No seagull strategies here

If you have ever encountered a flock of seagulls, you will have an idea of what the “seagull strategy” in business management is all about. Just as the birds soar and swoop and generally create a racket with their cries, a business manager who follows a seagull’s management style believes that being the boss merely entails having a bird’s-eye view of the entire situation and issuing missives from the top.

Without really understanding what is going on at ground level, such a manager can rant and rave and make a lot of noise when his associates don’t meet their goals. Like his avian counterpart, with its annoying cries and unexpected dives, he is a distraction to his staff when he occasionally ventures from the management perch.

The seagull manager is generally ineffective when dealing with associates. This is mainly because, like the pesky birds that haphazardly release their droppings on the unsuspecting, the manager with that kind of business orientation lets loose, heedless of who will get hit below. Naturally, this attitude destroys morale, nullifies all sense of teamwork, and hinders productivity in an organization.

Brad Tribble, Electrolux president for major appliances in East Asia, will have none of that. Although he is responsible for Electrolux sales and marketing organizations across seven countries (Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines) and leads 1,200 employees, he makes it a point to work closely with his partners. Like other successful corporate captains who are not content to simply examine the business figures and charts, he believes in getting into specifics and understanding the unique demands of each marketplace. He does this by spending time in stores and talking to consumers when he visits each of the countries in his charge.

“My management philosophy is very much centered on people,” says Brad Tribble. “The further I go from the consumer, the less I am in touch with the business. If you really want to know the business, you have to get as close as you can to the consumers and listen to them.”

Aside from talking to consumers, he makes periodic home visits with Electrolux teams as they do observational research. “What we are trying to do is to see how consumers use the various appliances in their homes.”   He explains that seemingly trivial details such as the number of times a consumer opens the refrigerator door are fed into development and design programs that help the company improve on each product to be able to give the consumer what he wants. “We take the home visits quite seriously. When Electrolux CEO Hans Straberg was visiting the region, he visited a home in the area.”

It is not surprising that with constant research being undertaken to make their products more relevant, Electrolux is a global leader in home appliances and appliances for professional use, selling more than 40 million products to customers in 150 countries every year.   

Consumer meetings conducted every two or three months also allow top management to address concerns promptly. In one instance when consumers complained that the product manuals for washing machines were too thick and too complicated for the household help who operated the appliances to comprehend, the company directly addressed the concern by distributing a DVD that was easy to follow.

The “Thinking of You” corporate concept is a very big program at Electrolux. The company believes that the way to success is to continuously think about the requirements and desires of the end user.  And it is through close association with their consumers that they are able to identify and anticipate the changing requirements. Thus, the company’s innovative products continue to win design awards.

The design of Electrolux products is “rooted in the Swedish design heritage that is human-centric,” explains Brad Tribble. “It is all very much about simplicity. Every single innovation is based on real needs.” And because the consumer comes first, the company hires individuals who believe in the philosophy of staying close to the people. There are no seagulls here.