Personal Leadership Development as a Strategic Manager - Assignment Example

Unit 7001V1 - Personal leadership development as a strategic manager Lecturer: Summary   The vision of Coca-ColaCompany is multifaceted involving the society, portfolio, associates, environment, profit and productivity. It is focused on being a great company for people to work and be motivated to achieve their maximum potential. This involves attracting, engaging and retaining the greatest skills while promoting social inclusion by recruiting women to leadership positions. It aims at developing the best portfolio of quality products globally that gratify the needs of consumers. The company is focused on maintaining an attractive network of clients and traders to develop a shared and lasting value. It takes in to consideration the need to maintain integrity of the planet by assisting in the development of sustainable communities. Maximizing shareholder value is an important aspect that is supported by watchfulness of the company’s global responsibilities. It aims to maintain productivity by maintaining high effectiveness, lean manufacturing and fast growth. Strategic human capital management, effective utilization of resources is also a core aspect of the organization’s mission. The strategic objectives include ensuring a reliable presence within the communities it serves. It is also focused on continuous research to establish community needs and assemblage of resources to support such needs. The company has a welfare culture of employee engagement developing optimism among employees, which kindles passion in every person. Employees are provided with sufficient skills and opportunities for personal and career development. Open communication ensures enthusiasm among employees thereby maintaining high commitment. A.C. 1.1 - Analyse the strategic direction of the organisation Coca-Cola has established a course of action that is focused on the accomplishment of company goals as outlined in its organizational strategy. The company has focused on improvement of customer satisfaction by ensuring that products are customised to suit consumer desires. Product differentiation has enabled it to serve diverse customers especially with the increased awareness among consumers regarding the impact of sweetened beverages on their health. Sugar free products such as diet Coke have been made available globally to caution consumers who are sensitive to the conventional Coca-Cola beverages. There is increased attention on products with the company focusing on enhancing safety and quality of its products, which involves reducing the levels of carbon dioxide, ensuring the use of food colour, sugar and alcohol levels. Customer relationship management is core in the realization of mutual understanding and trust among consumers, which are necessary in the accomplishment of company strategic goals. The company continues to expand its global market presence through targeted point of sales that will enhance consumption of the Coca-Cola brand. More outlets are being established globally as well as enhancement of the existing ones through concerted efforts in marketing innovations (Allen, 2010). Maintaining a positive image in the public sphere is also an important aspect of the company’s strategic direction. To enhance its position as a leading producer of the best non-alcoholic beverages globally, the company engages in corporate social responsibility such as environmental conservation through supporting community environmental initiatives such as tree planting and recycling of waste, especially development and management of a proper disposal system of the company’s product packaging containers. The company promotes innovations in all its activities, which are important in ensuring maximum productivity. These innovations have helped the company to maintain competitiveness especially the use of advanced technology in product differentiation and marketing. The company promotes self-concept as an entity that energizes the world with delightful soft drinks while generating optimism and pleasure. This ensures that consumers constantly reminisce and appreciate the company’s values. By promoting social inclusion, the company has positioned itself as a leader in the quest for equity and support for the empowerment of women. It ensures good working conditions for employees to encourage creativity and commitment. Lean manufacturing is expected to lower the cost of production and logistics while maintaining high standards of quality. The global presence allows the organization to produce in large scale thereby enjoying economies of scale (The Coca-Cola Company, 2011). A.C. 1.2 - Evaluate the strategic skills required of the leader to achieve the strategic ambitions Strategic leadership requires planning ahead to ascertain that an organization has a lasting mission and objectives as well as plans to accomplish them. The leader needs to develop and inspire others. Clear vision is one of the important strategic skills that entail the capacity to maintain attention on the future even when a company seems to be flourishing at the present time. Intelligibility of thought with regards to future openings, challenges and ways of moving the company ahead are important strategic skills. These skills inspire employees to follow the leader thereby promoting the accomplishment of organizational goals. Intuition and awareness of things happening around the leader helps the leader to identify potential obstacles well in advance. He/she is able to recognize mishaps that are likely to sway the employees off the track or when they are not aligned to the organizational strategy. Timely detection of such drawbacks ensures appropriate intervention, re-organization of direction or radical measures to improve the circumstances (Jean et al. 2008). Perseverance is also an important skill that ensures the leader steers the organization to realize its long-term mission. Resolute leaders do not give up as a result of initial challenges but rather devise ways of coping with the challenges and try again until they succeed. This helps to avoid demoralization of employees especially in innovative ventures. The leader ensures that every person is focused on the broader picture by meeting with them and re-affirming or re-directing their roles. Persuasive communication is an important skill allowing the leader to convince the subordinates to follow a specific path that is critical to the accomplishment of organizational goals. It also helps the leader to effectively influence employees to accept change especially when they do not understand its significance, for example in the recent combination of several Coca-Cola brands to sell through one brand name ‘Coke’ (Isdell & Beasley, 2011). A.C. 1.3 - Assess the relationship between existing, required and future skills to achieve the strategic ambitions Strategic leadership