Essay Example on Surviving the Future: Essential Skills Needed by Trader Joe's

What Essential Skills, Competencies, and Capabilities will be Critical for Trader Joe's to Survive in the Future?

Trader Joe's company operates as a chain of unique grocery stores that have been defined as a natural foods stores, specialty grocer, and neighborhood stores. The company provides a wide range of private label items, such as Trader Ming's, Trader Joe's, Trader Giotto, and the like. Trader Joe's avails products aimed at sophisticated consumers interested in getting good discounts. This has been one of the main competencies that have helped them to secure more clients than their competitors; Walmart, and Tesco. In terms of their marketing skills, Trader Joe's company ditched traditional supermarket advertising that involved coupon-filled circulars, or television commercials. Instead, they embraced the use of a" fearless flyer" (Ager & Roberto, 2013). The newsletter was designed to provide data on certain products, discount rates, coupon rates on returning clients, and introduced new items. In their new form of marketing, their main goal was to focus on "low-pricing philosophy" to gain a competitive advantage over other supermarkets like Walmart, and Tesco (Ager & Roberto, 2013). Some of the essential skills, Trader Joe applied to include discount grocery prices and a substantial line of private label items that were sold at low prices. Other relatively lower competencies include, the company maintaining a fairly small footprint, stocking fewer items than a typical supermarket, and a distinct target market. For example, Trader Joe's asserted that 80 percent of its clients had attended college, therefore, describing its target market as intelligent, educated and inquisitive people" (Ager & Roberto, 2013). Trader Joe's also recruits young workforce who mainly have diplomas, and this has helped them sustain their productivity since this crop of employees is determined to give their all.

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Identify Critical Gaps in the Skills, Competencies, and Capabilities that Trader Joe's Currently has Versus What you Think They will Need in the Future.

Trader Joe's did not invest greatly in advancing technology or automation within their stores. For example, even though they had eschewed the traditional marketing model of television commercials and embraced the use of" fearless flyer" (Ager & Roberto, 2013). That was still an offline method. As a consultant of the company, I would emphasize the need of embracing digital marketing models such as Social media as it is relatively cheap, yet lucrative in many ways like increasing their viewership and reaching a wider consumer audience. For example, they should utilize Facebook to appeal to the older, and broader clientele base of middle/upper-class households. Trader Joe should create a twitter profile that is succinct, interactive, and engaging. It should also resonate well with the young generation. Trader Joe's did not provide self-checkout lanes, ad it did not have flat-screen TVs at the checkout counter to automate their brands (Ager & Roberto, 2013). Finally, the company should have rolled out the loyalty-card program, and also provide coupons to increase client retention.

The Weather Company

If you were on the board of directors at The Weather Company in 2013, would you approve the proposed strategy?

The weather affects everything around us and propels decisions that range from the government policy on climate change to whether it is a fine day for families to go to the beach. The weather company concentrates on connecting people, businesses, and administrations with the greatest weather forecasts. The company develops apps for broadband and mobile platforms, such as iOS and Android mobile gadgets to allow a wider range of their clients in the aviation, energy, and other industries to use these platforms as weather forecasting tools, and systems (Kanter, 2014). Therefore if I was one of the board of directors in this company, I would approve the proposed plan to re-design the big data platform, forecasting systems, and applications to run distinctively in a cloud environment. The reason is that this form of strategy would allow the Weather company to scale while preserving control over the eco-system and costs (Kanter, 2014). It would also them to create user-friendly APIs that product teams across the company could use innovatively and create new features or products without worrying about infrastructure (Kanter, 2014). Through introducing an API-driven platform on AWS, the company would also be able to avail products and services to the market faster.

People Operations at Mozilla

How Would you Describe Mozilla's Cultural and Organizational DNA? What, specifically, about the way Mozilla Enacts Strategy and Executes its Business Plan Provides it with such Depth?

Ideally, the most significant challenge that most corporations face over time is implementing an effective strategy that resonates with the workers and their clients and also making strategic decisions as part of their DNA (Bahrami, 2013). The organization culture for Mozilla Corporation is centered on humanity and helping others reach their potentials. Mozilla Corporation has for decades focused on developing an organizational context that makes workers and staff feel motivated to deliver their maximum efforts for the growth of the company. For example, after Cohen took over the company she stated that " I want to embrace the culture of humanity in the workplace, particularly in a technology organization where people may not be as socially comfortable interacting physically" (Bahrami, 2013).

The execution of "Assess, Build and Then Execute" strategy gives them some depth as Cohen believes in the notion of "learn is more" philosophy when executing people-centric programs and initiatives, as opposed to other organizations who prioritize first on securing more value, impact and ROI (Bahrami, 2013).

What do you think are the Lessons from Mozilla for other Knowledge-based Organizations, particularly in terms of Strategy Execution and the Involvement of People throughout the Organization?

Strategy execution programs in a corporation may not be certainly the same since every firm has its own outlined plans. Nevertheless, other knowledge-based companies, such as Google, Google Chrome, and Firefox can learn from Mozilla Corporation in several instances (Bahrami, 2013). For example, Mozilla implemented an employee development initiative that involved workforce planning exercise, a designed compensation infrastructure that consisted of six levels of progression (Bahrami, 2013). The compensation plan was created based on the information garnered from the Talent assessments to enhance inclusivity and fairness. Finally, their onboarding recruitment system is unique and helped them to build a relationship with people even before they arrived at Mozilla (Bahrami, 2013). All these aspects showed that the company valued its brand, a norm that is not evident in other knowledge-based corporations.

Critical Challenges that Debbie Cohen Faces as Chief of People at Mozilla, and What she does to meet these Challenges

Strategic implementation in any company is a difficult task and challenges normally set in. Debbie Cohen also faced difficult tasks in implementing the company strategy. The first problem was how to sustain the constant growth and change at Mozilla, whilst improve the quality of the firm and also its people. The other challenge was to ensure the corporation remains competitive in the web-browsing industry. However, Cohen has a persistent character and was able to solve the problems head-on. For example, she created a policy that would lure volunteers who would help her implement an active R&D strategy (Bahrami, 2013). The R&D strategy would ensure they update their products and more functions thereby staying relevant in the industry.

References

Ager, D. L., & Roberto, M. A. (2013). Trader Joe's. Harvard Business School Publishing. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/714419-PDF-ENG_(1).pdf

Bahrami, H. (2013). People operations at Mozilla Corporation: Scaling a peer-to-peer global community. California Management Review, 56(1), 67-88. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/B5774-PDF-ENG_(1).pdf

Kanter, R. M. (2014). The Weather Company. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/314083-PDF-ENG_(1).pdf