Heidelberg Cements sets serious environmental targets

Cement production is responsible for about 8% of CO2 emissions. For the world to become carbon neutral, big cement companies have to do the heavy lifting. Here is short video where the CEO lays out the ambitious goals the company has for 2030.

African CEO of Credit Suisse faces revolt

As far as I can tell, Thian is trying to move Credit Suisse in the right direction to make the firm more sustainable. But a large fraction of employees is in open revolt again him. Will be successful. The NYT reports: “When Tidjane Thiam took over at Credit Suisse last July, he laid out a new direction for a financial giant with a storied investment banking history: Do less investment banking. [...] One year in, Credit Suisse stock is down 50 percent. And the investment bank, the second largest in Switzerland after UBS, is in open revolt.” Read full story.

Executive Reshuffle at Apple: Scott Forstall is out

Tim Cook take his first major step of reshaping the top executive ranks at Apple. It appears that a battle was brewing within Apple for some time about key design philosophies. Scott Forstall, who apparently has been branded as not being a team players, stumbled of the debacle with the Apple maps.

Read the detailed stories in LA Times and NY Times

Citi Chairman Is Said to Have Planned Chief?s Exit Over Months

Citibank’s CEO Viram Pandit was removed through a boardroom coup. There are two questions that the episode raises. Was Pandit truly oblivious to the what the chairman Michael E. O’Neill was up to? Did O’Neill in the end do CITI a favor or has done long-term damage to the morale of the high-level employees.  The NY Times reports:

Vikram Pandit’s last day at Citigroup swung from celebratory to devastating in a matter of minutes. Having fielded congratulatory e-mails about the earnings report in the morning that suggested the bank was finally on more solid ground, Mr. Pandit strode into the office of the chairman at day’s end on Oct. 15 for what he considered just another of their frequent meetings on his calendar.
Michael O’Neill is said to have begun building a case to force out Mr. Pandit after Mr. O’Neill became chairman in April.
Instead, Mr. Pandit, the chief executive of Citigroup, was told three news releases were ready. One stated that Mr. Pandit had resigned, effective immediately. Another that he would resign, effective at the end of the year. The third release stated Mr. Pandit had been fired without cause. The choice was his. The abrupt encounter, described by three people briefed on the conversation, included a terse comment by the chairman, Michael E. O’Neill: “The board has lost confidence in you.”

Read full story on NY Times.

T-Mobile buys and merges with Metro PCS: Will it succeed?

After the government did not allow ATT to buy T-Mobile, T-Mobile needed to find a different way to achieve scale and cut costs. Today it announced buying and merging with Metro PCS. Will the firm be able to avoid the fiasco of the Sprint/Nextel merger?

T-Mobile and MetroPCS will continue to operate as separate brands. Throughout the morning, T-Mobile executives sought to allay one of the biggest concerns about the merger, the incompatibility of the company’s network with MetroPCS’ own. John Legere, who will become the chief executive of the combined network operator, argued that the company will slowly move MetroPCS’ customers to its own GSM standard — with the goal of moving the unified entity to the Long Term Evolution technology down the road. The aim was to avoid comparisons to Sprint’s merger with Nextel, which failed at the same task and left that merged company in a far weaker position.

Full Stor

Home Depot changes its strategy in China after failing to achieve its targets

Home Depot is not the first company to find out that the strategy that worked well back home does not work in a foreign country. Wal-Mart failed in Germany not realizing that the competitive landscape was different. Starbucks failed in Australia, closing most of its shops because the Australian consumer was used to much sophisticated coffee. The WSJ journal reports on the changes in the Home Depot China strategy after failing to implement the previous one successfully.

Home Depot Learns Chinese Prefer ‘Do-It-for-Me’
The largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, which entered China in 2006, has struggled to gain traction in a country where cheap labor has stunted the do-it-yourself ethos and apartment-based living leaves scarce demand for products like lumber.
Home Depot conceded that it misread the country’s appetite for do-it-yourself products. “The market trend says this is more of a do-it-for-me culture,” a Home Depot spokeswoman said of China.Home Depot is shaking up its strategy by focusing on specialty stores. Three months ago, it opened one paint-and-flooring store and one home-decorations outlet in the northern port city of Tianjin to cater to specific needs and shopping preferences shown by Chinese consumers, the spokeswoman said. It also plans to launch online operations with a Chinese partner, she said, without naming the company.

Home Depot debuted in China with a 12-store acquisition six years ago and the number has since dwindled as it found that Chinese consumers differ from their global counterparts. As Swedish furniture giant IKEA discovered, Chinese consumers will pay for people to do the work for them. Several years ago, the furniture store added services to help customers assemble their furniture.

Home Depot’s closures will cause the company to take a $160 million after-tax charge in the third quarter, a company statement said. The charge will be equal to about 10 cents per diluted share, and will include the impairment of goodwill and other assets, lease terminations, severance and other charges associated with closing the stores.

Full Story

Deutsche Bank lowers ROE target from 25% to 12%

When a company has a very high financial targets, employees are encouraged to do everything possible to achieve it, which in turn may lead to an unwanted increase in the level of risk that the firm faces. As the FT.com reports, the new leadership of the Deutsche Bank determined that the target was to high. They may have felt that they needed to curb the risk taking in the bank.

Deutsche’s new co-chief executives are expected to make a decisive break with the decade-long era of Josef Ackermann, their predecessor, when they will drop a target of generating a 25 per cent pre-tax return on equity. At a strategy presentation in Frankfurt after 100 days in charge of the bank, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen are set to announce a “substantially lower return on equity target”, one person close to the situation said.High quality global journalism requires investment. They are also expected to unveil a strategy for much closer integration of the bank’s business lines, make significant changes to the bank’s bonus model and give more details on a plan to take out €3bn of costs.Analysts estimate that the new goal could be in the region of 12 to 13 per cent ROE after tax – a benchmark more commonly looked at by investors than the pre-tax figure.

Full Story on ft.com

Honeywell’s spectacular turnaround

The Economist reports an amazing on an amazing turnaround of Honeywell. It appears to be a great example of strategy implementation.

Honeywell likes its meetings short but plentiful. Every production cell, as the smallest shop-floor unit is called, starts the day with one. The aim is to try to identify problems and ideas for improvements, which are then pushed up to senior managers. Even the lowliest worker is expected each month to come up with two implementable ideas for doing things better. As an illustration of the firm’s devotion to “continuous improvement”, this is one of the pillars of what has become known as the “Honeywell operating system” (HOS).

This new production system, introduced over the past eight years, has helped transform Honeywell from a troubled giant to one of America’s most successful companies. Honeywell’s sales in 2011 were 72% higher than in 2002, and its profits doubled to $4 billion. A new emphasis on generating cash also means the firm has more money in the bank for every dollar declared in profit.

Full Story at Economist.com

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Strategy Implementation - 782

Topics

Capabilities

Communication

Congruence Model

Information Design

Fundamental Objective

Institutionalizing Change

Leadership Style

Management Process

Positioning Strategy First

Power

Psychology

Self & Career Development