Leadership by Lee Cockrell - Essay Example

Leadership by Lee Cockrell Leadership by Lee Cockrell (Lee Cockrell, “Committed, responsible, inspiring leaders create a culture of care, which leads to quality service, which leads to Guest satisfaction, which leads to measurable business results and a strong competitive advantage” (Cockrell, 2008). Lee Cockrell, the Executive Vice President of Operations for Walt Disney World Resort, is one of the major influential business leaders of modern era. He is successful in providing immense contributions to areas such as scientific business management and business leadership. In an eventful career characterised by lot of ups, downs, controversies and complements, Lee Cockrell has showed that some of the existing principles and theories about leadership need drastic changes. He is currently regarded as a well-respected leader and his views and opinions about business management are well respected and accepted in the business world. This paper analyses different characteristics of the Leadership of Lee Cockrell. Lee Cockrell: Primary business Lee Cockrell has started his career as a banquet waiter at the Hilton and climbed the ladder of organizational leadership one by one. Before becoming the Vice President of Walt Disney, he worked at various positions such as beverage controller at the Waldorf-Astoria, a manager at Marriot etc. In other words, Lee Cockrell’s primary functional areas were service sector. Since he started his career from a lowest level, he knows the psychology of all types of employees. It should be noted that most of the current managers know nothing about the needs of the employees since they don’t have the experience of working in the labour category. However, Lee Cockrell had all types of experiences during his lengthy tenure of employments in service sector and therefore he knows the needs of the employees better than others. The three major challenges faced by Lee Cockrell in running Walt Disney were; keeping up with the changes happening in the service sector, risks developed by the replication of products and services and the increased competition in the service sector. Lee Cockrell’s leadership style Products and services can easily be replicated. So if your company’s competitive advantage is based on products and services alone, you are at risk. But if it’s based upon products, services, and quality service, then you’ll have a competitive advantage that’s very difficult to match. And you can get quality service only by creating a caring, respectful, people-cantered culture within your company. Take care of your people, and they will take care of your business, not just because they have to but because they want to (Cockrell, 2008). Lee Cockrell has given more importance to quality service which brought dividends to the Walt Disney Company. He has realised that normal service and quality service are entirely different things and it is difficult to attract customers with the help of quality products and normal servicing methods alone. Even quality products may become useless if the servicing is inadequate to rise up to the expectations of the customers. He has realised that current customers value quality servicing more than anything else. He has formulated the unique way to raise the standards of servicing in his organization. Instead of compelling the employees to behave in a particular way, he has created a loving, caring and respectful work culture in Walt Disney. In his opinion, the natural instincts of the employees should be changed in order to raise the levels of servicing and for that purpose, it is necessary to develop a loving culture in a service organization like Walt Disney. The unique service quality offered by Walt Disney helped them not only to overcome the stiff competition from others, but also to meet the expectations of the changing customers. Thus, Lee was successful in addressing all three major challenges faced by Walt Disney with the help of one strategy. “Lee’s strategy is about moving from the old hierarchy to an inclusive, flexible, fluid, inclusive structure—from “telling” to “asking.” These missions, values, and strategies have made Disney a great learning organization” (Cockrell, 2008). Employees normally hesitate a bit in asking some doubts or questions to the top managers. Normally they are receiving instructions from the managers. In other words, employees may not take self-initiatives in a normally managed organization. However, in Walt Disney, Lee was successful in changing such traditional management concepts. He encouraged the employees to ask questions always instead of waiting for the instructions from the managers. Thus, Walt Disney was able to address management issues as quickly as they occur. “Leading into an uncertain future, there is a call for principled, ethical, effective leaders—not repeating the strategies and philosophies of the past, but redefining the future—the opportunities, the challenges, the ambiguities”(Cockrell, 2008). Normal leaders always like to stick with the scientific management principles they learned from their academic studies. They may not bother much to make many changes in such management principles in order to avoid headaches. Lee on the other hand is ready to travel in different directions and untraveled routes. In his opinion, academics will give insights only about the past management challenges whereas experience will provide insights about present and future challenges. So, he has given more importance to the lessons learned from experiences rather than that from the campuses. In his opinion, About midway in my 41-year career in the hospitality industry, I learned that one of our employees