Running head:
Unit Case Study Analysis
Kaplan University
School of Business
MT460 Management Policy and Strategy
Author:
Professor: Dr.
Date: ,
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Name of Case Study
Company Name:
Topic of the Week:
Synopsis of the Situation
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Alternative Solutions
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Selected Solution to the Problem
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Implementation
Recommendations and Conclusion
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References
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Appendix
Figure 1. SWOT Analysis based upon the topic of the week for the company case.
Strengths
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3.
Weaknesses
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Opportunities
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Threats
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Case 9: Defender Direct, Inc.: A Business of Growing
Leaders
Gosia Glinska
Edward D. Hess
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1 Defender Direct, Inc. (Defender), headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, was a
privately held company that sold and installed ADT security systems and Dish Network
Satellite TV to homeowners in the United States. President and CEO Dave Lindsey
started the business out of his home in 1998, making the transition to entrepreneur from
new-product development at Medeco Security Locks, Inc. He used $30,000 of his and his
wife’s personal savings to fund the start-up, which he called Defender Security Co.
2 From its humble beginnings in the Lindseys’ spare bedroom, Defender became one of
the largest security and satellite dealers in the Midwest, experiencing an average annual
growth rate of 60% over 10 years. In 2008, Defender generated $150 million in revenues
and ranked 387th on the Inc. 500 list of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies. With
1,500 employees, the company had a national footprint of 120 offices in 40 states.
3 Defender’s stellar growth was fueled by an aggressive direct-marketing focus and
national expansion, but Lindsey, who was fond of saying that “businesses don’t grow—
people do,” credited the Defender culture, which fostered continuous employee
development. He elaborated: Defender has grown faster than its peers not because we are
better at selling and installing security systems but because our people have grown. Our
sales have doubled because the capacity and talents of our leaders have doubled. A few
years ago, we stopped trying to double our business and realized the way to grow was to
double our team members’ enthusiasm, optimism, and skills. Send people to seminars,
leadership conferences, and self-help programs. Build a culture on purpose, not by
accident.1
THE FOUNDER
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4 Lindsey was born in 1969 and grew up in the Midwest. He graduated with honors from
Indiana University with a BS degree in Business Finance and an MBA in Marketing and
Finance. After graduation, he worked for various companies in the lock and door
hardware industry and became interested in security systems. A turning point for Lindsey
came when he was passed over for a promotion while working for Medeco Security
Locks, Inc., in Salem, Virginia. “We’re going to start a business,” he said to his wife,
“because I don’t want to ever be in this spot again, where it’s office politics controlling
my career.”
5 At Medeco, Lindsey had been involved in a program called Medeco Business
Advantage—a 2X Strategy to Grow Your Business, a set of business processes inspired
by Michael Gerber’s best-selling book The E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don’t Work
and 9-19-2What to Do About It. According to Lindsey, “It was a way for a mostly
traditional type of locksmith to double their business, using the 2X process and then upselling. We would teach it to our locksmith dealers, and I saw it work and decided, ‘I’ve
always wanted to own my own business, why not buy a locksmith shop, double it, and
create value?’ “
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
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•
6 Lindsey and his wife started looking for a locksmith business to buy, but after finding
none at a price they were willing to pay, they moved to Indianapolis. “That’s where my
family was and my support structure, and where I really wanted to be permanently,” said
Lindsey. He reflected on his days as a freelance locksmith: I began changing locks and
installing deadbolts, which was pretty horrible because every psychological test I’ve ever
taken says that me and a power drill should stay as far apart as possible. I have some
great stories about taking out my friends’ locks and not being able to put them back on
…. So that’s how I began, pretty ugly, and my intention was to never do installation,
because I’m not technical. But I had to get out and learn.
7 While his wife took over the role of a family breadwinner, Lindsey researched the
security industry. “I was, like, if someone needs a lock, maybe they want an alarm
system? And in the mid-’90s the alarm industry really exploded.” Lindsey jumped at the
opportunity when ADT Security Systems and other brands began offering $99 start-up
packages for homeowners, making home-security systems more affordable to a wide
group of consumers. “We wrote a business plan, got ADT to take a chance on us, and
began as an ADT Authorized Dealer. We never looked back. I never did another lock job
once we signed our ADT contract.”
