Strategic Leadership Case Study 1 (Carrefour)

1. Regarding that  Carrefour’s shares fell by 45% between  January and December last year, which came after few profit warnings ,a string of U turns and failed Brazilian merger plan I can only say that Carrefour  is in a very bad situation and it will need  to make big changes and look for the professional help in order to survive in the world’s  retail market and keep its second position.

It is obvious that the CEO, Lars Olofsson, didn’t do very good job , since Carrefour, the world’s second-biggest retailer , is in a very bad position now. But we cannot say it is only his fault  because he took over Carrefour when it has been already in struggling position.  He set unrealistic goals for the company ,but he couldn’t  achieve them.  He made mistakes when he was making some decisions because he didn’t  take into consideration other, external factors  like for example economic crisis, changing market, European Demography.  For example he has invested hundreds of millions of Euros  in new exclusive stores and you must agree that now is not good time for these kind of investments, he should have wider view on today’s people lives  and their needs.

But I also have to mention that he is under pressure  from  Bernard Arnault ,the boss of LVMH, and Colony Capital that jointly own 16% of Carrefour’s shares ,which prices has halved in value. They are forcing Mr Olofsson to get back the old prices of shares quickly. Of course it is not  easy to work under pressure, that  made him harder to apply long term strategy but still it is not an excuse for the bad politics he is running  in the company.

For sure, he could have done a better job.

Good strategic leader would ,for example, focus on reducing prices, pay more attention on changing markets , focus more on online competition, changing market, resolve conflicts between short term and long term, understand the market as much as possible,  gather better team of employees, conduct  swot analysis, Porter’s five forces analysis ,etc...

2.  I am very satisfied with my participation in the group this week,  I must say that in the beginning  I was a little bit restrained since  I saw for the first time in my life people from the group , but as time was passing  we had really good communication and co-operation.  It was really interesting to exchange the opinions with my colleagues regarding certain topic.

3. There are many things I want to remember from this week.  I am kind of person that really enjoy in listening other people  talking and finding out things I didn’t know.  I consider that everything I heard in the class is very useful , something is more interesting ,something less but still I will try to remember as many things as possible.