Home Depot Nardelli's Success

1. In my opinion, Nardelli’s programs were failed in changing operation of Home Depot to a more effective one. There are two reasons that Nardelli was not more successful. First, most employees did not want to an outsider to “GE-ize their company and culture.” Employees in Home Depot did not trust their new manager, which led absent support when Nardelli carried out the new process. The second reason was also the more important reason. Nardelli used the concept learned from industrial businesses to conduct the customer businesses. Since Nardelli wanted to conduct Home Depot in his own approach, he failed to recognize the importance of front-line staff, which leaded his fail in conducting the retailing business. The thing he should have done was improve the circulation of information between the different stores or within different level. Only in this way, he could solve the problem that Home Depot faced at that time—too large to be profitable. The worst thing he should not have done was to get rid of many old employees and replaced the full timers with part-time staff. This decline in the quality of customer service and customer satisfaction strongly hurt the customer orientated business.
2.
Nardelli provided a three-part strategy including improving Home Depot’s profit, and expanding the business and market. Crow focused on the other three priorities which would revive employees’ sense of ownership, foster their product knowledge, and boost their morale. The greatest difference was that Nardelli’s initiatives programs were concentrated on increasing profit and expansion, while Tim Crow’s programs were concentrated on increasing employees. Nardelli’s action decreased employees’ satisfaction and loyalty, which ruined Home Depot’s strong customer service culture. Tim Crow’s programs increased employees’ loyalty and revived Home Depot’s organizational
culture.
3. Strong culture reflects the values of the organization’s founders. Home Depot’s founders: Bernard Marcus and Arthur Black, as entrepreneurs, emphasized on commitment to customers, colleagues, and company. These conducted the original culture of Home Depot. Sometimes, the organizational culture could cause conflict when top management changed. When Nardelli toke over Home Depot, clash of two distinct cultural approaches occurred. Organizational culture that is consisted of shared beliefs, values, and assumptions existed in the organization would lead the behavior of employees and the direction of organization. Home Depot’s original culture let employees to establish strong relationship with customers, but after Nardelli’s conduction, this relationship as well as employees’ and loyalty were harmed. Since the culture would affect employees’ performance and organization’s achievement, it should be built to fit the characteristics of the business and altered with great care. Coordination, conflict resolution, and financial success were the assets of maintaining culture. However Nardelli failed to achieve these goals. Tim Crow, on the other hand, focused on restoring the initial culture by implementing more employee award programs that would positively impact employee loyalty and performance.