Why was Ozzie more successful in creating follow-on action after the Robinswood retreat?
After organizing and attending the Semiahmoo retreat, the company organized a second retreat because the first attempt by the company to formulate a strategy for the Microsoft’s core failed. Consequently, Ozzie took charge of the second retreat, which proved successful. Despite not putting much effort in working intimately with the team, Ozzie took the chance on defining and delivering the strategic challenge that Microsoft was facing. The Robinswood retreat took place at Robinswood house, which appeared to be poor quality unlike the Semiahmoo retreat. Ozzie made an effort to provide a 51-page memo before the retreat that described the diagnosis for the challenges facing the company. He successfully detailed the challenges facing the company through his friendly mood without confronting anyone for the past shortfalls of the company. He initiated the discussion through an invigorating exercise regarding adverse occurrences taking place in the present technical and organizational strategy of the company (Fried, 2009). In doing so, the team had a chance to open up and raise the issues concerning the faults of the company regarding its operations, particularly the issues that required urgent redress especially the fluctuating revenues of the company. Consequently, the retreat resulted into a more intense discussion about future strategies that could benefit the company. The meeting was successful despite a significant deal of controversy among the team members.
In addition, Ozzie highlighted the changing business environment and the importance of service to the customers. Ozzie worked closely with the team through a series of weekly meetings scheduled for the executives who attended the retreat. In achieving this, Ozzie emphasized the need for attendance and formulated agenda for the meetings. Ozzie was more successful in creating follow-on action after the Robinswood retreat because he integrated communication technologies in the process. According to Ozzie (2008), communication technologies have greatly evolved into a more convenient form. In the contemporary world, customers pay much attention to interaction between the company and its services and products and how they can be used more conveniently (Christensen, 2009). Companies are striving to reach customers directly and provide high quality services with lower cost. Technology firms are have resorted to selling their products and services without the need to ship and resorting to lower cost strategies such as downloading application directly from websites (Johnson, Whittington, & Scholes, 2011).
As noted by Ozzie, Microsoft has not developed a strategy on how to compete in the industry, especially advertising strategy by offering supported services and software over the internet. The strategy requires innovation and developers to develop and improve the services to customers (Levy, 2008). The company needs to adopt this kind of strategy in order to devise a practical way to reach and interact with the customers and enable the company achieve its strategic goals. Additionally, Ozzie was successful in creating a follow-up action because he found the best way on how to reflect on the past mistakes and relate them to the present environment without victimization. Ozzie was able to handle leadership responsibilities, strengths, and weaknesses in an amiable manner. This enabled the team to come up with immediate response to develop better strategies to solve the problems. The business can be at great risk if the team fails to handle the dilemma efficiently and lack an open communication (Levy, 2008).
Bibliography:
Christensen, C. (2009). "The Innovator's Dilemma", Harvard Business School Press.
Fried, I. (2009). “Ray Ozzie's view from the clouds”. cnet news. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10400244-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1
Johnson, G, Whittington, R, & Scholes, K. (2011). Exploring strategy text and cases (9th ed.). Harlow, Prentice Hall.
Levy, S. & Ozzie, R. (November 24, 2008). Wants to Push Microsoft Back into Startup Mode”, Wired Magazine: 16.12. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_ozzie
Ozzie, R. (2008). Internet Services Disruption. Retrieved from http://www.scripting.com/disruption/ozzie/TheInternetServicesDisruptio.htm retrieved 02/19/10.
