Still Leading (B1): Hon. Bob McDonald—Profiting from Purpose

Rosabeth Moss Kanter; Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | January 2018

Still Leading (B1): Hon. Bob McDonald—Profiting from Purpose

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Abstract

This case is included in the Still Leading series, which is part of an opening series of cases used in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. This case can also be taught as a standalone case as it is rich with many key leadership lessons that fall outside the series objective. McDonald’s career exemplifies a commitment to values. Throughout his career and life, he consistently maintained a set of values despite the changing context and periods of transition. His values seem to anchor him, especially during uncertain times. Teaching Note for HBS No. 318-050.

Keywords: Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Values and Beliefs; Transition;

Language: English

Format: Print

15 pages

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Citation:

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone. "Still Leading (B1): Hon. Bob McDonald—Profiting from Purpose." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 318-102, January 2018.

As a middle manager at a biotechnology company, Sandra Brown harnessed digital tools and social media to engage others and build campaigns for change in the company. This Teaching Note presents strategies for teaching the Sandra Brown case series, which follows Brown's career at NIN Biotech, and describes the challenges she faced as a change agent, working to promote gender equality and improve quality within the company, and build a movement around a new drug developed to fight cancer externally.

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2018 (Revised June 2018)

City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact

Rosabeth Moss Kanter and James Weber

In 2018, City Year was a 30 year old nonprofit that recruited and organized teams of young-adult “volunteers” (corps teams) to provide a year of citizen service. It had 3,100 corps members serving in 327 schools located in 28 U.S. cities. In its early decades, City Year provided a variety of services to a variety of organizations in need. Over its most recent decade, City Year had pivoted to having all corps members serve in low-income public schools to keep students on track to graduation in an effort to reduce the nation’s high school dropout rate. City Year also worked with partners to help schools transform themselves to better meet the needs of low-income students, and worked with policy makers and elected officials to promote the value of national citizen service. In 2012, City Year launched a Long Term Impact strategy (LTI) aimed at making a substantial improvement in high school graduation rates. The LTI required City Year to transform itself over time to create an organization capable of delivering its ambitious impact strategy. The case explores City Year’s history and its efforts to align its organization with its strategy. In March 2018, City Year CEO Michael Brown must examine the state of his organization and its strategy to determine next steps to achieving its LTI goals.

Keywords: Education; Service Operations; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Resource Allocation; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Human Capital; Growth Management; Service Delivery; Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Poverty; United States;

Citation:

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, and James Weber. "City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact." Harvard Business School Case 318-089, March 2018. (Revised June 2018.) View Details

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CEO Zhang Ruimin must plan how to accelerate the growth of self-managed microenterprises. Platforms were Haier’s business platforms operating in five major sectors: white goods transformation, investment and incubation, financial holdings, real estate, and cultural industry. Platform owners incubated microenterprises on their platforms with the resources Haier had, but they were not the supervisors of microenterprises. His goal was to tear down the walls between the organization, shortening the time the company took to respond to users’ needs, with the ultimate goal of “zero distance” between employees and users. Haier had engaged in a series of organizational changes since 2005, the most recent of which started in 2012. His latest experimentation was turning Haier into a platform for entrepreneurship. Employees and those outside Haier could set up microenterprises on Haier’s platforms. Zhang thought Haier was on the right track, but the model had to prove itself in practice. He set a timetable: the microenterprises must reach the tipping point by September 20, 2018, which meant the microenterprise would have become a platform to which all resource providers would flock and stay loyal. There was no precedent of transformation like this anywhere. Would Haier succeed? What could Haier do to push the microenterprises to get to the tipping point?

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Still Leading (B1): Hon. Bob McDonald—Profiting from Purpose

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