This is a response to Brandon Lee’s Blog (Peer): “Customer Service and Work Environment” and Tim Kastelle’s Blog: (External): “Zappos Just Pulled the Boldest Change of Management Ever”

As a follower of Elon Musk I am fascinated by entrepreneurs and the ways in which they shape business.  Currently, Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos is challenging the traditional organizational structure of businesses and proves the productivity of a holacracy with a major goal to satisfy both customers and employees.

Mr. Lee has correctly identified various strengths of Zappos which have led to their success. These strengths can be split into two categories: “Work Environment” and “Customer Relations”. Through a highly selective interview process, individual workspace, equally distributed responsibility to all employees, Mr. Hsieh is able to create a strong community within the workplace. Furthermore, through toll-free customer lines, special training for employees and many other techniques, Zappos is able to also construct a firm customer relation.

The two categories, “Work Environment” and “Customer Relations” according to Mr. Lee were positively affected by the Holacratic change. However, after the organizational change 210 employees resigned from Zappos (Kastelle, n.d.). In a blog by Tim Kastelle it is mentioned that when there is a major change in the workplace approximately 60% of the workers are indifferent, while the remaining workers are split between the opposite poles. Consequently, when merging the two ideas from the blogs it can be stated that in order for Mr. Lee to be right by stating that the change in organizational management was successful; then the CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh had to be a great institutional manager.

In looking at this in more detail, a CEO who is influential over their employees may move a larger portion of indifferent employees to the portion of employees who support and embrace the change that has occurred. As stated by Mr. Kastelle, the success of a change depends on the number of indifferent employees who will align their thoughts with the change. In consequence, one of the key characteristics of an institutional manager is to be able to influence people, thus Mr. Hsieh could have used his influence to make the Holarctic approach successful. Furthermore, Mr. Hsieh’s actions mirror the actions of an institutional manager, as he allocates responsibilities and makes employees feel empowered (McClelland, 2003).

I believe it can be concluded that an entrepreneurial CEO has to belong in the “institutional manager” category in order to assure that the changes being made are successful. While a corporation may be successful with a different type of manager, it would remain stagnant or with meager change.

Word Count: 406

Works Cited

Kastelle, T. (n.d.). Zappos Just Pulled Off the Boldest Change Management Move Ever. Retrieved from Tim Kastelle: http://timkastelle.org/blog/2015/05/zappos-just-pulled-off-the-boldest-change-management-move-ever/

McClelland, D. (2003, January). Power Is the Great Motivator. Retrieved from Harvard Review: https://hbr.org/2003/01/power-is-the-great-motivator