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Sales growth is the most sought after dynamic in business whether you are a CEO like Bryan Zwan, or Steve Easterbrook, or a shareholder of Apple. Focus is now shifting from external growth opportunities to those that live internally within the company. The main area of opportunity that is being explored is that of leadership development.
The creation of leadership development programs is certainly not a new concept however the recent shift has been to drive more empowerment to lower leadership levels to allow the key decision makers within the company to spend greater time on strategical concepts as opposed to others that could be phrased as a ” time suck”.
Newly appointed McDonalds CEO Steve Easterbrook has long been a proponent of empowerment which contributed to his success with innovations such as the advanced menu and the creation of an infrastructure for its digital initiatives. Bryan Zwan founded Digital Lightwave in 1990, and advised one of the reasons for such a successful startup was the level of personal responsibility taken onboard by each member of the team. Zwan attained that the lower empowerment leadership model allowed his team to take personal responsibility and as such become personally invested in the outcome which led to their phenomenal success.
The same can be attributed to the ongoing success of Apple. Apple recently documented a 33% growth for the 2015 third quarter with revenue of $49.6 billion. It’s no coincidence that the level of personal responsibility undertaken by all Apple staff during the customer interaction buying process is a major key to this success. Apple staff are empowered to make decisions that are in the best interests of the customer. Decisions are made fast and with a view to provide the best customer experience, which is the same mantra portrayed by Zwan and Esterbrook.
Release ID: 87633