Assignment of week 23

1)      In your own words and using referenced quotes describe what is meant by the term “strategic leadership”.

2)      Identify two interesting similarities and two differences between the 5 Elements of Successful and Effective Strategic Leadership model and the Transcendent Leadership model.

Answers

1)       Strategic leadership refers to a manager’s potential to express a strategic vision for the organization, or a part of the organization, and to motivate and persuade others to acquire that vision. According to the Professor Richard Lynch, “Strategic leadership is the ability to shape the organization’s decisions and deliver high value over time, not only personally but also by inspiring and managing others in the organization”.

The main objective of strategic leadership is strategic productivity. Another aim of strategic leadership is to develop an environment in which employees forecast the organization’s needs in context of their own job. Strategic leaders encourage the employees in an organization to follow their own ideas. Strategic leaders make greater use of reward and incentive system for encouraging productive and quality employees to show much better performance for their organization. Functional strategic leadership is about inventiveness, perception, and planning to assist an individual in realizing his objectives and goals.  The strategic leadership requires skills and talent that goes beyond the normal thinking. Some essential skills can be pointed as:

a)      Anticipate

b)      Challenge

c)      Interpret

d)     Decide

e)      Align

f)       Learn

Holistic Theories of Strategic Leadership

a)       Five elements of successful and effective strategic leadership model

b)      Transcendent Leadership Model

Five elements of successful and effective strategic leadership model have been developed by Lynch in order to describe strategic leadership. Followings are the five elements of successful and effective leadership model:

a)       Developing and communicating the organizations’ purpose

b)      Sustaining Competitive Advantage over time

c)      Managing human resources & organizational decisions

d)      Setting ethical standards

e)       Defining and delivering to Stakeholders.

Strategic Leadership: Transcendent Leadership

a)       Leadership of Organization

b)       Leadership of Others

c)       Leadership of Self

Answer 2 :

Similarities:

Both the model of strategic leadership, focus on maintaining good relationship between leaders and followers. These models believe that organizational goals can be achieved only with the cooperation in between leaders and followers. Leaders are the idol for its followers or employees. They need to motivate their follower with reward and incentives. Leaders have the responsibility to develop skills of their followers or employees. By maintain good relationship with followers leaders need to achieve organizational goals.

The main purpose of both the leadership model is to achieve organizational goal. By preserving competitive advantage of the organization both focuses on achieving organizational goals and objectives.

Differences:

Lynch model is more flexible than the Transcendent Leadership model. It is because Lynch model is more focused on developing the key skills of employees is only possible with a good relationship with them, whereas transcendent model is more focused with the rules, procedure and structure of organization.

Lynch model give more emphasis to maintain good relationship with stakeholders whereas transcendent leadership model has not mentioned such relationship with stakeholders. Lynch model of strategic leadership believes that with a good relationship with both the internal and external stakeholders, organization may be able to adapt to change in a complex situation.

References:

·         Crossan, M., Vera, D and Nanjad, L. (2008) Transcendent Leadership: strategic leadership in dynamic environments, The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 19, Issue 5, October 2008, Pages 569-581.

·         Lynch, R., (2009) Strategic Management, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall, chapter 16.

·         Burke, C. S., Stagl, K. C., Salas, E., Pierce, L., & Kendall, D. (2006). Understanding team adaptation: A conceptual analysis and model. Journal of Applied Psychology,91(6),1189-1207. doi:10.1037/0021 -9010.91.6.1189.

·         Chemers, M. M. (2000). Leadership research and theory: A functional integration. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4, 27-43. doi:10.1037/1089-2699.4.1.27.

Assignment of Week 21

Week 21

1)         What are the benefits and drawbacks of taking an “emergent” approach to strategy making?

2)       Did Honda’s entry strategy demonstrate the characteristics of “logical incrementalism‟?

Answers

1)    A strategy which is always in the process of being articulated it emerges through a process of learning. An emergent strategy is a pattern of action that develops over time in an organization in the absence of a specific mission and goals, or despite a mission and goals.

Emergent Strategy is a strategy whose final objective is unclear and whose element are developed during the course of its life, as the strategy proceeds.A perfectly emergent strategy is characterized by order, but in the absence of intention about it. It is although difficult to imagine action in the total absence of intention. Emergent strategy does not mean chaos, but in essence unintended order.

Benefits of emergent strategy:

Flexibility:

Emergent Strategy increase flexibility in a turbulent environment, allowing the business to respond to threats and exploits opportunities. Organizations must keep their options open , by not committing to early actions and investments.

Entrepreneurship:

Emergent strategy is developed for adapting human needs and continuing to develop overtime. The difficult period gets the best leadership skills out of the individuals. The best way to find out what will work is to let people try. This is conductive to an entrepreneurial spirit to emerge.

Learning:

It gives an opportunity for the organization and the employees to learn from the errors and mistakes .Letting strategy emerge provides the environment of the organization to learn.

Drawbacks of emergent strategy:

Bad Planning:

Emergent strategy does not happen by accident. A corporate strategic plan should allow for the emergence of potential benefits that were never anticipated. When those benefits are discovered, an emergent strategy is in place to analyze them and see if the benefits should be explored further.