LEARNING THE ROPES
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8 For his first three months as an ADT Authorized Dealer, Lindsey focused on meeting
the sales quota. Failure to sell 15 systems per month not only could lead to problems for
the business but also could result in a financial penalty, which would have swallowed
much of the Lindseys’ start-up capital. A devotee of the principles Gerber laid out in The
E-Myth, Lindsey said he “was looking for that Gerber-type of repeatable system,
something that could be ‘McDonaldized.’ “
9 Lindsey took advantage of a sales-training program offered by ADT. “The Dealer
Program I came into was 90% door-to-door sales,” he said. “ADT was teaching us to
knock on doors. They threw me in a van with a bunch of other guys and put me on the
street, and I’d sell ADT systems door-to-door.”
10 The day that Lindsey, who had never sold an ADT system before, made his first sale
within a couple of hours, he “saw it work.” He immediately called his wife to tell her he
was going to buy a 15-passenger van. He recalled: I had seen a repeatable process, which
involved a van; when you go door-to-door you have to have that team environment—
when you drive together in one car, you’ve got to pick the people up so they can’t leave,
until they get a sale. When everybody drives individually, they end up getting back in
their cars and leaving.
11 During the first month of knocking on doors, Lindsey sold six security systems and
fifteen during the second month, with the help of a friend. It was cause for celebration
because they had met ADT’s monthly quota. The third month was even better; with first
hires onboard, Lindsey and his team sold 30 systems.
9-29-3
THE ADT SALES CONTEST
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12 By September 1998, Lindsey had assembled a team of 10 salespeople. “I really
wanted to start the team out with a bang,” he said. “I needed a catalyst, a point of focus.”
ADT’s sales contest with its $15,000 prize was exactly what Lindsey needed to fire up
his team. “Each dealer’s quota was based on the previous three months’ sales,” he said. “I
believed we had a great opportunity to win since our previous three months’ quota would
be only 17 units.” The team launched a sales blitzkrieg. As Lindsey recalled: My living
room was converted into our Sales Meeting War Room. My artwork was covered up with
a makeshift sales board, and my entertainment center became an employee mailbox
system. Administrative paperwork was handled from my back bedroom, complete with a
board stretched out on the bed to form a desk, a computer, and a borrowed fax machine.
Side meetings and training sessions were held on the front lawn. We were entrepreneurs,
making the rules up as we went. We had no fear and knew we had a great product and
wanted to meet as many people as possible. We went out together each day, feeding off
each other’s energy.2
13 One day in mid-September, while his sales team was gathered in his living room,
Lindsey went to the back bedroom to call ADT’s headquarters to find out how his team
ranked among other ADT Authorized Dealers. His surprise turned to shock when he
learned that, as a new ADT Authorized Dealer, Defender had its sales quota increased
from 17 to 45. Shaken, Lindsey weighed his options.
14 What happened next was what Lindsey referred to as “an inflection point in the
company” and “the moment of truth” for him as a leader. He took a few minutes to
compose himself and went back to the living room to face his sales team. He candidly
related the news about the quota and then spent a few minutes rallying his troops. “We’re
going to blow through this,” he said.
15 With 45 sales already under its belt and two more weeks to go, Defender still had a
shot at winning the contest. “We took it up a notch or two during those last two weeks
and worked long hard days,” Lindsey said. Defender’s installation crew tripled its
capacity to make sure every system Defender sold got installed the next day. By the end
of September, with 142 systems sold and installed, Lindsey’s sales team was 316% above
its quota and 835% above its three-month historical average.3
16 In snatching the top prize in the sales contest, the upstart company had defeated
hundreds of other ADT Authorized Dealers from across the United States. “September
was crazy,” Lindsey said. “After four months of knocking on doors, we had a system, and
we knew what we were doing. Soon after, we sold 200, 300 systems, and we ran pretty
quickly to the 600-range a month. And it kind of skyrocketed from there.”
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET
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17 During its first few months of operation, Defender subcontracted all systems’
installations. “You know the old adage, nothing happens until a sale happens,” Lindsey
said. “So we focused on creating demand.” In September, when sales numbered 142
systems, however, Lindsey hired his first installation technician. At the beginning,
Defender hired technicians with minimal industry experience, who were able to handle a
wireless alarm system that was relatively easy to install.
