Assignment 2: 21st Century Leadership

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Being diverse is a key attribute to a company being successful. Most people like to go in an organization and see and speak to someone who can relate to their own culture. An organizations success depends on its ability to embrace diversity and the benefits that it can provide to the company. Diversity brings to companies increased adaptability, broader service range, variety of viewpoints and more effective performance. Macy’s has a strategic diversity plan, which bottom line means catering to all customer no matter where they are, after all if you can’t go into a store to buy it, you can always buy online. Terry’s outlook on Macy’s being diverse is he believes that different perspectives are important to our company, and we benefit greatly from the individual strengths of each associate. Macy’s strives to include every segment of their customer base in five key areas, which is called their holistic plan. These areas are: Workforce, Marketing, Communications, Supplier Diversity and Community Partnerships. We consider this our Holistic Plan.

Giving back to the community is so important for organizations. Macy’s as an organization assists so many charities each year. Macy’s provides monetary contributions, volunteering and corporate sponsored match options. One of the biggest charities that the company supports is United Way, in which Terry is a huge support. The company allows the associates to contribute and they match their contributions equally. Terry shows huge support to associates and allows them to come up with their own ways to help give back to the community. The one that intrigues associates the most is support $5 to the charity of your choice and you can wear jeans on weekends.

I believe in order to stay a great company you must make sure that you have an outstanding staff. One of the best ways to keep your staff educated and motivated is through training. Consistent training is a good key to effective employment, which is in my opinion of course. Terry requires that all associates, managers and executives of Macy’s participate in trainings at the time they are hired. All employees also have to go through annual compliance training to include code of conduct and harassment trainings that have to be signed off on annually. Terry encourages everyone to be the “MAGIC” and in order to keep the standards of the company he sends out correspondences of the importance of training.

Overall, I think that Terry Lundgren is an awesome individual. Through his experience he has grown in his industry and has become a legend. He walks the walk of excellence. He sets the standards of integrity and honesty. His innovative look on what makes a company successful shows ambition and encouragement to all. He has shown that through productive change, a company can excel positively. An example of this is: Buy online, pick up in store’. This is one of the best and most creative innovations we’ve ever had He has open up so many options for Macy’s to be a better company and it shows significantly, after all Macy’s is the number retail store in the industry. Terry indicates that this business was built to last.

He is not just a CEO, he is a worker in the business. On major sale days like, Black Friday, he’s not at home; he is in a store making sure things are being handled appropriately. He stays informative with all of the issues that are presented and he takes the lead on wanting to know the good and bad of what goes on at all of the stores. He doesn’t walk away when there is pressure going on. One of the things that he is known for is visiting a store without notice. He generally calls the store manager and advises that he is on the way when he is five minutes away. Talk about chaotic.

References

http://www.macysinc.com/community/default.aspx

http://www.employeeconnection.net/ Macy’s internal employee website