Analysis of Leadership based on Microsoft and Coca-Cola - Case Study Example

LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS of Analysis of Leadership Styles of Bill Gates Bill Gates is the senior executive at MicrosoftCorporation. Over the years, he has seen a collection of challenges plaguing the company but this has remained to be one of the largest companies in the whole world. From court cases against his company to personal issues, he has maintained the position of Microsoft in the market. This can be attributed to his leadership style. Bill Gates is not one leader whose style can fully be described as democratic or laissez faire. This success has been contributed by the ability to make shifts between autocracy and delegation type of leadership. Control was basic to his nature and practice of management. He was always obsessed with detail and checking. Having gone through several legal problems, he never required any dealing that would cause errors (Heller, 2001). That is he only hired well-endowed engineers under extremely stringent conditions to avoid mistakes. In the delegated domain, he believed that recruitment of the best engineers would save him the strength of having to follow up issues in the different departments. The recruitment process is never short. Once hired, the autonomy is given to the managers who take up full responsibility of every action they do. That is however one of the best ways to have a human resource effectively discharging its duties (Heller, 2001). The company has never failed under him. Organizational Structure and Culture of Coca-Cola The company for which interest is important is the Coca-Cola Company. This is a company that has maintained a high level culture and structure that it purely depends on this for continuity. In this company, the top management is at the prime of everything where there is the president and CEO Muhtar Kent. Immediately under him are the corporate and the manufacturing seniors. This is because these are the core and basic sections of the company being a producer company. The manufacturing is tasked with ensuring supply is efficient and marches demand in the market while the corporate staff takes care of management both at vertical and horizontal level at that stage. Source: Coca-Cola Company Being a multinational company, its marketing comes in hand to help keep its high profile stable in the wake of competition from other companies such as Pepsi. All these are aided by finances managed by the finance section of the company which lies at the same horizontal level as marketing. The next level is quite diverse and is categorical of the company being a multinational. The regional management in charge of the five international divisions is tasked with the work of co-coordinating operations in their regions. All regional leaders operate at the same horizontal management level. The last management bit comes to hand where there are sub-divisions in the regional level of management. This is descriptive of delegation where the company has given departmental and regional managers the mandate to exploit the best way of managing their regions. In this company, there are several leaders and subjects under them who work in a positive way towards the company success. The culture of the company as created by the CEO when he came to power was that of owning the company. He made it clear that it is impossible for the employees to work in a company they do not own. The culture moves around: Turning passion into action through individuals’ ability to contribute. Creation of fresh thinking regardless of the position held Collaboration spirit where it is stated that one cannot flourish without experiencing the diversity of other people A commercial mindset that helps understand challenges of sustainability All the above have helped improve work performance because the structure makes it clear that there is always someone controlling you whom you must consistently work with and the culture integrates the vision in people as noted by the human resource section of the company. Performance of Bill Gates and His Motivation Level Much as Bill Gates is an authoritarian, his ethical aspects management aspects can be described as involving. His way of expressing concerns may not be the best but the points are clearly taken home. He believes in team work and smartness at work. This has made Heller (2001) to describe it as a company that runs like a campus. Gates insists on five very critical issues; Personal mastery Team learning Systems thinking Shared vision and Mental models. As opposed to other companies that insist on experience, gates believe that the success of Microsoft purely relies on effective hiring other than experience. Ethically speaking, he has a coordinating factor where he insists on sharing knowledge. His communication therefore to employees and prospective ones for his matter is very clear; sharing knowledge is the most effective way to manage the goal of the company. There is therefore a general “building on each other’s idea “notion in the company. In so doing and saying, his ethical aspects groom new employees to a level to depict that what is expected of them is nothing but the best. He communicates that the whole organization must have the same unity of purpose. Therefore, he has a big ability to manage knowledge sharing through good rewards and recognition. The other aspect of Gates is his ability to effectively manage knowledge. In knowledge management, he has four areas of specification; planning, training, customer service and collaboration in projects. Many of the processes are carried out by online means but he has a personal touch on all employees as long as he is able to access them. There are several other direct involvement issues in his management is creation of a collaborative culture where he energizes workers effectively to the extent that they always want to be part of Microsoft. The successful records of Microsoft speak for themselves as far as success valuation is concerned. This is motivating because as an employee, you always feel part of a large group especially where the top management interacts with the recruits. This automatically improves