Leadereship

How Leadership Influences Company Culture

Complete your assigned reading (Chapters 14-17) and then read the article below which corresponds to this week’s discussion topics. Then answer the questions below the article. Use the concepts from the course textbook and the article to support the information in your initial post. It is required you support your initial posts and peer posts with cited information from all the sources you use and provide all the sources in your reference list to meet the APA style requirements. 

https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781264250196

 

Jones, G. R., & George, J. (2022). Contemporary Management (12th ed.) [E-book]. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/reader/books/9781264250196/epubcfi/6/28%5B%3Bvnd.vst.idref%3Dchapter01%5D!/4/2/38/14/18/3:30%5Bw%20p%2Crod%5D

 

Leadership Lessons from a Pair of Socks

When David Heath advises entrepreneurs to get close to their product, he is speaking from personal experience.

Before officially launching the apparel brand Bombas in 2013, Heath walked around New York City carrying a backpack of prototype socks that he handed out to almost everyone he encountered, including the homeless community, which he considered his target audience. This hands-on interaction gave Heath helpful insights and direct feedback that he took into consideration when designing the perfect sock.

Sticking close to your customers is essential for maintaining a mission-focused work culture, Heath told a recent gathering at the Business School. He still personally gives out socks to the homeless during charity events, with participation strongly encouraged among all employees. Bombas holds up to 15 giving events monthly, including serving breakfast at shelters and delivering late-night soups in winter.

“We put a ton of emphasis on company culture” Heath explains. “The people at our organization really, really live what we do…. They come into work every day knowing that they’re fighting for something because they’ve made relationships out in the community, and they could see the direct impact.”

Part of a recent crop of for-profit charitable organizations that pledge  to give away their product each time they make a sale, New York-based Bombas has donated more than 25 million socks to homeless shelters. Along the way, annual sales have surged beyond $100 million, with year-over-year growth around 100 percent for what has been called the “most high-quality, comfortable pair known to man.”

Heath, who studied business as an undergraduate at Babson College, got the idea for Bombas in 2011 when he read that socks were the most-requested clothing item in U.S. homeless shelters. At that time, the start-up footwear company Toms (founded in 2006) was promising to donate a pair of shoes for every pair sold, a model adopted by Warby Parker when the eyeglasses-maker launched in 2010. Heath figured it could also work for socks.

Bombas crowdfunded $145,000 in 2013, then raised another $1 million in 2014 from friends and family. That same year, Heath struck a $200,000 investment with Daymond John of Shark Tank. Bombas later raised another $3 million in Series A funding. Within its first two and a half years of business, Bombas sold (and donated) 1 million pairs of socks; the company surpassed 25 million donations late last year. Adding to the company’s social appeal, in 2017, Bombas  became a Certified B Corporation, a designation given to companies that meet high standards for sustainability, income equality, and community impact. Research suggests millennials and Generation Z consumers really value the fact that companies have a social mission.

As with any start-up, Heath acknowledged some challenges over the past six years. At one point, Bombas dependence on Facebook for marketing became a problem when the social media juggernaut shifted its algorithm in a way that hurt the consumer cost per acquisition. This was a lesson about the need to diversify marketing channels. They’ve also overcome obstacles in maintaining sufficient inventory. One year, Bombas so under-projected holiday sales that the company had to refund more than 1 million customer orders that couldn’t be fulfilled on time.

Another aspect to the learning curve was figuring out how to design a sock that is most helpful to the homeless community. Initially, Bombas donated the same socks it sold. But the homeless population kept requesting socks in darker colors, which the company’s charity partners explained was because of a preference for socks that wouldn’t show wear. Bombas tweaked the product to reflect that color preference, along with adding features like an antimicrobial treatment and reinforced seams.

In an effort to better measure the social impact of donating socks, Bombas is collecting more quantitative data to determine how communities benefit from its donations. Anecdotally, Heath already knows Bombas is making a difference. By giving socks to a homeless shelter in North Carolina – one of more than 3,000 partners nationwide – the company was able to help the shelter save about $30,000 that was used to send two youths to community college, he said.

Bombas is now expanding into channels beyond socks, including t-shirts, and is also looking into opening retail outlets in the future. To keep up with demand, Bombas nearly tripled its headcount over the past year to 120 employees. Out of the 80 new hires, only four people have left, a low rate of turnover that Heath credits to the company’s strong social mission.

“We attract the right types of people who want to be a part of something that is bigger than just simply showing up to collect a paycheck,” Heath said.

Reference

Kurczy, S. (2020, February 7). Leadership lessons from a pair of socks. Ethics and Leadership News. https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/healthcare/publication/8085/leadership-lessons-from-a-pair-of-socks

     Please Watch This Short Video

https://youtu.be/zbKt8P8Ht7E    

Organizational Leadership Series with David Heath: CEO Challenges

Video Reference 

Columbia Business School. (2020, January 13). Organizational leadership series with David Heath: CEO challenges [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/zbKt8P8Ht7E

How Leadership Influences Company Culture

Answer the following questions:

1. Describe the concepts related to transformational leadership and explain how managers can engage in being transformational. How does transformational leadership differ from transactional leadership and servant leadership? Please explain. 

2. Discuss how emotional intelligence plays a role in the effectiveness of a leader. 

3. Which type of leadership style does Bombas CEO David Heath implement in the management of the company? Would you say that he is a charismatic leader? Please explain. 

4. Explain the five source(s) of power discussed in the course textbook. Determine the source or sources of power David Heath implements to affect other people’s behavior?

5. Discuss the two basic leader styles in Fiedler’s Contingency Model of leadership. Determine the leader style David Heath implements in his leadership. 

Please read each question thoroughly and answer all questions in their entirety in your initial post. It is important to answer all components of the questions in a comprehensive discussion post. One or two sentence responses are not acceptable. If the question states ‘Please explain’ it is required to include this information. Please note it is required to support your responses with cited information from the sources you used.

You should cite your sources and provide the references for your sources at the end of your posts.

Please use the APA 7th ed. format resources  â€˜Business Writing and Research APA Formatting Videos’

Discussion Rubric: Discussion assignments will be graded as follows:

Thoroughly answered all of the questions: 40

Quality of responses to two classmates: 20

References to text and/or other sources: 10

Spelling/Grammar at the college level: 10

Posted on 3 separate days: 20

TOTAL: 100 points

Discussion Posts (APA Guidelines)

It is required you support your initial posts and peer posts with cited information from the Jones & George (2022) course textbook, the Case Study article, and professional sources such as peer-reviewed journal articles found in the Online Keiser Library. You may also use other professional business sources. It is required you provide the sources you used in your reference list to meet APA style guidelines. 

It is required to use correct APA 7th ed. format for citing your sources when writing your discussion posts. Please do not provide any direct quotes from your sources. All information used from sources is required to be paraphrased in your own words and cited appropriately. Please include all sources used in the reference list at the end of your posts. In-text citations including narrative and parenthetical citations are required to meet APA style guidelines.

When citing information from the Case Study article cite the reference listed at the end of the article, not the textbook. You should cite the textbook only for the managerial concepts related to the Case Study. 

All sources are required to be published from 2013 to the present. 

Remember, sources should include the course textbook, the article in the above Case Study, peer-reviewed journal articles, and professional sources.

The following sources are NOT accepted: Wikipedia, Wiki websites, blogs, encyclopedias, bibliography.com, online books or textbooks, other books or textbooks, dictionaries, other students’ papers found in online websites, online essays, job search websites, student dissertations, White Pages, videos, and non-professional online websites.

 

 

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