9-39-4
•
18 At approximately the same time, Lindsey hired his first sales manager, who took over
driving the van with the sales team, freeing up Lindsey to “get the paperwork done to
support this,” as he put it. “I was able to stop and go back and put some processes in
place.” He reflected on the early building of the business: We kept in mind Gerber’s three
roles in a business: the entrepreneur’s job is to create the process, the manager’s job is to
assure the process is used, and the technician’s job is to follow the process and use it.
And that has dominated my thoughts for the past 10 years. Every time we’re trying to
grow something, we are very clear about who is playing these roles, and we make sure
somebody’s doing each of these. In the beginning, I played all those different roles, but I
was conscious that I was ultimately the entrepreneur, and for the first three or four years
all I did was build processes.
THINKING BIG—WITH A CLEAR FOCUS
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19 In November 1998, Defender opened a second office and sold 125 systems the first
month. Lindsey’s sales team pledged to open a new office every 90 days, and Defender
ended its first year of operation with four offices. As Lindsey said, “We lived, and still
do, by Gerber’s tenet—‘big business is just a small business that thought big.’ And we
wanted to be much bigger. In those days we’d always remind ourselves that it’s not okay
to put a mom-and-pop system in place, because that’s just going to keep us small
forever.”
20 Looking for ways to grow his business, Lindsey considered expanding into the
commercial security market, but after some thought, he decided that the residential
market would be Defender’s staple. “We weren’t so much a security company as a home
market and installation company,” Lindsey said. “We found another product that could be
marketed in a mass way and be installed in homes.” That product was satellite TV, which
Defender added to its offerings in 2001 and with it quickly became one of the top Dish
Network dealers.4
21 Since making the decision to concentrate on the residential market, Lindsey stayed on
course and steered his company away from potential distractions. “We have a saying
posted all over our offices—Focus Equals Growth.” He elaborated: Today we still only
have 13 part numbers in our inventory room, the same 13 we had 10 years ago. We have
not added things. We keep doing more of the same better, trying to McDonaldize it. We
understood focus as the goal early on, constantly using an ABC format to prioritize. I
coach all of our new leaders, “We don’t pay you to get everything done—we pay you to
get the most important things done.”
Defender’s “Hedgehog” Statement
•
22 For help in knowing what to focus on each day, Defender employees turned to what
the company called its hedgehog statement—“We are best in the world at customer
acquisition for top brand-name products and services that target homeowners.”5 The
hedgehog concept was one of the principles of greatness outlined in Jim Collins’s 2001
best seller Good to Great.6 As Collins’s research indicated, great companies refused to do
anything that did not fit with their hedgehog concept, and they made as much use of stopdoing lists as to-do lists.
23 Lindsey cited Collins as one of his biggest influences and made his employees read his book; they
even read whole chapters out loud in the office. Having spent five years discovering its hedgehog
concept, Defender leadership used it as a frame of reference for all its decisions. As Lindsey said, “We
really pride ourselves not on our to-do list but on our not-to-do list. And we have found that the more
we say ‘no’ to things, the more we grow.”
Defender’s “Circle of Life”
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24 Another practical tool, which Lindsey and his leadership team used on a weekly basis,
was the so-called circle of life (Exhibit 1). It was a visual representation of their
understanding of how the business worked. “Imagine a clock face,” Lindsey said.
“Twelve o’clock is marketing, three o’clock is sales, six o’clock is installation, and nine
o’clock is admin and finance. It used to be just sales, door-to-door, but it all starts with
marketing. So I spent my energy on really ramping it up over the last five years.”
25 Whenever Lindsey noticed a bottleneck in any of the four areas of the circle of life, he
would focus his full attention on that particular spot to alleviate the bottleneck. He
elaborated: First, I’d work with marketing until we had enough leads. But we didn’t have
enough salespeople, so I’d jump over to sales, and make sure we close all the leads until
we didn’t have enough technicians. Then, I’d go down to installation and make sure
we’re getting all the systems installed, and it would flow back up, and then we’d have a
paperwork backup, so I’d make sure ADT was paying us. And then as soon as that is all
released, we say that the money 9-59-6flows around that. Marketing takes a dollar and
starts at 12 o’clock, and you hope that two dollars come up when you spin around the
circle. So then I’d go back to marketing and say, “Okay, we’ve got some more marketing
programs: let’s go. And I just kept running around that circle. The faster you spin the
circle, the faster we grow.I’ve had my direct reports say to me, “You’re focusing on my
part of the circle right now. You’ve been to my office every day this week,” and I’m,
“Yeah, I’m going to be in your part of the circle until our install rate or our backlog is
down.” Today, I’m backing up from that a little bit as I’m changing my role.
