Procter and Gamble - Case Study Example

Jaeger also let the existing brands sideslip while introducing expensive new brands that never caught on. One of the Jaeger's shortcomings was lack of understanding of P&G's culture, having come from abroad and having worked his way up he failed to imbibe the true spirit that P&G was built upon and tried to do away with the very identity and brand imaging P&G worked on. It was under Jaeger's leadership strategic focus and direction became fuzzy and not only did the company's profits decreased P&G became saddled with excess baggage that threatened to squeeze P&G's life blood.

(Jamal Shamsie 2005) Jamal (2005) mentions that Lafley is focusing on existing strengths in brands that have strong following and following these brands to make them into super brands - empowering his work force, delegating responsibility and ownership into employees, and recognition of the efforts. He also focused on opening channels and reducing hierarchical layers so that ideas and suggestions are heard quickly and acted upon quickly. He believed in the motto that key assets of P&G are its employees and brands.

Lafley is also focusing on focusing on P&G's strong cultural values and on reclaiming the heritage through aggressive measures whilst taking employees into complete confidence. He has focused on building goodwill, strengthening of key areas and opening of communication channels. (Jamal Shamsie 2005) Jamal . Jamal (2005) believes that some of his major steps have been to trim down the work force, especially the leadership team, realigned responsibilities, reducing multiple layers, changing traditional hierarchy at P&G, making P&G customer focused rather than other way round.

He has instituted regular meetings with all of his 12 top executives every start of week, sitting at a round table, letting them thrash out ideas while acting only as a moderator. He has focused more on women giving to them more key positions then before. He has recreated existing brands with new outlook to make product usage an experience that users would want to enjoy. He has complemented beauty line with acquisitions of Clairol and Wella. He has been of the opinion that P&G should build up on its strengths and should not be diversifying and loosing focus on areas which are not its key strengths.

He has revamped its existing 200 brands adding extensions that complement on existing brands that add value to existing brands by providing additional features that would enhance the brands existing functions - Tide stain brush, a battery powered brush for removing stains, while washing with Tide! (Jamal Shamsie 2005)Some of the ethical issues he has had to face with is bringing people from outside where P&G earlier only promoted from within - giving multiple promotions to promising P&G 3staff members, giving women higher responsibilities and more decision making roles.

Another difficult decision had been to outsource any product or service that was not value adding inside the firm. He has to a large extent shifted the surplus workforce from his own premises to the outsourced company's premises. (Jamal Shamsie 2005)What is Lafley hoping to achieve with his