Friday, February 9, 2018

Introduction to Sherwin-Williams

1. The Mission

The name of the organization I will be examining is Sherwin-Williams, a commercial and retail coatings supplier. The company has multiple missions or objectives that revolve around the supply of quality paint products. First, Sherwin-Williams strives to provide the highest quality service and knowledge in the industry through highly qualified and trained staff that can  answer questions and direct consumers to the right products for their projects. Second, they seek to provide a variety of the highest-quality retail and commercial coatings, stains, and supplies to best fit every type of project. 

Many companies will boast a mission that is somehow related to providing the best products or services to their customers, but often times this is little more than positive PR. Having worked at Sherwin-Williams for multiple years I can say that their care for the customer is genuine, even if its to serve the greater goal of profits. 


2. Website Link


This link will take you to the main website which contains links to pages for all their company, product, employee, and investor relations information.


3. History of the Company

The story of The Sherwin-Williams Company and its journey to becoming one of the largest known paint suppliers is a story of success and innovation. The company traces its beginnings to 1866, when Henry Sherwin became a partner in Truman, Dunham, and Company, a small supplier of paint ingredients and other products. In 1970 the partners wanted to focus on different pursuits so the partnership dissolved, replaced by Sherwin, Willaims & Co. With the help of his partner, Edward Williams, Henry turned the small paint supply company into a household brand by redefining the industry (Sherwin-Willaims, 2018). 

In more ways than one, Henry and Edward created what we now know as the paint industry through a slew of ground breaking inventions. Starting in 1877, Henry patented the first resealable tin can and later introduced his own pigment grinding process. These two inventions allowed Sherwin, Williams & Co. to create the first high quality and reliable pre-mixed paint. Amazingly, the company has managed to stay on the fore-front of innovation with over 100 patents on inventions like the first paint roller and spray paint can (Sherwin-Williams, 2018). In this time, they have also managed to expand world-wide with over 4,000 locations and 40,000 employees in over 100 countries. With such a strong history of innovation and success, its no wonder Sherwin-Williams has risen to become one of the top coatings suppliers worldwide.

Reference:
 The Sherwin-Williams Company (2018) Important Moments in our History. Retrieved             from: http://excellence.sherwin.com/history_timeline.html


4. Personal Role

I have been working at Sherwin-Williams in a part-time position for a little over two years now. I started as a sales associate and am currently a closer or 3rd key as we call it. My current role consists of essentially running the store in day-to-day operations including helping customers, preparing orders, and dealing with inventory. The only tasks i do not handle are the behind the scenes paperwork to the main offices, this is supposed to be the job of the managers. Though there is an extensive service aspect to my role, it also requires a high level of training and product knowledge to be able to help customers with even simple questions. I typically work by myself on weekends, opening and closing the store, roughly around 20 hours a week.


5. Management Styles

When attempting to apply concepts of classical and humanistic management styles to Sherwin-Williams there are two levels of management that we can look at. First, the level of management directly above me, my manager and assistant manager. Second, the corporate management above my managers, namely the district managers. Of course there are more levels of management throughout the company but these are the two levels that i have direct interaction and experience with. 

The interactions between me and my direct managers is mostly personal and relaxed rather than official and strict. This stems from the mostly humanistic management style employed by my manager. Some elements highly utilized by my manager are closely related to Douglas McGregors Theory Y, with a strong focus on upward communication, tapping workers potential, and as Mcgregor termed it, integration (Modaff, D. P., Butler, J. A., DeWine, S. A. (2017) p. 34-35). For instance, although our store is required to have meetings every so often, our manager ensures they are more personal by asking everyone their opinions and insisting that we point out things he or the assistant manager are doing wrong and that we would like to see changed. This puts focus on upward communication and the interpersonal relationship we have with our manager. Additionally, he will check up on us when he can to ask if there's anything we need but also gives clear direction on what needs to get done and trusts us to do it our way, not hovering over our shoulders micro managing every hammer stroke. A great final example that brings together our managers use of integration and trying to fully utilize our potential is his implementation of a incentive program. Our company has long relied on strong incentive programs, internal promotions, and other employee benefits but he took it a bit further and tied the company performance to a bonus each month. If the company performs well in certain areas such as increased sales, accounts, positive reviews, and other performance standards each month, the employees receive a bonus as a way to further align our interest with the companies.

As to the styles of management employed by our district managers, it is decidedly more related to the classical theories of management. In particular, the district managers tend to adhere to or employ many elements of Henri Fayol's Administrative Theory. There is a strong sense of unity of command, direction, and centralization of power. There is also significant use of the scalar chain type communication rules present in the organization, and even an esprit de corps or element of loyal members (Modaff, D. P., Butler, J. A., DeWine, S. A. (2017) p. 22). The unity of command, direction, and loyalty of members is fostered largely through company culture and benefit programs. As previously mentioned our company has strong incentive programs and keeps over 95% of promotions within the company. Not only are career options plentiful at Sherwin-Williams, but there are significant safety nets to provide high job security and the company does extensive work and investment into truly benefiting consumers. These elements provide many reasons for employees to stay loyal to the company and commit to its direction. When these incentives fail, the district managers have also been known to inspire unity of direction and command by force, as they have final say in our yearly goals, inventory levels, and overall daily behavior. The company tends to let the stores run themselves in some ways but reserves the right to take complete control. On many occasions I've seen district managers come through and decide to change our inventory levels even though they have no idea what our daily customers need. Likewise they have set unreasonably high goals for us, such as increasing sales volume by 20% in a year while they continue to open other stores in our territory, forcing us to divide customers and business between multiple new locations. This is also a demonstration of the centralization of power present in the upper levels of management in this company. This is also where the use of the scalar chain communication comes into play, because if our manager has a serious concern or need to question a decision, they have no power to do so and whatever the district manager wants to do is what happens. A situation similar to the ones previously mentioned, just recently occurred with our delivery service. Some years ago the company decided to concentrate all delivery vehicles and requests to one store in each district, called the HUB. The hours for delivery through the HUB are very limited however, and it typically takes upward of 3 hours for a delivery to arrive, much to long for impatient contractors. Because of this our district often uses an outside delivery source that charges for each delivery. This past quarter our district managers decided we spend to much money on this external delivery service and cut off our ability to use them, holding store managers personally responsible. As often seen in the classical theories, and Fayol's Administrative theory in-particular, there is a strong lack of upward communication and respect or inclusion for the worker at these upper levels of management. There is also a strong centralization of decision making power as you move higher up in the organization (Modaff, D. P., Butler, J. A., DeWine, S. A. (2017) p. 22). These elements are somewhat disguised by strong benefit programs and company culture, along with a buffer of different management styles between district or higher and local store managers, helping to ease new employees into the company.

Reference:
Modaff, D. P., Butler, J. A., DeWine, S. A. (2017). Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and Misunderstandings, 4th Edition.

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