Corporate Problem: A large retailer wants to enhance their customer experience. To achieve this goal they need their employees to “lean in” and accept greater responsibility. However, significantly large employee-turnover is wasting resources, affecting the culture, and diminishing value for customers.

Ironbound Strategy: Create more employee value. The more valued employees feel the happier and more engaged they become in the company’s mission, and the less likely they are to leave.

Ironbound Action: Walmart’s vision is to exceed the customers’ expectations through an inspired, dedicated team of associates. In April 2015 Walmart raised its starting salary to $9/hour and will further raise it to $10/hour in early 2016. Along with the planned wage increases the company is also piloting a program to create clearer career pathways for associates to earn more and seek promotions. 

Corporate Challenge: A product developer increased their revenue 10-fold in one year.  The company opened to new investors, and made over-extended partnerships.  Soon, the employees were over worked, the product quality declined, and sales slumped.  Within a year the company considers bankruptcy.

Ironbound Strategy: A company’s most valuable resource is their team of employees.  Focus on creating employee value by reducing excessive workload and increasing perks.  An increase in product quality will be inevitable.  Collaborate with other developers to outsource work and meet the demands of the new partnerships.

Ironbound Action: Atari collapsed in 1983 after the company focused on profits rather than employee value.  In contrast, an upstate New York supermarket called Wegmans focused on treating employees as family members.  The more perks the company offered their employees, the more profitable the stores became.  Wegmans has become one of the fastest growing grocery experiences in the North East, and has been on Fortune Magazine’s national best companies to work for since the list began in 1998.

Corporate Challenge: A mobile phone manufacturer is forced to concede its dominant market share to new entrants. The company experiences rapid sales decline and a collapse in share price.

Ironbound Strategy: Quickly identify the niche market spaces where the new entrant isn’t as well positioned. Create more value for this target customer and remain competitive in the adjacent market space.

Ironbound Action: Blackberry didn’t act fast enough but finally stopped competing with Apple and streamlined their product offering to maintain a competitive advantage within the enterprise market space. Enterprise customers value the Blackberry functionality and network security. The new business strategy better positions blackberry to compete in developing countries with lower cost mobile phones.