qualities are evident among Coca-Cola’s workforce with a high level of specialization in different sections within the organization. Leaders exhibit a clear vision of the organization’s ambitions with clarity of thought that has enabled the company to maintain progressive growth in the global market. The company’s leadership has been able to withstand shocks in the efforts to maintain global presence, including thriving through harsh economic crisis. However, the company requires skills that allow leaders to take up different roles to for maximum effectiveness to be accomplished (The Coca-Cola Company, 2011). Inter-personal skills are required to maintain leadership competitiveness. Rather than the high level of specialization, employees with the ability to play inter-personal roles are able to brand themselves as effective leaders and managers. They are able to inspire and encourage employees in the company as inter-personal roles are focused on building relationships with others. Such leaders are able to play a liaison role in the organization, keeping in touch with other employees and braches, which is necessary for the company with a global presence. The ability to represent the organization in the public sphere is important especially in the company’s goals towards corporate social responsibility. Such leaders are in a position to play a figure-head role whereby they carry out social and legal roles. They act as spokes persons for the organization, issuing company information to stakeholders and associates (Isdell & Beasley, 2011). Good communication skills are necessary to ensure that leaders are able to receive and disseminate information in a timely manner and to ensure that everyone in the organization understands what is happening. The leader needs to manage the internal and external transfer of information to ensure that tasks are accomplished successfully. In future, conflict resolution skills will be necessary especially with the growing international conflicts where Coca-Cola as a global company needs to get engaged in helping global communities to maintain peace. Moreover, conflict resolution skills also enable the leader to deal with internal conflicts between employees and the management. Negotiation skills are also important for leaders to develop strategic partnerships that will be useful for company growth. Leaders need to be innovative to solve future problems in the organization. It is therefore necessary to ensure that leaders are equipped with skills that will enable them to remain innovative (Allen, 2010). A.C. 2.1 - Discuss the opportunities to support leadership development  Coca-Cola considers leadership development to be important in supporting the accomplishment of its strategic ambitions. For this reason, the company offers opportunities to enhance personal leadership development. This is accomplished through learning, workplace training and development to enhance leadership knowledge and skills. The company provides leaders with opportunities for self-awareness whereby they explore their own behaviour, assertiveness, emotion, familiarity, knowledge, talents and vision among others as understood by the leader as well as his/her subordinates. Effective communication eliminates misperception, conflicts and suspicion. Leaders are also presented with an opportunity for self-awareness through understanding what is understood in the realm of subordinates but may not be known to the leader (Nazeri et al. 2012). He/she may be perceived as incompetent, lacking in leadership qualities or inconsiderate by the subordinates while he/she may only be focused on his/her accomplishments. Understanding the unknown qualities is important as it helps the leader to develop strategies to address the inadequacies, which in turn leads to self-development. The leader opens up to others for them to know him/her better thereby eliminating the negative perceptions. Coca-Cola provides an opportunity through effective feedback mechanisms that allow employees to express their feelings regarding the organization’s leadership. This presents leaders with an opportunity to assess their leadership qualities. The feedback from subordinates enables leaders to improve their soft skills, conduct collaboration, responsiveness as well as interpersonal skills. The company offers apprenticeship programmes and training for leaders as well as mentorship to develop leadership competences (Jean et al. 2008). Leaders are exposed to internal and external job assignments as well as placement in different departments other than the regular place of work offers opportunities for leaders to develop new competencies and networks. Coca-Cola implements job rotations to enable leaders develop hands-on experience thereby ensuring that the organization maintains a competent workforce even when any leader leaves the organization. Action learning also provides an opportunity for leadership development by allowing leaders to deal with prevailing issues affecting the organization. They are involved in brainstorming with other leaders to develop solutions, which enhances their problem solving and conflict management skills. Coca-Cola also engages in personality profiling to promote understanding with regards to the effect of personality on workplace interactions. The company promotes inter-departmental networking by bringing heads of departments together through informal forums where they engage in dialogue regarding prevailing issues. The organization also offers accreditation opportunities for emerging leaders such as ILM certification as well as encouragement of leaders to engage in developmental learning through further education (Isdell & Beasley, 2011). A.C. 2.2 - Construct a personal development plan to direct leadership development  Objectives Action steps Role Milestones Outcomes Develop innovativeness Develop a culture of continuous learning Engage in research and development By December 2017 Increased organizational productivity Establish innovation teams Act as a team leader Teamwork in the workplace Develop better communication skills Ensure open communication in the workplace Receive and transmit information effectively Enhanced workplace communication and employee morale Develop networking skills Establish useful networks within and outside the organization Engage in inter-personal communication Networks useful in the accomplishment of organizational goals A.C. 2.3 - Devise an implementation process for the development plan to support achievement of strategic objectives To develop innovativeness, the innovation team will dedicate thirty minutes per day for reading materials in the organization’s library related to new production strategies. This will help in maintaining a learning culture that is important for research and development. The team will also be meeting once per week to review progress regarding proposed innovations. Barriers