at Marriott was making racist remarks. I confronted him, shook my finger in his face, and told him he had a bad attitude. He cracked me over the head with a clipboard. I had proven my point about his attitude all right, but at the expense of 14 stitches. That night, my wife, Priscilla, said to me, “Lee, do you think this happens because of the way you talk to people?” She knew it wasn’t the first time my intimidating management style had backfired on me (Cockrell, 2009). The above incident clearly shows Lee’s willingness to learn from the mistakes. Such incidents occurred plenty in number in Lee’s professional life. However, the success of Lee lies in his ability to learn some lessons from such incidents. The above incident also shows Lee’s attitude towards racism and cultural diversity. Walt Disney is operating in different countries at present and therefore issues related to cultural conflicts often affect the functioning of Walt Disney also. Being a secular person, Lee is able to manage all such cultural challenges successfully. “Understanding what makes each and every employee different will allow the manager to better understand the difference in a group and how the group can have a “common” goal or idea. “If you know them well, then you will treat them well””(Victor, 2011). In Lee’s opinion, the focus of the leader should be on others not on themselves. He has pointed out that workers are unique and therefore their needs are also unique. The success of leadership or management lies in the understanding of each employee needs. The needs of an American employee may not be the same that of an Indian or Chinese employee. Moreover, it is necessary for the business to adapt with the environment in which it operates. In Lee’s opinion, if the managers are smart enough to identify the needs of the diverse employees and the environment, business can be operated successfully in any part of the world. Lee Cockrell’s theory of leadership Even though Lee was an aggressive leader in the past, he changed his leadership styles a lot at present. His experiences were the learning curves for him. He has formulated ten strategies for becoming a successful leader which are given below; “Remember, Everyone Is Important, Break the Mould, Make Your People Your Brand, Create Magic Through Training, Eliminate Hassles, Learn the Truth, Burn the Free Fuel, Stay Ahead of the Pack, Be Careful What You Say and Do, Develop Character” (Cockrell, 2009). In Lee’s opinion, even a sweeper or a peon can contribute heavily to an organization if they are managed well. “At Disney, the acronym RAVE is used, meaning respect, appreciate and value everyone” (McBee, 2009). He has stressed the importance of breaking the traditional management principles and to remold it, in order to make them suitable to the needs of the changing business world. He has mentioned that instead of spending huge amounts for brand building activities, it is better to make the employees as the brand ambassadors of the company. In other words, a company can build its reputation through its employees. In order to build the brand through the employees, the company should empower the employees with the help of training and development. He has pointed out that unnecessary hassles should be avoided in the functioning of the employees and they should be allowed to function freely. In other words, the company should trust the employees. The word of Appreciation, recognition and encouragement should be used extensively while managing the employees. In short, the leader should set the example, and he should be able to show a strong character in front of the employees. Lee has pointed out that “People are not just evaluated on the results that their work achieves. They are praised because of their personal characteristics, their cooperation, good judgment, and initiative” (McBee, 2009) Lee Cockrell’s impact on global business leadership “Disneys Approach to People Management motivates organizations wishing to benchmark the Disney corporate culture, which is driven by inspired Cast Member (employee) pride and ownership” (Lee Cockrell, 2011). Global organizations have taken lot of inspirations from Lee Cockrell’s leadership. Many of the global organizations started to respect its employees more at present than before because of the lessons taught to the corporate world by Lee. Organizations realised that employees are the most valuable and primary asset to a company and all other organizational resources are secondary. In the absence of loyal and competent employees, organizational resources may not mobilize properly. Lee was successful in making the organizations aware of the necessities of working in line with the needs of the environment. In other words, Lee reminded the corporate world that sustainability of any business lies in its commitment to the environment in which it operates. Conclusions Lee Cockrell is one of the most successful leaders of modern era. His most valuable contribution is making the corporate world aware of the importance of workforce in the development of an organization. References Cockrell L. (2008). Creating Magic. Retrieved from http://www.wdwplanner.com/creatingmagic.htm Cockrell L. (2009). Creating Leadership Magic. Leader To Leader, No.53, Summer 2009 Retrieved from http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=778 Lee Cockrell (2011). Retrieved from http://www.leecockerell.com/di.cfm McBee M. (2009). "Creating Magic," by Lee Cockrell. Retrieved from http://www.teachingpr.org/management_book_reviews/2009/03/creating-magic-by-lee-cockrell.html Victor (2011). Tag Archives: Lee Cockerell. Retrieved from http://victorwongiv.wordpress.com/tag/lee-cockerell/ Read More