netrashetty

Netra Shetty
Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich, through its subsidiaries Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE: BGP) is a leading specialty retailer of books as well as other educational and entertainment items. The company employs approximately 19,500 throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders(R) and Waldenbooks(R) stores. Online shopping is offered through borders.com

As of January 30, 2010, the company operated 511 Borders superstores in the United States, including 508 in the U.S. and three in Puerto Rico. The company also operated 175 stores in the Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment, including Waldenbooks, Borders Express, Borders airport stores, and Borders Outlet stores.

2
CEO
Bennett LeBow
Director
David Shelton
2
Director
Timothy Wolf
Director
Michael Archbold
2
Director
Dan Rose
5
Director
Howard Lorber
2
Director
Ronald Floto
3
Director
Michael Grossman
5
Director
Paul Brown
CFO
Mark Bierley
CIO
SL
Legal & Secretary
TC
3
US Stores
Kenneth Armstrong
4
President
Michael Edwards
Human Resources
RT
Store Operations
JF
Accounting & Control
GT
Real Estate

These dysfunctional organizations end up trying to go in two opposing directions at once. We once halted an executive retreat and everybody went home after the group of seven division presidents and corporate staff vice presidents couldn't agree on whether their values were centralization or decentralization. Trying to do both at once was ripping the organization apart. The CEO never could decide which direction he wanted to commit to. He was eventually fired as frustrations and infighting rose while organization performance fell.

Most centralists don't set out to deceive anybody. In their heads they know that high degrees of involvement, participation, and autonomy are key elements in high organization performance. But in their hearts, they still crave orderliness, predictability, and control. That's one of the reasons strategic planning causes so many performance shortfalls in their organizations. It's part of their futile search for a master plan that can regulate and bring a sense of order to our haphazard, unpredictable, and rapidly changing world.

Our narrow accounting systems give centralists plenty of reinforcement. For example, hard financial measures can clearly show that consolidating and centralizing support services and functions saves money and increases efficiency — at least on paper. What doesn't show up is the alienation, helplessness, and lack of connections to customers or organizational purpose that centralized bureaucracy often brings. The energy-sapping and passion-destroying effects of efficiencies may save hundreds of thousands of dollars. But traditional accounting systems can't show the hundreds of millions of dollars lost because of lackluster innovation, mediocre customer service, uninspired internal partners, and unformed external partnerships.


The search for an ideal or perfect structure is about as futile as trying to find the ideal canned improvement process to drop on the organization (or ourselves). It depends on the organization's Context and Focus (vision, values, and purpose), goals and priorities, skill and experience levels, culture, teams' effectiveness and so on. Each is unique to any organization.

Research and experience shows that the shape and characteristics of high performing organization structures have a number of common features:

Intense Customer and Market Focus — systems, structures, processes, and innovations are all aimed at and flow from the voices of the market and customers. Field people and hands-on senior managers drive the organization in daily contact with customers and partners.

Team-based — operational and improvement teams are used up, down, and across the organization. A multitude of operational teams manage whole systems or self-contained subsystems such as regions, branches, processes, and complete business units.

Highly autonomous and decentralized — dozens, hundreds, or thousands of mini-business units or businesses are created throughout a single company. Local teams adjust their company's product and service mix to suit their market and conditions. They also reconfigure the existing products and services or develop new experimental prototypes to meet customer/partner needs.

Servant-Leadership — senior managers provide strong Context and Focus (vision, values, and purpose) and strategic direction to guide and shape the organization. Very lean and keen head office management and staff serve the needs of those people doing the work that the customers actually care about and are willing to pay for. Support systems are designed to serve the servers and producers, not management and the bureaucracy.
 
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