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For Case Discussion (2 pages)
1. What is your assessment of Billings’ performance as president of Stone Finch? What do you think of his leadership style?
In my opinion Billing’s is a strong leader as he possessed key criteria in my assessment
Bold, Risk taker
Energetic with drive People followed him ( evident by the description in the case were majority of employees followed him when he acquired stone finch)
Encouraged innovative and open culture which I think is key to successful leadership . I like the idea of jam and open comments that he applied and I think the fact that many employees participated freely is a positive indicator of his leadership style.
However were I think Billing’s shortcomings is how he implemented the idea of building an innovative culture.
The radical and extreme decisions as described in the case “every choice spells survivals or death” could have negative impact on building an innovative environment and culture from the scratch.
Also his rewarding method could be potentially perceived as unfair to some employees which resulted in producing poor employee morale.
By focusing too much on these new priorities, he seemed to have lost focus of the core business and hence losing more clients to the competition.
2. What is your assessment of the entrepreneurial subsidiary concept? How does a company manage the contradiction of existing and innovative products simultaneously?
In my opinion, entrepreneurial subsidiaries provide great opportunities for employees to participate in many areas of the company that they are interested in, I also think that it served as an opportunity to engage employees who felt discouraged with the current company performance and participate in innovating and re-building the company. Overall I think it was a brilliant idea if it was implemented well however there seems to be handled better in theory than practice. I think this is mainly due to lack of communication and perhaps lack of motivation within
1. What is your assessment of Billings’ performance as president of Stone Finch? What do you think of his leadership style?
In my opinion Billing’s is a strong leader as he possessed key criteria in my assessment
Bold, Risk taker
Energetic with drive People followed him ( evident by the description in the case were majority of employees followed him when he acquired stone finch)
Encouraged innovative and open culture which I think is key to successful leadership . I like the idea of jam and open comments that he applied and I think the fact that many employees participated freely is a positive indicator of his leadership style.
However were I think Billing’s shortcomings is how he implemented the idea of building an innovative culture.
The radical and extreme decisions as described in the case “every choice spells survivals or death” could have negative impact on building an innovative environment and culture from the scratch.
Also his rewarding method could be potentially perceived as unfair to some employees which resulted in producing poor employee morale.
By focusing too much on these new priorities, he seemed to have lost focus of the core business and hence losing more clients to the competition.
2. What is your assessment of the entrepreneurial subsidiary concept? How does a company manage the contradiction of existing and innovative products simultaneously?
In my opinion, entrepreneurial subsidiaries provide great opportunities for employees to participate in many areas of the company that they are interested in, I also think that it served as an opportunity to engage employees who felt discouraged with the current company performance and participate in innovating and re-building the company. Overall I think it was a brilliant idea if it was implemented well however there seems to be handled better in theory than practice. I think this is mainly due to lack of communication and perhaps lack of motivation within