It’s easy to admire successful business people from the sidelines. You see their names in business magazines. You watch all their interviews, and you follow their life story.
And now, you probably have a dream to be like them someday. However, business success is not accidental. The people you look up to had to undergo so much pressure and make tons of decisions.
If you have started your business already, you have indeed made some big decisions. It might be who to hire and how many. Also, you’ve probably chosen the location of your business and hired which building construction management service for your construction needs. This is just the beginning.
Big Business Decisions and What You Can Learn from Them
While some business decisions are purely a case of trial and error, they still calculate these decisions. It means that a lot of factors go into every decision-making process they ever made.
The following are the most significant business decisions made by big business players. You can get some inspiration from these big stories. These are based on the book “The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time” by Verne Harnish:
1. Wal-Mart
Before this chain of supermarkets reached 24 countries, there was one decision that changed its course. Founder Sam Walton decided to allot every Saturday morning for an all-employee meeting. This resulted in a rapid flow of information among all members and workers in the company. The fast flow of information in the whole company greatly affected the speed of their decision-making. Now, Wal-Mart operates in 24 countries, including Mexico and India. And they also own a couple of successful retailing brands.
2. Samsung
The giant mobile tech company started as a grocery store in South Korea. It traded goods in and around Taegu City. Some of its products are dried fish and their own Korean noodles. Fast forward to 2021, Samsung is one of the leaders in tech innovation with its top-of-the-line smartphones, especially in design. It also produces advanced home appliances like smart refrigerators and air-con units.
Their biggest decision? They launched a sabbatical program. They send their top employees to a sabbatical program all over the world. This is such a great motivation for all employees. This is proof that incentivizing employees’ works will bring in good results for the company.
3. Apple
There is no doubt that Apple is a giant tech company, especially considering how big of a deal every iPhone launch becomes. People queue at Apple stores to get their hands on the latest phone launch.
Before all of this happened, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of the company, got fired. Well, the matters surrounding his leaving from Apple are still in dispute. Some sources say he left. Some say he got fired. John Sculley, then Apple’s CEO, apparently disagreed with Jobs about the price of Macintosh Office, the second-generation Mac.
It wasn’t selling well, so he planned to drop the price, which Sculley and the rest of the board disagreed. He got fired because of that. The year was 1985. Their greatest decision? To hire Jobs back in 1997 when Microsoft Windows started taking over the market. He joined Apple again as the CEO.
At the time, Apple was on the brink of failure. Jobs was able to revitalize the company. But it meant letting go of 70% of the products Apple produced at that time, which also meant they had to let go of many employees. Jobs’ strategy focused on only four products, two of them being desktops and portable devices.
A year after his return, Jobs was able to turn a $309 million profit.
4. Ford
Ford is one of the oldest and most successful car manufacturers in the whole world. Ever since the first car Henry Ford created in 1886, Ford has remained one of the top players. The company has also made a lot of big decisions in the course of its history.
Their most notable one is doubling the wage of their employees. In May 1914, the wage of their workers was at $2.40 per day. They raised to $5 per day for qualified workers.
Ford reasoned that their employees should be able to afford the products that they made. In reality, it was a management move to boost workers’ morale and decrease the rate of turnover, which was rampant back then. Workers were factory-hopping, looking for better wages. And at that time, activism was on the rise. Ford actually averted a crisis with this one.
As you know by now, these big companies were never short of problems to solve. The bigger your company becomes, the bigger the hurdles you need to overcome. Right now, you have to focus on being a great decision-maker.
