Category: Marketing Strategy

Avnet’s Roy Vallee on leadership

Thirty-seven years ago Roy Vallee was stocking shelves at a small electronics distribution company in Los Angeles. That small firm has grown up to become Avnet, Inc., a Fortune 500 firm located in Phoenix, Arizona. Avnet is one of the largest distributors of electronic parts, enterprise computing and storage products, and embedded subsystems in the world. And Roy Vallee is the CEO and chairman of the board. One morning recently, marketing professor Anthony Peloso sat down with Mr. Vallee to talk about Avnet, his leadership style, and how to motivate employees — even in a far-flung global operation. Professor Peloso leads the Marketing Professional Sales and Relationship Management Initiative, which fosters strong relationships between students who are headed for careers in sales, marketing faculty members and corporate partners. The goal is to build professional sales capabilities and advance the profile and status of the sales function. And now let’s hear what Mr. Vallee has to say about one the toughest jobs of leadership: motivating employees.

Going for the green: Companies seek sustainability for the environment and the bottom line

As power costs increase and consumers and government put more pressure on business to reduce environmental harm, sustainability is becoming important to all kinds of companies. Sustainable service was the subject of a panel discussion at the Center for Services Leadership’s 19th Annual "Compete Through Service" symposium. Managers are starting to understand the advantages of being cleaner and greener, panelists said, but in order to bring about real change, the commitment to sustainability must be organization-wide. The changes have to make sense for the business and achieve impact beyond public relations.

Sending clear messages: Communicating the ‘core idea’

People who know Mike Figliuolo likely were unsurprised when he founded a training and development firm called "thoughtLEADERS, LLC" in 2004. Up to that point, every stage of his career led seamlessly to the next, as he groomed himself in teamwork, delegating, structure, strategy and leadership. "My background is critical to the firm," he explained. "I spent so much time in meetings, listening to presentations that were poorly communicated and left me and other participants unsure of what the message was, what the next step should be and how their research backed up their hypothesis." Figliuolo was a speaker at the 19th Annual Compete Through Service Symposium, sponsored by the Center for Services Leadership at the W. P. Carey School.

Dave Lewis: Creating the creativity economy

In Canada, a group of Nike employees meets once a week in the same place at the same time for a creative brainstorming session. But there’s an element that keeps the sessions from going stale. The meetings are on a Toronto subway car. "Gray Formica meeting spaces lead to Gray Formica thinking," Dave Lewis told an audience at the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University’s 19th Annual "Compete Through Service" symposium. The mission of Lewis’ company, ?What if! The Innovation Company, is to shake folks out of stale thinking. But Lewis knows that there isn’t necessarily a fast train that takes companies to a more innovative and creative place. Creativity that leads to innovation, Lewis said, tends to be more a habit than a destination.

Podcast: Framing the issue did ‘bailout’ label skew debate?

Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke learned a lesson from Media Relations 101 the hard way when they introduced a plan of action to stem the financial crises and did not suggest a catchy name for it. Left without a headline phrase, the media came up with its own: "Bailout." The negative connotations associated with "bailout" contributed to its initial defeat in the House of Representatives. Management professor Gerry Keim, who studies the relationship between business and government, uses the episode to talk about the importance of choosing words carefully when framing an issue.

“OBD: Obsessive branding disorder”: Has branding jumped the tracks?

In his book "OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder," Lucas Conley asserts that branding has gotten out of hand. At it’s worst it is deceptive, he writes, and it diverts companies away from real product improvement to focus on superficial details. "Branding offers the satisfaction of a sense of change without the hard work," Conley writes.