Leadership, Strategy and Innovation - Google - Case Study Example

LEADERSHIP, STRATEGY AND INNOVATION Contents Contents 2 Company’s Mission 3 Ashridge Sense of Mission Model 4 2. Answer 8 References 11 Company’s Mission Mission of a company defines its purpose or reason of its business. Mission statement of an organization includes goals and objectives of the company. It highlights different process that the company is majorly dealing with. Mission statement also focuses on the performance standard that a company expected to achieve (Boxall and Purcell, 2006). A firms focus and target varies from time to time but its mission statement does not change. It describes the short term objective of a company. An organization highlights its mission statement for motivating its employees to achieve its goals and objectives. It acts as a verbal reminder to all the members of an organization about their responsibilities. As per Ashridge sense of mission model a company develop its mission by combining different organizational values (Johnson, Whittington and Scholes, 2011). By this process employees form an organizational culture based on the values which help Google to establish various strategies according to its purpose. The four elements like value, culture, strategy and purpose combine together and form a good balance. All of these elements play a vital role in establishing a sense of mission of Google. Big firms are able to carry out their mission successfully as the management of these companies has a strong communication with all the employees. Managers and leaders of Google communicate organizational values and mission effectively to the employees (Baker and Doran, 2007). As a result, employees develop a clear perception about company’s strategies and purpose which help them to improve their performances. Strategies of large companies like Google are decided by its top managers. Employees do not perceive their job only as a way to earn but they perceive it as an important way to for making meaningful contribution to Google Google is one of the large companies of the world. It started its business in1998. The company initially started its business as an internet search engine (Grant, 2013). Within 15 years Google has reached a very successful position in the market. The company has experienced huge growth and innovation in its business process for its effective strategies. According to Ashridge sense of mission model Google has a strong mission statement. This helps its employees of all level to operate the business process and their job efficiently. Google’s mission also helps its organizational leaders to innovate new business process and its strategies for achieving company’s objectives. The most important organizational leader of Google is Larry Page and Sergey Brin (McLean, 2005). Under the leadership of these two people the company was established. The founders of Google disclosed that Google do not have the intension to become a conventional company nor it was a conventional company. This statement influenced a lot to form organizational values and culture. The leaders of this company perform their job on the basis of these factors (Schein, 2010). Ashridge Sense of Mission Model Figure 1:Ashridge Sense of Mission Model (Cummings, 2002) Ashridge Model is formed on four vital elements which contribute a lot in establishing mission of a company. These four elements complement each other. Google has a strong link between these four elements. The organizational values and its strategies help to form behavioural standard in the company. Purpose: Mission of Google is to organize its business process in such a way that all the information of the world can be easily accessible in a useful way. Different purpose of Google can be derived and understood by its mission statement. Larry Page and Sergey Brin started this company with the objective of achieving this purpose (Armstrong, 2006). Google initially started as a search engine. But with time the company expanded and diversified its business. Strong leadership skills of it two founders and effective strategy of the company helped it to get many customers and strong financial backing. It enabled the company to its IPO in stock market of USA. In 2004 Google became a publicly owned company. The leaders of Google tried to fulfil its mission statement by introducing new products and services into the business. Success in offering IPO influenced them to change and focus more on future strategies of the company (Sims, 2007). The purpose of the company remained same but the leaders improved their understanding about it. Therefore they implemented different new strategies. In 2011 the company acquired 99 different companies all over the world. Various major acquisitions are done by this company during this time. The company implemented the strategy of launching an operating system for mobile known as Android. Google acquired a video sharing website, You Tube. The company also introduced Google Chrome as a Web Browser. By implementing all of these strategies, the leaders of the organizations made the company capable of developing new products which help people to find information more easily with the help of advanced software. Google deliver high quality of services by focusing more on its purpose (Yaeger and Sorensen, 2009).Various accusation and innovations are done by Google to fulfil its business purpose. The leaders of the organization are responsible to implement and establish different strategies which are closely related to its purpose. Strategy Focused: Different strategies of Google are formed on the basis of leadership structure of the company. Google believes in simplicity. Organizational leader of Google have designed the Google page in such a way that users can easily get what they want. From its very beginning the Page and Brin has established many unique strategies for the company. Under their leadership the company follows an unusual route which helps it to become successful. The structure and management of Google provides freedom to its employees in their job (Huq, 2010). This management system of the company helps it to promote leadership skills of the employees. Google follows two tire structures in its governance structure which helps the company to provide managerial freedom. The leaders of the organization focus on establishing and maintaining the strategies quality workflow by participative leadership process. They formed light managed organizational process. The company implemented participative leadership strategy of building small teams for delivering quality work. The organizational leaders of Google provide different types of facilities to its employees (Lencioni, 2002). This helps them to establish and develop various kinds of strategies for organizational development. Two founders or leaders of Google look after two different sides of the business. Page looks after Google’s social structure and Brin looks after the company ethics. This leadership structure helps the company to focuses more on various innovative strategies for enhancing its service and products. By this leadership structure employees of Google puts various i8nputs in the decision making process of the company. Culture: It plays a vital role in developing sense of mission. Organizational culture of Google shows philosophy and believes of its leaders. It helps to establish values of the company. According to the Page and Brin the company is run by its organizational culture. The employees have a great emotional commitment towards the company. They get a huge benefit from Google