work performance once one becomes part of the company staff (Lesinski, 2009). Motivating Employees From a structure examined in Microsoft and Coca-Cola, there is one striking feature in management that comes out. Team work and ability to manage groups has been the likely to the success of most of these companies. There are several ways through which organizational leaders can use to motivate their employees. The first one is recognizing employees as individuals and as groups and rewarding them as such. This has been seen in the two reviewed companies. Individuals can be recognized through email messages and by outward applauding especially in front of the others as well as making sure that the recognition is taken in good faith by the other employees (Nohria, Greysberg, & Lee, 2008). As a group, the organizational management can send weekly messages to employees to make them understand that their efforts are paying off. Moreover, meetings can be held to assure them that their efforts are contributing to the development of the company and achievement of the mission of the company. The second way to motivate workers is to develop close professional and social relationships at the place of work. Organizational leaders like human resource management team needs to know their employees. There is no good way of knowing them without interacting with them. Most managers pretend to be too busy to associate with their employees. Create a social event sponsored by the company and let there be a group event like “coffee Friday” or a games day works well for employees. It stops monotony and boredom at the place of work. The last and maybe most important aspect of motivation are through increased packages and working conditions. The employment is supposed to initiate a classical situation where there is a high sense of periodical financial increment. Other facilities like staff housing can be provided so that workers can feel comfortable going to work and getting back to a good home (Nohria, Greysberg, & Lee, 2008). Challenges Leaders Encounter When Managing Diversity Diversity has been a major problem in major work places. Without effective management, the whole organization may start running in liabilities, both social and financial. One of the major problems when managing diversity at the work place is communication. In the USA for instance, not all people have English as their first language although their contribution in companies is highly appreciated (Borrego & Johnson, 2011). Lack of effective communication at the place of work leads to low productivity because issues are not able to be handled effectively as per the instructions. For instance, a manager may give instructions to an employee and due to lack of effective understanding; the employee may not carry it out effectively. The second problem encountered in diversity management is conservatism and opposition to change. Different employees come from different backgrounds. Their backgrounds dictate their behavior and the way they do things. A change in these may spur opposition and rebellion. Moreover, change in management also brings change in regulations. Many companies have maintained a given way of doing things and workers who stay in that company for long may find them out of place when it comes to changing to new regulations. This is a very big problem especially to the relatively old employees. The type of diversity also may bring challenges. Some strategies such as affirmative have always received a lot of opposition especially to those that it does not favor (Borrego & Johnson, 2011). In the world of business however, diversity at the work place brings with it variation in carrying out diversified strategies. An employee of Spanish diversity may for example be useful in implementing a marketing strategy in Mexico. Effective Business Strategy Strategies are meant to confirm development of an organization. Putting together the problems that do occur at work place and the diversity problems help professionals to manage them well (Lesinski, 2009). The first way to manage workplace problems and diversity differences is to confirm that all the policies at work place from hiring, promotions and firing is entirely based on performance. Avoid use of tenure, ethnicity and favors in promotions. These bring about all the problems realized in diversity management. The second way to manage these is that qualifications are supposed to be rated based on the experience and expertise and not age or any other category of existence. This is the first step in diversity management. Thirdly, diversity must be put in consideration when creating teams and groups. These groups are also supposed to be hired based on the aspect of their qualifications as well as diversity. This brings cohesion taken from the differences of these workers. Complains of favoritism and discrimination are supposed to be treated very seriously. Employees are supposed to be encouraged to report all cases of favoritism and there should be a modality for doing that. Lastly, quarterly trainings and periodical increments in salaries for the workers should be implemented. This helps them keep updated with the latest knowledge given that work place trends are very dynamic. The increment in remuneration helps develop a positive motivation and ownership of the company (Pant, 2008). References Borrego, E., & Johnson, ‎. G. (2011). Cultural Competence for Public Managers: Managing Diversity in Today s World. New York: CRC Press. Company, T. C.-C. (2013, December 31). Employee Engagement. Retrieved February 21, 2014, from The Coca-Cola Company: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/employee-engagement#TCCC Heller, R. (2001). Bill Gates, Genius Of The Software Revolution And Master Of The Information Age. Business Summaries, 9(2), 2-16. Lesinski, J. M. (2009). Bill Gates: Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Washington : Twenty-First Century Books. Nohria, N., Greysberg, B., & Lee, L. E. (2008, July-August). Employee Motivation, A powerful new Model. Harvard BUsiness Review , pp. 1-7. Pant, P. (2008). Business intelligence (BI), How to build successful BI strategy. Washington: Deloitte Consulting LLP. Read More