Leadership in the 21st Century - Report Example

How Are Leaders Leading in the 21st Century? Leadership style of the CEO Leadership in the 21st century is characterized by those who are innovative and break the curve. The CEO that has been considered for this particular wrote op is the Google CEO Larry Page. Larry page is a democratic leader who values innovativeness. Some of the characteristic traits of Larry page as a leader are: Larry encourages his staff to come up with crazy tactics Page encourages his employees to come up with crazy ideas. He holds the belief that of once does not come up with crazy ideas he is doing the wrong things. Page urges his employees to come up with audacious ideas and pursue that idea single minded. By tackling great ideas even if the idea was not the original goal the result is great and worthwhile. Page tries to build his own team and avoids bureaucracy In the earlier days Page took individual time to select employees for the organization. The good fact is that many of the early employees have continued to stay with the organization and this is success to Page’s leadership style. Page dislikes conventional leadership style and so shuffles his management who are sitting at the top position in a bid to avoid bureaucracy. Quick and concise Page facilitates and likes quick decisions to be made at the company. In order to make this happen, Page has asked his employees to give him 60 word update on the projects that the executives are on so that he has knowledge of all the things that are going on in the company as well as be efficient at the same time (Efrati, 2011). Persevere Larry page knows how to stick with a single idea for many years still in achieve success (Elmer, 2011). Page first goes out after an idea and then when he is sure of the idea he goes on to convince other of the idea till the time everyone is convinced. The L team Larry likes to give independence to the various executives who head different departments at Google. His Vision is to impose autonomy with collaborations at the same time (Swift, 2011). He has a group of top executives who reports directly to him and works in close proximity to his office for a major part of the week. How CEOs leadership style aligns with the culture The culture of Google is very open and innovative. It supports innovation as the organization is a technology company and the only way it can retain its position in the market place is through constant innovation. The leadership style of page perfectly aligns with the company. He encourages the employees to come up with crazy ideas and then follow that idea. He likes people working independently as well as collaboration with each other. He hates conventional style of management and hates bureaucracy. These are the factors that are also implicit in the culture of Google. It has never stopped innovating since it was formed. Page wants to remove bureaucracy from his organization and wants his organization to act like a start-up rather than acting as an incumbent. Examine the CEOs personal and organizational values Larry’s Value has close proximity with the Google’s value and that is one of the reasons why he has been as successful as the CEO and the people like to work under him. One of the central themes of Google is that as a company it encourages innovation. Google is a company which encourages new ideas and Larry personally is the forerunner of this value. He personally encourages his employees to have crazy ideas. Employees in Google are permitted to use 20% of their work time on projects that they actually like. Second philosophy of Google is that ‘Don’t be evil’. Barring a few isolated cases the company has largely kept its word n most of the cases. Another of Page’s central value is that he hates bureaucracy and red tape. He has facilitated this spirit with the organization by asking the executives to give him a 60 word update of the projects that they are currently pursuing. Influence of CEOs values on ethical behavior within the organization The way CEO behaves in an organization has an impact on the organization and its culture. Through the strategic decisions that the CEO makes the impresses his values on the organization and the organization culture is in turn influenced by the strategic decisions’ of the CEO (Linley, Woolston & Biswas-Diener, 2009). So CEO’s have to be careful regarding the values that they bring with the organization as the values of the CEO is likely to be imitated throughout the organization. The values and behavior of the CEO serves as a standard that has to be followed throughout the organization. In case of Google when Eric Schmidt was the CEO of the company a lot of bureaucracy had crept within the company as Schmidt believed in traditional management style (Turunç, Çelik & Mert, 2013). However Mr. Page did not approve that and the first step that he advocated as a CEO was to remove this red tape of bureaucracy throughout Google so that Google starts acting again as a start up and not as an incumbent. Strength and weakness as a leader Strengths of Larry page as a leader are as follows. Larry is focused and crazy about innovation. Larry is himself focused on following crazy ideas and also encourages his employees to do so. This serves well for a company like Google which is an innovation based company. Persevere- Once Larry has a great idea in which he believes in, he will continue to stick with the idea and see that idea through to its end. Collaboration and avoiding bureaucracy- Larry understands the values of collaboration and so he encourages his employees to come out of bureaucracy and increase collaboration amongst them. Weakness Being introvert Larry does not like to talk and face the investors of other partners which can have a negative impact Larry is not adept n dealing with controversy. Following dreams can sometimes be risky and this is a risk that creative leaders have to face. Changes the CEO should consider to improve as a leader Page as a CEO and leader of Google is very introvert in nature. Larry has to learn to communicate more whether it is to the Goggle’s partners, media and to the others. As some people hold the view in order to be an effective CEO, the CEO must learn as to how to communicate with others. This is evident from the fact that if the CEO does not communicate with others then his and his company’s decision may not be understood well by others and backlash may ensure. One example of miscommunication or lack of communication of Larry page was evident when after its earnings announcement Page did not hold a question and answer session with the investors and one day after the incident Goggle’s share dropped by more than 8%. Another lesson that the Google’s CEO should learn is how to deal with adversity. When Google does a thing it does not consider the cost of backlash or the cost of defending it. This threat may eventually loom large for the company. The company was at the receiving end of an antitrust complaint that was filed against the company by Microsoft and as the company continues to enjoy dominant market share in search and advertising industry it is likely to receive additional complains. Effect of communication and collaboration, and power and politics influence group dynamics Collaboration within a group refers to the different groups in the organization working together towards a singular goal. Effective collaboration is facilitated by effective communication. Collaboration can result only if the members of the organization communicate with each other. Communicating means not only within the same levels but communicating through all levels of an organization. Most of the previous organization used to be vertically aligned as power was centralized at the top and it flowed vertically down through the organization in top down manner. Now days however there is more emphasis on matrix type of organization. References Efrati, A. (2011). At Google, Page Aims to Clear Red Tape. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703784004576220902706041400 Elmer, V. (2011). What would Larry Page do? Leadership lessons from Google's doyen. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2011/04/18/what-would-larry-page-do-leadership-lessons-from-googles-doyen/ Linley, P., Woolston, L., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2009). Strengths coaching with leaders. International Coaching Psychology Review, 4(1), 37-48. Swift, M. (2011). Larry Page set to take over as Google CEO starting Monday. Retrieved from http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_17753706?nclick_check=1 Turunç, Ö, Çelik, M., & Mert, İ. (2013). The impact of leadership styles on ethical behaviour. Journal of Academic Research In Economics, 5(1), 60-86. Read More