over Quality
Best Buy through its new CEO applied several specific leadership and motivation concepts to improve the performance of the company. According to Wagner (2015), in early 2015, Best Buy was performing badly in the market and therefore, specific actions needed to be taken to address the problem. The use of quantity over quality is one o the best strategy applied by the company to motivate employees to perform better. In most companies or businesses employees are not allowed to make decisions and managers are consulted in every minor decision. The concept was changed at Best Buy. Best Buy allows employees to use their instinct and make the right decisions. It was pointed by the new CEO Joly that for the company to move forward employees should be engaged in making faster decisions in matters happenings in the company and therefore, employees are allowed to make decisions. This motivates employees to work extra hard because of the feeling of responsibility. Best Buy managers encourage employees to make rapid choices and also promised to back them. Though allowing employees to make decisions means tolerating many mistakes, it gives employees power and confidence which every employee needs to perform well.
The result from only Work Environment
Best Buy has implemented the “Result only Work Environment” strategy its corporate strategy to improve employees’ performance. The strategy improves the productivity of the company by almost 41% wand a voluntary turnover of rates of 90%. The use of the model allows employees to be free to make their own decisions and to do whatever they want. The management has given the employee the freedom to do whatever they want as along the work done. This means that managers trust and believes in employee to do their work diligently and this motivates employees to work harder. This can only happen in few organizations like Best Buy, in many companies employees are strictly supervised and their lack of trust between employees and managers. At Best Buy managers trust employees and constantly allow employees to accomplish their duties and the evaluation of employees is conducted based on the result not the time an employee spends at the desk. The strategy ensured that there is no need to have scheduled, and this helps in building a strong team where nobody is feeling that he or she is being overworked CITATION Tyl19 \l 1033 (Tylor & Lucy, 2019). The employees are working together to achieve specific goals and objectives. In this kind of environment, people at all levels try so hard to avoid wasting time and money and therefore, morale, teamwork and engagement are nurtured in the company. Therefore, this strategy helped Best Buy improve its performance and the company was turnaround within the shortest time after dwindling of performance. Best Buy management takes employees serious and consults them more often. The ideas of the employees are used to build a strong concept and used by the management and therefore, this encouraged employees and makes them feel part of the team. The managers also take concerns raised by employees serious and ensured that employees' concerns are addressed properly. In order to improve interaction and build in building trust, Best Buy established a feedback mechanism, where all concerns among employees are raised and solved.
Teamwork and encouragement
For Best Buy to realize its growth after a poor performance, the company adopted a new strategy to build a strong team based on understanding and goals. The new CEO Joly encouraged all the managers to listen and build a strong relationship with all employees. The company also changed its approach to employees and especially the way employees are managed. Instead of treating people employees of Best Buy as a cost that should be minimized, Joly put a lot of priorities on creating meaning for all the employees. The company’s purpose was changed and the CEO encouraged managers to have a close dialogue with employees to listen to their dreams and provide help so that the employees’ dreams can be connected with Best Buy's purpose. As stated by Joly (2015) creating a close relationship with employees helps in building trust and with trust, employees could work extra hard to ensure that the company obtains its goals. It is important to ensure that managers and employees have a close working relationship for efficient operations.
It is pointed out that when Joly took over the management of Best Buyer Company, the managers and employees were not working cohesions and this was directly affecting the performance of the company. Working as teamwork ensures that there are consultation and understanding among employees and managers and with understanding, solving problems, which arise daily from the company especially stores became very easy and faster. The fact that managers worked together with employees and seeking their opinions and contribute to a number of issues encouraged employees to work hard and this result in high sales. At Best Buy stores across the country, employees are out engaging customers and providing the best solution to their issues. The change of strategies improves the performance of employees and therefore, the performance of best improved.
However, the Best change of leadership brought several changes to the company which improves the performance. Through the leadership of Joly, the company changed operations and build a financial and cultural transformation that endured performance. It is pointed out that the companies build talented leadership through its transformation strategy to have people who are dedicated to serving the company to ensure that the company is able to meet its objectives. Best Buy employees were encouraged to build lasting relationships with customers and create a positive impact on society. This therefore, improves engagement in the company, which is critically important for the success of the company. A stated by Meyersohn (2019), the level of engagement in the company influence the performance and without engagement employees cannot perform well and therefore, cannot deliver. The CEO, Joly created room for engagement and encouraged managers to work closely and consult employees. As stated by Meyersohn (2019) working together and consulting employees make employees feel special and involve in the operations of the company. Therefore, motivates them to work hard as part of the team. It is not proper to leave employees in key decision making and through consultation the bond is built between manager and the rest of employees and therefore, they start to work as one team focusing on delivery specific goals and objectives which is growth. The strategy helped in building a formidable team. It is reported that Best Buy employees could work without any complain and this resulted to quick service delivery and profitability.
