Miguel Bustillo of The Wall Street Journal reports on Home Depot's latest post-Nardelli turnaround in today's issue, highlighting how famous companies can turn their internal processes into news when they need coverage.
Communication was also a problem at Home Depot. Mr. Ellison [Marvin, EVP of U.S. Stores] said he was stunned to discover that store managers were drowning in hundreds of emails from headquarters.
So Mr. Ellison says he cut it to one email a week, on Monday, and set up a hotline for managers to complain if the edict is violated.
The reality is that Home Depot's management is too early in the major business initiatives described in the article to know if they will work or not. Amidst a litany of negative comparisons with Loew's, critical observations from customers and hard data about how slow their core markets are, Home Depot's spokespeople were able to use internal changes such as the new e-mail policy to convey a sense of positive change.
That sort of thing won't make a story for a small company but it is a critical discussion point for PR at big companies looking to make the most of a bad situation.
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