so their commitment level is high (Western, 2007). With the help of their leaders the employees of Google can connect their personal goal with company purpose. Google has a culture to allow its employees to do what they want. As a result they are excited in working and the leaders do not face any major problem related to its employees. Organizational culture of Google permits the employees to participate in organizational development process. Values: Google has strong organizational values. Two of its leaders have established these values by developing behavioural standard for the company. According to this model good behavioural standard of a company can be accomplished by its different guidelines and policies. This help to promote organizational strategies and purpose (Crutchfield and Roughton, 2013). The leaders of Google communicate different values of the company to its employees. This process becomes very effective as the most important leaders of Google are its founders. As a result the communication process becomes more effective. Various strategies of these leaders influence all employees to work for enhancing the values of the company. One of the important policy of Google is it allows it engineers to spend 20% of their time in their personal projects which stimulates them and help them to develop new ideas (Barjasic, 2010). This policy helps the company to develop new product ideas and establish new processes. The behavioural standard which the leaders of Google implement contributes a lot in building innovative products and risk taking capability of its employees. This behavioural standard helps Google to get various benefits from its different values. 2. Answer Strategic decision making process involves all the approaches to develop different strategies (Sosnizkij, 2004). Strategic decision helps to establish company’s structure and determine different functions of the company. Important strategic decision of the company helps it’s to achieve its mission an objectives. In Google the strategic decision making process are implemented with the help no0f its organizational leaders In this company various experiments and testing are done for developing a strategy. Leaders of Google take strategic decisions by the process of continuous adaption and learning. This process of learning contributes a lot in developing various functions and products which highlights company’s purpose and mission. Google has a unique kind of management structure which influences its employees to get involved in strategic decision making process in a planned way. Strategies of the company vary with situations. The leaders of this organization focus on its different corporate issues while developing its strategies (Rees and Smith, 2014). Various policies are implemented by them for developing a product and establishing strategies according to that. The unique decision making process of Google supports the company’s philosophy and mission of innovations. Different employees of the company provides various ideas in innovating new technology and products. By this process Google get a huge number of unique ideas which help it to establish new strategies and policies. The company has a principal of providing more freedom to its employees which helps them to innovate and research new things. One of the important strategic decisions of Google is expanding and diversifying its business. Initially the company started as an internet search engine. In a short span of time this strategy became very successful (Punzel, 2013). The leaders or founders of the company implemented the strategy of launching IPO of Google and made it a publicly owned company. This decision helped the company to grow more. The leaders implemented the strategy of developing many new products which will match with company’s mission statement. Initially Google main source of revenue was its ADWords. But now by implementing various important strategies it has diversified i8ts re3venue generation sources into different parts. Launching of Android mobile operating system by Google is a vital strategy (Robbins, 2009).The company also started in manufacturing handset. By this strategy the leaders of Google enhanced its functions. In 2008 the company launched Chrome web browser. This strategic decision of its leaders helps the users help it to protect itself from Microsoft by offering a very simple browser with sophisticated technology (DuBrin, 2010). Google implemented the strategic decision of acquiring Motorola for getting patent right of various technology of Motorola. By this decision Google developed its hardware and software business. This strategy also helped the company to create its presence in mobile internet market. The leaders of Google launched social networking site Orkut. But its strong competitor Facebook captured the market (Dillon, 2009) because of introducing better features and facilities in the social networking site. The strategic decision making process of Google is based on some important features. They are: Hiring Policy: The Company is very selective about hiring its employees. The leaders of this company give more value to exceptional technology than an average engineer. So Google only recruit extremely talented candidates who can deliver quality work (Harrison, 2005). Flat and decentralized organization: Google organizational structure is very simple and decentralized. The company has a democratic culture. All the employees of Google are given enough freedom in performing their work. Small teams: The leaders of Google divided the company into several small teams. Decision making process becomes very easy and effective for this (Martires and Fule, 2004). Experiments: For implementing various strategic decisions the leaders of Google conduct different experiments which involves low cost. By this process effectiveness of various strategies and be estimated (Boxall and Purcell, 2006). Goggles strategic decision making process have some resemblance with Emergency approaches of Grand in oil companies research. Large oil companies and Google develop guidelines for their strategies based on situation and external environment. Many planning are done by their corporate leaders to execute the strategy (Dyck and Neubert, 2008). These companies implement a strategy for achieving certain purpose of the company. Google and major oil companies do corporate level planning or granting a strategic decision. For keeping its leadership position in the market Google implement various strategies to improve its product. The strategic decision making process of the company is influenced by Google leaders and its organizational structure (Mueller, 2006). Freedom of its employees helps Google to enhance its business process. It helps the company to become one of the top companies in the world. Google’s strategic decision making process thus have a huge contribution in developing its business. References Armstrong, M. 2006. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. New York: Kogan Page Publishers. Baker, J. R. and Doran, M. S. 2007. Human Resource Management: A Problem-solving Approach Linked to ISLLC Standards. London: R&L Education. Barjasic, I., 2010. Drivers of Change and how Leadership can affect the Organisation: A case study of British. Germany: GRIN Verlag. Boxall, P., and Purcell, J., 2006. Strategy and human resource management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Crutchfield, N and Roughton, J., 2013. Safety Culture: An Innovative Leadership Approach. Waltham: Butterworth-Heinemann. 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