26 To keep a close eye on his business’s financial performance, Lindsey used a
scorecard, which he had introduced a year after starting Defender. “It’s a concise Excel
spreadsheet,” said Lindsey, “with weeks’ and months’ worth of history and then this
week’s numbers, like, what’s the close rate? We want to get that scorecard more
automated, and we want that to be a live dashboard.” Lindsey held weekly Friday
meetings with his direct reports, during which they thoroughly reviewed all metrics on
the scorecard. The meetings started in the afternoon and lasted more than four hours.
FINANCING GROWTH
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27 All entrepreneurs know that funding growth is an expensive proposition and that
access to capital is one of the biggest challenges facing start-ups. Defender had an
advantage in that area because of its business model, which involved acquiring new
customers and then “selling” them to ADT and Dish. “They cash us out upfront,” said
Lindsey. “We sell the contract, which is a three-year agreement that has a value, just like
a bank sells a loan. It has always kept us cash rich, and we’ve been able to fund all this
growth without any debt.” In addition, Defender pulled in regular revenue from
installation and monthly monitoring services.
28 But the company experienced its share of bumps in the road. About a year into his
entrepreneurial journey, Lindsey struggled to make payroll. At a family dinner, he
wanted to forget about work but could not stop thinking about it. “I remember my dad
and I made eye contact,” Lindsey said. “I just broke down crying, telling him how
stressed out I was. So that’s early on, just cash flow and understanding. You’ve got all
these people believing in you, and you’re trying to have that initial confidence just to get
the ball to roll.” Lindsey elaborated: It got really ugly, and that led us to getting into Dish
Network Satellite TV in addition to ADT. So, luckily, things righted there. But that was
huge; we had one year of negative growth in 10 years, and that was that year. It was
really just about holding things together. I remember I had everybody in the company on
speakerphones, giving them a speech, “We’re going to get through this, and these are the
three or four things we’re going to do.” That was probably the biggest time I felt like a
general of an army.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BUSINESS MODEL
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29 For the first three years, Defender’s sales force consisted of “full-commission doorknockers,” as Lindsey put it. “It was a great way to start, because there’s no marketing,
and you’re only paying someone when the sale is made. Then we realized we could set
appointments instead of knocking on doors, and we became 100% telemarketing-based.”
30 Around the time Defender was transitioning to telemarketing, an acquaintance of
Lindsey’s introduced him to Marcia Raab, owner of a small call center in Indiana.
Defender soon became Raab’s exclusive customer. “She did a great job, was such a
servant to our 9-69-7business—she really did it at an exchange rate with us,” said
Lindsey. “Terrific marketing and sales person. She grew the 20-person call center to 200
people in two centers, and she owned that.”
31 Defender eventually bought Raab’s call centers, and Raab became Defender’s vice
president of sales and marketing. “She was an absolute dynamo,” said Lindsey. “She
started coming to our staff meetings, when she was our outsource partner with her own
call centers, which she ran like a division of ours. And then we formalized it and put her
in the VP spot.”
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32 The telemarketing operation had to be scrapped in 2001, with the introduction of the
“no-call list hit,” as Lindsey named it, which allowed consumers to put a stop to
unwanted telemarketing pitches. “So, we reinvented the business for the third time,”
Lindsey said. “Now it’s 100% direct mail and the Internet, so our call centers handle only
incoming calls.”
33 Defender’s call center kept growing, reaching more than 400 sales and customerservice agents in five contact centers located in Indiana and Ohio. The sales agents
handled inbound calls from potential customers, who responded to Defender’s newspaper
ads, pitches on the Internet, or direct-mail offers, while customer-service agents handled
the calls from existing customers seeking support. “The inbound agents who are taking
calls from prospective customers are paid minimum wage plus heavy commission,” said
Lindsey. “And with those people we have a fairly high turnover. You have to hire four or
five to get one who’s good.”