Emergent strategy is that its lacking in planning so that the organization lacks in any sense of strategic direction and control.

Unclear goals and objectives:

Since emergent strategy is a pattern of action that develops overtime in an organization in absence of specific missions and goals. It often has unclear goals and objectives.

 Answer : 2

With studying all the case study we can easily say that Honda’s entry strategy demonstrate the characteristics of logical incrementalism. Logical incrementalism is a management philosophy which states that strategies do not come into existence based on a one time decision but rather, it exists through making small decision that is evaluated periodically. These small decision are not made randomly but logically through experiment and learning.

In the case of Honda, they learn from every failure strategy. Every time it failed it goes for another strategy again and again and finally that experience helps them to grow in the market.At the very beginning stage of business in U.S, the people there used to believe the motorcycles are for bad guy or rowdies, so in order to remove the misconception Honda introduced “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda" slogan. Further, they knew that Motorcycle business was seasonal in U.S and after knowing this some Honda’s motorcycles began to sell but after some month’s complaint were coming about the machines. They again ran test and redesign the machine. In such a way Honda continuously scanned the US motorcycle environment and it was successful in adapting with changes.

 For 5 years Honda struggled a lot to get in U.S. markets.  As it turns out, even Honda's larger bikes were not robust enough for American riders and they started having engine failures. While waiting for the engineers to upgrade the design, the staff in the U.S. continued to hit the streets. They rode around doing errands in Los Angeles on Honda's small lightweight bike, the 50cc Super Cub. The success of the Super Cubs eventually translated into success with larger bikes, and Honda went from no presence at all in the U.S. market in 1959 to 63% of the market.

     The conclusions from the successes of Honda and Grace Manufacturing are to have humility about what you don't know about an unfamiliar market, to not over-plan and to stay adaptable to emerging information and circumstances. This doesn't mean being wishy-washy or directionless. Your objectives must be clear, but the shape in which success takes shape within them may be quite unexpected.

           References:

          Abrahamson, Eric (1996) ‘Management fashion’,Academy of Management Review 21.1:     254-285.

         Abbeglen, James C. and George Stalk Jr. (1985) Kaisha, The Japanese Corporation. New York: Basic Books.

Lessons from Honda's Early Adaptive Strategy, 2011, Available from <

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/lessons_from_hondas_early_adap.html>

Assignment of week 20

Assignment of week 18

1.      How can using the Change Kaleidoscope and Force-field analysis help an organization to deliver its intended strategy?

Change Kaleidoscope and Force-field analysis are the major tools which are used to assess the change within an organization. Both the tools have got positive and negative features. The positive features assist change and the negative features resist change.

Change Kaleidoscope

The change kaleidoscope is a diagnostic framework. It can be particularly useful in a context sensitive change process, which one can argue is the case in this management project.

The kaleidoscope contains an outer ring concerned with the organizational strategic context. There is a middle ring that has the features of the change context. Finally there is an inner ring which contains the design choices that can be made.

The change contextual features are aspects of the organization to do with its culture, competences and current situation. These are all issues that need consideration before selecting the change approach.

Below you find a short theoretical description of each one of them:

• Time: How much time does the organisation have to achieve this change? Is it in a short term crisis or is it concerned with long-term strategic development? Are stakeholders, such as the stockmarket, expecting short term results from the change?

• Scope: Is the required outcome realignment or transformation? Does the change affect the whole organisation, or is it only concerned with a particular division or department?

• Preservation: To what extent is it essential to maintain continuity in certain practices or preserve specific assets? Do these practices and/or assets constitute invaluable resources, or do they contribute towards a valued stability or identity within an organisation?

• Diversity: Is the staff group concerned diverse or relatively homogeneous in terms of its values, norms and attitudes? Are there many subcultures or national cultures within the group? Are there different departments or divisions or is it one particular staff group? With whom or what in the organisation do different staff groups identify – their team, job, department, division or the whole organisation? Are there professionals who identify more with their profession than their organisation?

• Capability: How capable or competent is the organisation at managing change and how widespread throughout the organisation is this capability? How much change has the organisation and its individual staff experienced in the past? Is there an expertise at an individual level for handling change?

• Capacity: How much cash or spare human resource is there to divert towards the change?

• Readiness for change: Are staff aware of the need for change? If they are, how willing and motivated are they towards the change? How much support generally is there for the change? How much understanding is there for the scope needed?

• Power: Where is power vested within the organization? For this change to be successful, who are the major stakeholders within and outside the organization whose support must be canvassed? Is the unit needing to change part of a larger group or is it relatively autonomous?

The kaleidoscope does not give predictable configurations that lead to more formulaic change recipes. The eight contextual features remain the same but they are constantly reconfigured to produce different pictures for each organizational change situation. Certain features lead to certain design choices, but the potential permutations are endless.

The eight contextual features of the change kaleidoscope are:

2. Add your Change Kaleidoscope diagram for Hewlett Packard (Exercise 1 – slide 21) to your Learning Journal.

References

·  Online available from http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/vijaymallya-shuts-down-kingfisher-re/1/19258.htm/. [Accessed April 6, 2013]

·         Online available from http://www.economictimes.com  [Accessed April 3, 2013]