Enable
Home Depot sought to emphasize a decentralized culture allowing the company to provide employees more responsibility and feel more apart of the corporate decision making process. During the establishment of the company the founders implemented a stock purchase program where employees would be given stock with a guarantee that the company would buy back the stock at the price employees were given the stock at even if it went down. This allowed employees to become stockowners and decision makers. Individual Home Depot stores were decentralized as well, allowing for management decisions to be made by individual stores to a certain extent.
Execute
Home Depot’s various visions throughout the history of the company have been executed with varying degrees of success. Marcus and Blank’s initial vision for the company was realize with impeccable accuracy, much of which came because of the strong vision the founders had. When he came to the company Nardelli also had a vision, but his execution of that vision did not work as intended. 29 of 34 executives left the company early in his tenure due to poor execution of his vision. The events that occurred under Nardelli’s tenure demonstrate why having a vision is important, but without proper execution a vision can be essentially worthless. Since Nardelli’s departure the company has seen new visions with better execution, which has been reflected in the return to dominance of the company.