LINDSEY’S BIGGEST CHALLENGES
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34 From the time Lindsey launched his own business, he had been challenged to
continually evolve his relationship with the company, transforming himself from a doorto-door salesman to sales manager to controller to regional manager to president and
CEO in 10 years. As he reflected on his changing role, My biggest struggle has been
constantly reinventing my relationship to the business. You go from a business that’s in
an extra bedroom to 200 employees nationwide, $150 million in sales, and that is a huge
challenge in itself, both in terms of process, skill, and psychologically. Every year I say
to my wife that I have to reinvent my relationship to the business. It started with hiring
the first sales manager to go take these guys to knock on doors for me, to then jumping to
be an admin lead and putting someone else in my place. I feel like I kept filling a hole
and then leaving somebody behind. Then taking it from being in Indianapolis to being a
regional presence and all the skills it takes. And today I’m evolving even more into
being—I think of it as a chairman, a shareholder, investor, as well as business strategy
and new products.
Managing People
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35 As Lindsey’s relationship to his business evolved, so did his management philosophy.
At first, he found it hard to delegate. “It was hard to release control,” he admitted. “At
one time I thought I could do it better than anybody else. All it took was to hire a couple
of people and understand they could do it better than me.”
36 After six months of driving a van with his door-to-door sales team, Lindsey found a
sales manager he trusted who eventually became the number one ADT sales rep in the
country and rose through the ranks to become vice president of sales. Similarly, the first
installation technician Lindsey hired grew to become Defender’s vice president of
installation. When Defender was generating $20 million in revenue, he was in charge of
installation for the whole company. “When the job started to outstrip him, he was put into
a regional role, which was still almost a $10 million region,” said Lindsey. “I always say
to people whose jobs outstrip them, ‘You still have the same level of responsibility or
more.’”
9-79-8
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37 As a manager who never had much tolerance for mistakes, Lindsey described himself
as a proponent of tough love. “I kind of manage with a Bobby Knight–type7 of mentality
with my direct reports,” Lindsey said. “I’ve always said I need people with thick skin
who themselves do not tolerate mistakes.”
38 By 2008, Lindsey had four direct reports: chief operations officer (COO), chief
marketing officer (CMO), chief information officer (CIO), and chief financial officer
(CFO).
39 COO John Corliss, whom Lindsey had met at Medeco, came onboard in January 2006
as Defender’s CFO, a position he held for a year. As the COO, Corliss was responsible
for the company’s customer service, human resources, and installations departments.
Installations included all field installation technicians, who were full-time Defender
employees working in 120 installation locations around the country. In 2008, Lindsey
made him a partner in the business.
40 Marcia Raab, a Defender employee since 2001, was promoted from vice president of
sales and marketing to CMO and in 2008 became a partner. She was responsible for
managing the planning and purchasing of all Defender marketing programs as well as
overseeing the operations of Defender call centers. Lindsey said, “Marcia is the drumbeat
of the organization, and as fast as she beats that drum, the rest of us dance.”
41 Bart Shroyer, the CFO, came onboard in 2007. He was responsible for all accounting,
funding, and financial management for Defender. Shroyer, who had a breakout year in
2008, was made a partner in 2009.
42 Gregg Albacete, the CIO, joined Defender in 2007. He was responsible for building
and maintaining systems, databases, and the IT infrastructure that supported and extended
Defender’s business model.
Finding the Right CFO
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43 Among the many challenges Lindsey faced while growing his business, one of the
toughest was filling the CFO position. At first, Lindsey “gave a box of receipts to an
accountant,” as he described it, but nine months into his contract with ADT, Lindsey’s
wife took over the accounting function of the business. A few months later, with the help
of QuickBooks accounting software, Lindsey said, “She came on full-blown,” and
continued in the CFO role for five years, until the arrival of the Lindseys’ third child
when she became a full-time stay-at-home mom. Then, her assistant, who “grew up in the
business,” took over.
44 Lindsey admitted that he has had “four to five people” in the CFO position since he
started Defender. “It was the hardest job to fill,” he said. He elaborated: Our average
growth rate was 60% a year for the last 10 years. So you hire a bookkeeper, then you
need an accountant, and then you need a controller. I didn’t shoot far enough ahead. The
problem was, when I tried to shoot ahead, I got real schmoheads. CFOs are all by nature
pretty conservative people. They are sharp guys, not looking for a $10 million business to
work in. The only person who wants to be CFO in a $10 million business says, “Well, I’ll
just start my own business. I’m not going to work for this guy, take on his risk.” So I got
a couple of screwballs, who didn’t seem that way when I interviewed them. Once we got
to $50 million plus, it was a lot easier to attract people.
DEFENDER’S CULTURE
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45 Lindsey attributed Defender’s success to its culture, which he built around each
employee’s personal growth. Describing it further, he said, “Another word is ‘terrific.’
We talk about being terrific every day, and we choose to be that way.”
9-89-9
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46 Lindsey was continuously learning and growing, and he encouraged his employees to
do the same, sending them to various self-improvement seminars, such as Dale Carnegie
Training and Ed Foreman’s Successful Life Course. “We coined a saying, ‘Businesses
don’t grow—people do,’” said Lindsey. “I don’t want this to become a cliché around
Defender because it’s been our secret sauce. All of us had to grow. We’ve accomplished
this reinvention through good books and good tapes and networking with good people”
(Exhibit 2).
47 Over the course of 10 years, Lindsey reinvented Defender’s business model three
times, reinvented himself and his role, but, most important, he redefined the purpose of
his business, which had evolved from making money to growing people. “Our growth
plan 9-99-10is that you have to reinvent yourself this year,” Lindsey told 1,500 Defender
employees at its annual Self-Improvement Day, held in April in Indianapolis. This
companywide commitment to personal growth and continuous reinvention was the
linchpin of Defender’s corporate culture, and Self-Improvement Day provided an
opportunity for reaffirmation every year.
EXHIBIT 2: Defender Direct, Inc.: A Business of
Growing Leades
Defender’s Culture
At Defender Direct, we are about being the best! We have founded ourselves on the
principle that we can be the best in the world at customer acquisition for top brand-name
products and services that target homeowners. It doesn’t stop there. It has infiltrated
throughout our entire company.
We have the best employees! We have the kind of employees that are constantly
working on themselves and building themselves into leaders. At Defender Direct, you
will find people that are always striving to set and meet new goals. That is why we are
always promoting people from within. Our four passions act as a roadmap for making our
people the best they can be, and they really take it to heart.
We work with the best products! As a Dish Network dealer, we are one of the top-five
dealers in the country. For ADT, we are also a top dealer. How do we do that? By
working with the best products in the industry and products we believe in. Our employees
are some of our best customers! At Defender Direct, customers will find that we do our
best so we can be the best! We strive for excellence and that is what customers get each
time.
Defender Direct is the best in the world at customer acquisition for top brand-name
products and services that target homeowners.
Rewards and Recognition
o
o
o
o
• Annual Superstar Celebration. Every year we celebrate our employees’
accomplishments by taking them on an annual trip. For 2008, we took 278
employees and their guests to Cancun, Mexico. Past trips have included trips to
Jamaica and the Bahamas. Our superstars are what make us what we are, and we
want to celebrate that with a trip that lets them know how much we appreciate
their dedication and commitment to achieving their goals.
• Defender Family Day. Each Labor Day, we invite our employees and their
families to spend time with us for some fun and sun, our treat! Past events have
taken us to Indiana Beach and Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom. It’s a great way to
celebrate the last hurray of summer.
• Sales Contests. We understand that our sales team is a key driver for our
success. We have weekly contests and awards for our sales team to keep them
working on hitting and breaking new records. This year we even gave away a car!
• This is just a small list of the many things we do to reward and recognize our
employees’ dedication and hard work. We are always coming up with new ways
to reward them for all they contribute. We put this as a high priority on our to-do
list.
Training
o
o
• Every technician we hire attends Defender University, a complete training
program that gets them ready to be successful in the field. We have had some of
the top techs in the industry come out of Defender University, and we continue to
expand the size of our classes every month.
• We are always looking for opportunities to send our employees to training and
seminars, so that they are continuously developing and working on themselves.
Programs include the Dale Carnegie Training Program, Ed Foreman’s Successful
Life Course and much more. We believe in self-improvement, and we are always
looking for ways to help employees do just that.
