The turmoil continues at Lands’ End with the firing of president and CEO Mindy Meads after just 18 months at the helm of the clothing retailer.
Meads had been promoted to Lands’ End CEO in February 2004.
Replacing Meads as interim president is David McCreight, executive vice president of merchandising for Lands’ End.
Daily Archives: August 5, 2005
New Vaccine Could Prevent Flu for Life
A revolutionary vaccine developed by British scientists could give lifetime protection against all types of flu.
British biotech Firm Acambis is trialling the vaccine. If successful, just one jab would offer permanent protection against all strains of flu.
Green Bay’s Schneider National: HBR on their Operational Innovation
Great example of a traditional company that continues to improve. I remember using Schneider years ago, on the west coast and being astonished at their unique GPS shipment tracking system. This was in the late 1980’s…. Michael Hammer takes a look:
That’s the bad news. The good news is that Schneider’s leaders did not give up, but restarted the effort in a different way. This time around the company was astoundingly successful. The time to respond to a customer’s RFP, which had been in the range of 30–45 days, plummeted to 1–2 days. These results started to appear within nine months of the project getting underway and were fully realized in less than two years. By getting back to customers so much faster than its competitors, Schneider was able to shape the terms of competition. The result was a rise of some 70 percent in the percentage of bids that Schneider won, which translated into sales increases of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Ironically, many of the ideas that had been developed in the original project resurfaced in the new system for responding to RFPs.
So what changed between the first and second efforts that made the difference between failure and success? There were six key factors: