Running the Running Room
Case Questions
1. What does the field of organizational behaviour have to offer successful leaders such as John Stanton?
John Stanton is a leader who prizes streamlining, time efficiency and the effective dissemination of communication and delivery of results. Such a man can develop himself enough to make these qualities certain for himself, but at the end of the day, they also involve the behaviours of many other people he will have to lead in an organisation. Organizational behaviour, an interdisciplinary branch of study that synergizes psychology, H.R. and business management, is indispensable to him; it makes possible a bird's eye view of the behaviours of the individual and collective human resources in an organisational context, and through careful and detailed study, the application of optimisation theories to them and the improvement of their behaviours in terms of results that managers want to see. Though organisational behaviour is, again, an interdisciplinary field of study with no cast iron consensus on its definition or parent fields, its foundation lies in recognising the importance of the relationship between the psychology of people and the collective behaviour and results of a human organisation; the psychological nature of human swarms functioning together to attain a common purpose. It is essentially a manner for Stanton to study how to apply his own successful organisational behaviour to his members of staff, and make it infectious.
2. How would you characterise Stanton's leadership style?
John Stanton is a man who dislikes bureaucracy, decorum, formalities and other characteristics of protocol that do not really concern themselves with the effective delivery of organisational results. He does not care to build an organisational hierarchy wherein one member of staff is functionally subservient to another; perhaps he does not care to define reporting relationships or even real segmentation of the organisation in to functional layers and divisions. The description of the organisation from the case is that it is simply an amalgamation of managers, their organisational roles and responsibilities often overlapping, and they manage to run the organisation very effectively, perhaps because Stanton does not believe in 'big government' and keeps his 'cabinet' streamlined. Probably the informal managerial approach works for small or midsize companies like The Running Room; the application of very formal, theoretically grounded managerial styles is usually to manage larger numbers of human resources, such as thousands or even hundreds of thousands or millions, if we consider the employment levels of the world's largest organisations; The Running Room seems to be staffed by hundreds as an educated guess. John Stanton also emphasises the importance of technology and manipulation of the latest techniques and 'short cuts' in delivering organisational results; finally, Stanton does not treat himself as any better or more important than his staff, whom he seems to consider as partners in the delivery of results. Because of all of this, I would say that Stanton's is a participative, yet highly delegating leadership style, characterised by Stanton trying to make running the organisation easier for everyone else rather than by his giving orders and expecting to be obeyed. Stanton is a heavily involved, 'hands on' leader, serious about responsibility but casual about status.
3. What advice do you have for Stanton as his company moves into new products (e.g., walking apparel and footwear) and new markets (e.g., the United States)?
I would advise Stanton to revise the utilization of his day; the text describes him as always making 'rounds' in the 'barracks' of the company, and rather easily reachable by mobile phone or e-mail. Stanton should study whether or not this is an efficient use of his time, or a sustainable one; how much information can he absorb by 'touring' the organisation all day, once it really enlarges? Expansion into new products and markets means expansion of the organisational structure, and Stanton may actually end up more effective if seated at a desk and using a decision support or business intelligence system that performs companywide data capture on a day to day basis. Also, Stanton should invest heavily in intellectual capital and knowledge workers to enhance the company's innovation, customer relationship management, supply chain management, inventory management etc. systems, because this will continue the streamlined pattern that has made The Running Room successful. For example, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is famous for its inventory management system and supply chain management system, which almost completely eliminate the need for warehousing by replacing an item on the store shelf almost as soon as it is purchased by a customer.
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