The objective of improved work-life balance is achieved. However, it prompts a discussion of whether management should take on special events during what is now a long weekend in order to improve the bottom line even more. The case raises questions about other businesses to which the Cyrus planning process and profit model can be applied.
The loss of the lease at their Michelin-starred Cyrus 1.0 in Sonoma County, California gives the partners an opportunity to shut down and rework a "broken" business model, one with labor intensive experiences six or seven nights a week, high burnout, high turnover-especially in the back of the house, low profits, and a lack of work-life balance. The case illustrates a novel planning process centered around (1) rethinking a gourmet dining experience using a model of how people entertain at home and (2) defining what people hate about something (in this case their jobs) and using that as a basis for describing an ideal solution before considering how to get there. The planning process still has to deal with the issues of work-life balance and how to achieve a three-day weekend for everyone and still reward investors.
Montes Calçados is a well-known, "fast-fashion" Brazilian manufacturer of casual, but fashionable women's shoes for women aged 18-35 in major cities worldwide. To boost its declining revenues, MC must evaluate two growth options: whether to expand distribution online (at the risk of diluting the brand, by attracting older customers) and whether to increase the frequency of introducing new styles (at the risk of more fashion "misses"). Altogether, Montes Calçados may need to rethink the "Brazilian" positioning of its brand. The case is suitable for strategy and general management courses because it raises questions about a company's basic direction and business definition, and the management of complex issues associated with doing business worldwide. Because this case suggests the overlap of key marketing decisions with strategic questions, it can also be used in both required and elective marketing courses, especially for topics on distribution of consumer products and brand management. This case can be used in advanced undergraduate, MBA, or executive-level courses.
This document identifies the characteristics of excellent case studies and their accompanying teaching notes. The purpose is to provide guidance in preparing these educational vehicles. These guidelines were developed based on consultations with very experienced case teachers and an analysis of the elements of case studies and their teaching notes considered to be high quality by Harvard Business School faculty across departments, and on the basis of cases highly demanded by other schools. Elements of Excellence in case studies include focus, complexity, clarity, engagement, controversy, complexity, robustness, and intellectual richness. Key elements analyzed in teaching notes include learning objectives, substantive analyses, and teaching processes, including discussion plans, questions, openings and closings. Appendices provide guidance on the case study and teaching note development process as well as check lists for the key elements of excellence in cases and teaching notes.
HandsOn Bay Area, an organization devoted to the performance of (and development of leaders for) community service, is undergoing a significant (and internally controversial) shift in its business model from "retail" projects involving individual volunteers to "wholesale" projects with for-profit partners from the San Francisco Bay Area. Its CEO has to decide whether and how to respond to a request from Google to engage 5,500 Google employees in community service activities during a one-week period. It's a far larger project than the organization has ever undertaken and one requiring many added resources. Among the risks is the possible damage to the HandsOn reputation among Silicon Valley partners if the effort does not succeed.
Porcini's Inc. operates a chain of 23 full-service restaurants located near shopping malls and downtown areas in the northeastern United States. Known for providing excellent service, Porcini's serves high-quality Italian cuisine made from fresh ingredients. Looking for expansion opportunities, management considers launching a new chain of lower-cost, limited-menu restaurants called Porcini Pronto. The new outlets will be located along busy interstate highway exits in the region and will serve outstanding Italian food at reasonable prices to both travelers and local residents. Management is concerned that a poor customer experience at Porcini Pronto could tarnish the company's well-established and successful restaurant brand. The management team asks the vice president of marketing to develop the concept and to create an operating strategy for the new outlets. The VP must also analyze three alternative expansion strategies before management will make any commitments to the project. If Porcini's builds and operates the new restaurants, the company will maintain complete control of operations and the customer experience but expansion will take a very long time. Franchising and syndication are two other options which provide faster expansion but introduce the risk of losing control of the brand. The VP must analyze the options and make his final recommendation.
Calveta Dining Services contracts with senior living facilities (SLFs) for the management of food service to residents. Created by Antonio Calveta and built on his passion for food and traditional family values, the firm had enjoyed three decades of strong growth when Antonio retired and named his eldest son, Frank, CEO. Frank Calveta now struggles to carry out his father's directive: double revenues within five years while maintaining the humanistic and emphatically pro-employee company culture. Should he expand beyond the SLF market? Can he continue to maintain the quality level for which Calveta is renowned? Can he contend successfully with organizational and communications challenges?
This is the fourth in a 35-year series of HBS cases on an organization that has changed the rules of the game globally for an entire industry by offering both differentiated and low-price service. The focus of the case is on whether Southwest Airlines should buy gates and slots to initiate service to New York's LaGuardia airport, which does not fit the airline's profile for cost, ease of service, and other factors. The bigger issue is how the organization should deal with competition that has successfully emulated more and more of what it does in an operating environment that has changed significantly. Hence the subtitle, which was suggested by Herb Kelleher, Southwest's Chairman and CEO, Emeritus.
Bill Strickland, CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation, must decide the best way to replicate his innovative, award-winning approach to curing poverty. Manchester Bidwell's approach, which provides both adult job-training tuned to fill the needs of local industries and after-school art instruction for at-risk youth, has proven highly effective over the 40 years Strickland has operated it. He wants to replicate this strategy across 100 or 200 cities, but progress has been slow. Is the current intensive approach correct, or should he change it? What would be at risk? How can he best provide his "cure for poverty" to the greatest number of communities?
In exemplary service organizations, executives understand that they need to put customers and frontline workers at the center of their focus. Those managers heed the factors that drive profitability in this service paradigm: investment in people, technology that supports frontline workers, revamped recruiting and training practices, and compensation linked to performance. They also express a vision of leadership in somewhat unconventional terms, referring to an organization's "patina of spirituality" and the "importance of the mundane." In this article, Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, and Schlesinger take a close look at the links in the service-profit chain, which puts hard values on soft measures so that managers can calibrate the impact of employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity on the value of products and services delivered. Managers can then use this information to build customer satisfaction and loyalty and assess the corresponding impact on profitability and growth. Describing the links in the service-profit chain, the authors explain that profit and growth are stimulated by customer loyalty; loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction; satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers; value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees; and employee satisfaction, in turn, results from high-quality support services and policies that enable employees to deliver results to customers. By completing the authors' service-profit chain audit, companies can determine not only what drives their profit but how they can sustain it in the long term.