Additional Perks
o
• Extensive library with books from great authors such as John Maxwell, Jim
Collins and Jack Welch.
o
o
o
• Corporate-sponsored Weight Watchers program to help employees achieve
personal weight-loss goals.
• Corporate chaplains.
• Much More!
Source: Adapted by case writer from the company Web site.
•
•
48 Lindsey was particularly proud of Defender Advantage, the company’s four-year
initiation program into the Defender culture, during which employees received leadership
training, participated in the company’s book club, and traveled with their families on
mission trips abroad to work as volunteers.8 In addition, newly hired installation
technicians attended Defender University, a complete training program that prepared
them to be successful in the field. Part of the Defender University’s curriculum was
Corporate Culture Day, during which all new hires listened to Defender’s senior
managers, including Lindsey, via satellite. The main purpose of Culture Day was to drive
the following message: “We are asking you to work harder on yourself than on your job.”
On Culture Day all new hires were also given the Defender Leadership Advantage Board,
which charted the path of their growth (Exhibit 3).
49 Besides focus and drive, Lindsey listed forgiveness as one of his greatest strengths as
a leader. As he told his staff, he believed that their “ability to forgive each other really
built a culture around here. It’s the glue that allows us to stay at this breakneck speed.”
Lindsey, who described himself as a “student of leadership,” stressed that his “basic
belief in forgiveness comes from [his] Faith and having learned from Jesus, who was a
servant leader.” Still, when reflecting on his entrepreneurial journey, Lindsey always
emphasized the lesson of continuous employee development: It’s been a humbling
learning [experience] for me as a business owner. It’s not about having a better plan or a
widget. It’s about helping your employees, because every time they grow, 9-109-11I
grow. And that’s what keeps me going, that’s my calling in life—to build and develop
leaders …. We don’t want to be in the business of buying and selling businesses. We
want to be in the business of growing and developing leaders. We have a platform to do
that. So that’s what my goal is.
Assignment Grading Rubric
Course: MT460
Unit: 9
Points: 45
_________________________________________________
Unit 9: Leadership, Policy, and Culture
Case Study Analysis Paper:
Prepare a case study analysis of Case 9, Defender Direct, Inc.: A Business of Growing Leaders found in the Cases
section of your digital book.
Closely follow the Case Study Analysis Template by clicking on the hyperlink. Please utilize this template format for this
Assignment. Use titles and subtitles per the format for readability purposes. Focus upon the idea of the company’s
strategy-culture relationship and which of the four strategy-culture situations should it implement in order to help move
Defender Direct forward. Please include the SWOT Analysis with the four quadrants in the appendix of your paper (after
the References page). You can find the SWOT analysis template in Doc Sharing.
Assignment Checklist:
•
•
Conduct a SWOT Analysis on the case study company’s current strategy-culture relationship.
Create a case study analysis focusing on which of the four strategy-culture situations it should implement in order
to help move the company forward.
Format
The case analysis should be 2--3 written pages in length (not including the formal title page and References page),
double-spaced. Ensure that you use correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and usage. The citing of sources
(text and list references) should use the current APA format and style.
For assistance with APA format and citation style visit the Kaplan Writing Center.
Directions for Submitting Your Project
•
•
•
Before you submit your project, you should save your work on your computer in a location and with a name that
you will remember.
Make sure your Assignment is in the correct file format (Microsoft Word .doc or .docx).
Submit y your completed document to the Unit 9 Assignment Dropbox.
Need help with the Dropbox? Click on the Dropbox Guide link under Academic Tools tab.
MT460 Unit 9 Assignment Grading Rubric
Maximum
Percent
Criteria
Maximum
Points
Content
Answer provides correct and complete
information demonstrating critical
thinking:
•
50%
•
Conduct a SWOT Analysis on
the case study company’s
current strategy-culture
relationship.
Create a case study analysis
focusing on which of the four
strategy-culture situations it
should implement in order to
help move the company
forward.
22
Analysis and Critical Thinking
30%
15%
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Synopsis of situation
Key issues
Problem definition
Alternative solutions
Select a solution
Implementation
Recommendations
Writing Style, Grammar
14
6
5%
100%
APA Format and Citation Style
3
Total
45
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