Training and seminars
In order to improve service delivery to customers, Best Buy established a strategy to provide various trainings to employees to improve their service delivery to customers. According to (), it was important for the entire employees to adapt to the cultural and ethical values of the company for them to deliver needed services to customers. Therefore, the company organized for training and workshop for specific employees to improve their services and the service of the company. Wieczner (2015) stated that training and seminars are some fo the best method, which business undertake to improve growthl. A stated by Kornelius (2016), it is important to have employees who understand the organizational or business cullture including the ethical values and through trainings and seminars these cultural and ethical practices are learnt and understood well by employees. As noted from the CEO Joly, the company offered both in house and outside training on number of core issues. Best Buy employees are therefore, trained before taking a job to ensure that they understand the company well and therefore, responsibilities incuding the goals and objectives of the company. This helped to steer ahead the company to growth. Research indicates that the changes which were implemented by the company between 2014 and 2016, opened the company to the chapted of growth. Best Buy trains employees on customer care, service delivery and office ettiquette and these have been a core concept in driving the growth of the company. Studies have established that customer care, and ettiquate are essential business elements needed to improve services. And therefore, as Best Buy offered trianings to build a strong, leadeship and skilled team ready to take the company to the next level. The Best Buy CEO, pointed out that “Best Buyer growth is trajectory, deliver on the full potential of the strategy, which create long term value for the shareholders, customers and employes”. Trainings and seminars are some of the aspects, which are believered to have helped the company to create a strong culture, value and ethic, which have helped the company to realize growth in the market.
Reward and appreciation
Reward and appreciation are key to growth because they motivate employees to work harder to achieve specific objectives set by the company. Reward and morivatiuon encourage employees to work to achive a desire goals and therefore, through reward and appreciation Best Buy managed to improve the performance of employees and the company’s performahnce as well. The CEO discourage taking credit on behalf of an employees and continuously use the team we managed to means the entire team and this makes employees to feel being appreciated by the management of the company CITATION Pra14 \l 1033 (Juneja, 2014). It is also reported that the company gives gift cardds and the payment is awarded based on the work done not hours taken in the office. The strategy introduced competition in the company and therefore, a key strategy for the the growth. As pointed out by Kornelius (2016) competition among employees improve performance by ensuring that employees competete on service delivery, the company benefit from high turnout. The company also develop moral and team spirit through working together and ensuring thag every work done by employee is recognized.
Conclusion
Leadership and motivation is critically important for the performance of the company. The study has established that motivation improves the performance of employees and therefore, better performance of the company. The provision of these aspects is not easy and only an individual with leadership quality can influence these elements of business operation for the efficient performance of a business. Best Buy has developed a teamwork culture, allow employees to make their decisions and also provide trainings to employees as strategy to improve performance of employees. It is also established that motivation makes employees to work hard as part of the team. It is not properly to leave employees in key decision making and through consultation the bond is built between manager and the rest of employees and therefore, they start to work as one team focusing on delivery specific goals and objectives which is growth
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY Joly, H. (2015). Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability R. https://corporate.bestbuy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FY-13-Full-Report.pdf , 2-35.
Juneja, P. (2014). leadership and motivation management. Journal of international studies of commerce and trade , 2-14.
Kornelius, L. (2016). Motivation in leadership for corporate . International Journal of Business and management , 2-5.
Mcknon, L., & Patterson, M. (2014). Leadership and Motivation. International Journal of Management and Communictaion , 2-34.
Meyersohn, N. (2019). Best Buy's outgoing CEO, Hubert Joly, rescued the company. Journal of Business and communication , 2-34.
Tylor, M., & Lucy, P. (2019). Best Buy Evolves Leadership Roles As Part Of Succession Planning Process. https://corporate.bestbuy.com/best-buy-evolves-leadership-roles-as-part-of-succession-planning-process/ , 2-34.
Wagner, R. (2014). One Store, One Team" at Best Buy. Business Journal , 2-15.
Wieczner, J. (2015). Best Buy CEO on how to lead a corporate turnaround (without making employees hate you. https://fortune.com/2015/10/29/best-buy-ceo-turnaround-tips/ , 2-15.
