Motivation: Doug Is It Essay, Research Paper

Colin Adams9/13/98SSM 304T. Th. 1300-1450″ Doug Is It “Group #4 – Motivation Article Analysis Last October, a monumental shift of power occurred when Roberto Goizueta, the chief executive officer of the Fortune 500’s number three-ranked company–Coca-Cola, died from complications of lung cancer. With his death came an equally monumental shift in the company’s paradigm at the hands of Doug Ivester, Goizueta’s successor and right-hand man for over a decade, and Coca-Cola’s new CEO and transformational leader. Stepping into what is thought to be one of corporate America’s toughest jobs, he definitely has a tough act to follow, and some big shoes to fill–Roberto Goizueta took over and saved Coke from their early eighties debacle in 1981, and has since increased Coke’s market value from $4.3 billion to $147 billion, at the time of his death. But Doug Ivester isn’t inundated in the least. A follower of and firm believer in New Age motivational technique, he believes that he can accomplish even more and push Coke into the 21st century, as an economic global powerhouse. From his unique perspective, working his way up the ladder, and gaining valuable insight on how still the company can be improved and opportunities increasingly realized, he is now in the position to transition the company, and motivate his resources to accomplish this transition in I think a number of ways. 1. Aggressive Goal Setting; in order for the company to “self-actualize”, or be all that it can be, it has to take advantage of and seize all the opportunities it can find or get it’s hands on. 2. Job Enrichment, and to some extent redesign. Technology and a shift from the conventional way of doing things will play a big part here. Flattening out the organization and opening the channels of communication will be paramount in achieving the global success and interconnectedness it seeks. 3. Feedback; two-way communication will expedite the learning process and in some respects the job enrichment phase of the transition. It will also cut down lead-time in assessing and evaluating strategic decision-making processes, and increase autonomy among contributors. Goal setting is big with Doug, as we can glean from his personal career achievements, and is a big part of motivation and his theory thereof. Doug Ivester, I believe, is the epitome of motivation, and he brings that to the job with him everyday in everything he does. His overriding goal, double Coke’s volume, seems ambitiously difficult but perhaps not impossible, to which all other goals are secondary. When asked if he’s specified a date he merely replies, “It won’t take us another 112 years”. So the stage is set. All consequent goals are instrumental. He plans to open up 200 new sales offices in China in what he calls a sort of viral growth, using each new office to open up several more, rather than traditional linear methods. He is also achieving the global consolidation of the company’s bottlers, faster than anyone, even board members thought possible.

Doug is also in the process of job enrichment and redesign throughout the organization. He claims that hierarchy is out, believing that it slows everything down. This is evident in the fact that there is no #2 right now, per say. He has 6 operating executives that are performing very, very well and who are very motivated in their relationship with him– (equity theory). He prefers to think of his employees as knowledge workers, their office being the knowledge–or intellectual capital, they carry around with them, supported by technology that allows them to work anywhere, anytime. “The conventional desk job is out”. He wants to make the person “command central”. He is trying to institutionalize the sharing of experiences from person to person, executive to executive, and to transform Coke into a “learning organization”. He wants to alleviate the notion of the “isolated executive”. And finally, feedback. The technology revolution inside Coke has purportedly been driven almost entirely by Doug Ivester. He has transformed Coca-Cola into a voice-mail culture. He demanded that the company be wired globally, to decrease lead-time or lag-time in many instances. He has implemented “voice-mail business planning” and transformed it into a process of continual discussion rather than an annual meeting. Information such as the annual report, and earnings/success data is disseminated via the voice-mail system, worldwide. In the “lock-solid follow-up system” he has established, each communiqu he sends is dated with a time to respond by usually in the corner, and If he doesn’t hear back from you, you can bet that you’ll definitely hear back from him.This network even allows Coke marketers in the U.S. to “know how a particular package, of a particular brand did, in a particular outlet two days ago”, which is invaluable to competitive marketing managers. Who knows what else Doug Ivester has up his sleeve for Coke in the future, but for now Doug is it !

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