Michael Budman and Don Green are the co-founders of Roots Canada Ltd., a business retailer selling clothing, footwear, and luggage, which was founded in Canada in 1973. Budman and Green have a customer-oriented leadership style as a foundation of their business. This can be attributed to the values that their firm is based on, which are the principles of comfort, practicability, and simplicity of design, which all work for the customer’s benefit. Another leadership style exhibited by Budman and Green is that of team participation and bottom-up management. This is evident from their involvement in broad-based participation of different design teams to develop various designs. Still, approval of any new product lies at the discretion of Budman and Green.
Budman and Green are not leaders of integrity because the firm previously acknowledged that all of its Olympic branded products were made in Canada, which was not the case, and the fact why the firm was criticized by various labor organizations for not meeting international labor standards as an indicator of lack of integrity in their leadership.
It turns out that both Budman and Green are not effective leaders because they have not been successful in most of their new ventures and continue venturing into new business risks. This is an indication of an ineffective leader who has not done proper research and planning.
Budman and Green need to learn the skills of risk-taking in business and become more patient in any business they are going to undertake in the future.
The major challenge that Budman and Green will experience in the future is that of financing their social causes.