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 The most important observation I made about both of the men was that they both were involved in and created a successful culture that was always changing. According to Brown, “A strong culture is characterized by the organization’s basic values being intensely help and widely shared” (Brown, 2011).  In figure 15.4 we see that the more people who are willing to commit to the values, the stronger the culture becomes. For Jim McIngvale, he has created a culture around making sure employees are well taken care of. He does this by providing endless education on products, techniques, and customer relations. I found it most interesting that he actually saves over one million dollars a year in health insurance because his employees engage in physical activities during company work time. I think he has found a way to engage employees both physically and intelligently. The employees seem to be responding more, creating a better culture, because their leader is taking the time and investing in them.

Stanley McCrystal was successful because he was able to take advice from people who worked under him who had more knowledge of the technologies he had to use. One source states “Revealing you are human is helpful; good leaders go and find the answers the team needs” (Brandon, 2014). I think Stanley lives that each day. He understood what it took to be successful; sometimes he doesn’t have all the answers and he needs to outsource the information gathering to someone more qualified. Often times leader are not successful because the do the opposite of that. They think they have all the answers and they implement things that are not successful like that of Napelli from our discussion about Home Depot. A classmate (Phillip), said it best in his discussion observing that “The negatives were apparent at Home Depot during his tenure due to index score fell from 75 to 67 while rival Lowes remained at 75” (Boylyard, 2015). In our discussion this week, it was obvious that the new CEO has made a number of huge errors that, in hindsight, must not make a lot of sense to Napelli. 

I think that there is a lot to learn from these two leaders. Each one of them admitted that they needed to look at the way they are doing business and reevaluate that technique in order to be more successful in the future. Stanley had a lot thrown at him in a short amount of time and was able to use his tools to his advantage. Jim knew that in order to keeps his business going, he would have to look outside the box and understand new management techniques. Those techniques are making him more profitable and successful now.

Brandon, J. (2014, August 29). 20 Ways to Become a Better Leader Right Now. Retrieved May 3, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/20-ways-to-become-a-better-leader-right-now.html

Brown, D. (2011). An Experimental Approach to Organizational Development (8th ed.). Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Boylyard, P. (2015, January 1). Class Discussion [Online].