to successful innovations will be analysed in every meeting and solutions established through brainstorming among team members. The team needs to develop innovative strategies within a period of six months. To develop better communication skills, e-mails will be checked and responded to within the same day they have been sent during working hours. Those that are sent after working hours must be responded to first the following morning. Information meant for employees will reach them soonest possible after it has been received. They will be reminded to check the fresh mail file and their e-mails every day. Employees will also be expected to give daily feedback regarding the day-to-day communications and encounters. Monthly meetings will be held to review progress and discuss emerging issues. To develop networking skills, all useful networks will be identified and classified depending on their usefulness to the organization. They will be approached one after another to encourage them to develop links for mutual benefits. Once the networks have been established, efforts will be made to ensure that they are maintained (Brian, 2010). A.C. 3.1 - Assess the achievement of outcomes of the plan against original objectives  Development of innovativeness has recorded high quality and progress with organizational productivity increasing by 20% over the last six months. This is a positive trend that indicates high innovativeness and productivity by 2017. Leadership development is consistent with the expectations. There is still a high leadership potential to promote innovation in the company. Development of better communication skills is above average. Employees have been encouraged to participate in organizational; communication and their commitment has increased by 30% over the last six months. There is high potential for improvement in communication skills. Development of networking skills has improved by 20% over the last six months with new networks having been established. These are essential in the overall productivity of the organization (Jean et al. 2008). A.C. 3.3 - Review the leadership development plan The development of innovative skills needs to include outdoor challenges to broaden the information search and reduce the knowledge gap. This is important in coming up with practical skills to deal with emerging problems. Mentorship is also necessary in the development of innovativeness in the workplace. Experienced leaders need to be included in mentoring the emerging leaders to guide and entrench a culture of innovation in the workplace. Development of communication skills needs to be facilitated through training to equip the leader with knowledge necessary to become an effective communicator. Employee satisfaction surveys are important indicators of the success in developing communication skills. Networking skills require exposure through external job assignments and 360 degree feedback (Brian, 2010). A.C. 3.4 Update the leadership development plan Objectives Action steps Role Milestones Outcomes Develop innovativeness Learn from external job placements Participate in external work groups By December 2017 Increased innovation capability Evaluate feedback and implement recommendations Receive and analyse feedback Increased knowledge on innovation Develop better communication skills Training on communication skills Receive training and apply it in the workplace Enhanced performance and productivity Develop networking skills Network through external job placements Engage in inter-personal communication Networks useful in the accomplishment of organizational goals A.C. 3.2 - Evaluate the impact of the achievement of objectives on strategic ambitions  Innovation has increased as the organization designs and inspires the technologies and skills that enhance the manner in which employees work and live. There is greater organizational competitiveness in the market as new methods of production have resulted in lower cost of production. There is increased customer satisfaction as the organization’s products are customised to suit customer desires. Loyalty from customers and commitment from employees have been accomplished due to improvement of services. The organization is able to venture in to new markets as a result of increased innovations. It has also attracted new employees who are enthusiastic about innovations and hence has become an organization of choice for aspiring professionals. The innovations have also increased the range of product offerings by the company to serve different consumer segments. Improved communication has increased the respect and assurance of employees, clients and shareholders. Employees have developed ownership of organizational goals as they understand clearly the organization’s strategic direction, which in turn has helped to increase commitment and productivity (Jean et al. 2008). Communication has also enhanced employee understanding of workplace health and safety in a proactive manner. Effective feedback has enhanced improvements in the workplace through prompt identification of emerging issues. It has helped in the continuous review of interventions to guarantee best practice. Networking has helped to establish useful partnerships that the organization can leverage in to venture in to new markets and lower its production costs. Networking has also enhanced technology transfer, which is necessary in supporting the innovation processes at Coca-Cola. The networks have also promoted the company’s objectives of corporate social responsibility as some of the activities involved are accomplished through strategic partners. Networks have also enhanced the company’s marketing strategy since there is collaboration with potential partners of competitors denying them the opportunity to form strategic alliances that may adversely affect the company’s market share (Brown, 2007). A.C. 4.1 - Evaluate the impact of corporate commitment to staff welfare on organisational objectives Coca-Cola’s staff welfare is concerned with the development of a work environment that generates a situation of satisfaction that enables workers to develop and accomplish their full potential for their own advantage as well as the organization. The company upholds that it is a great place for employees to work and this is entrenched in the company’s culture, which plays a significant role in the accomplishment of organizational goals. Employees are regarded as significant assets that enable the company to attain its strategic ambitions. The welfare program is aimed at accomplishment of physical and emotional wellbeing as well as to develop interpersonal skills and career development. The well-being of employees is important in ensuring a healthy workforce that is motivated to accomplish organizational goals. Employee welfare is therefore entrenched in the organization’s corporate strategy with a strategic welfare policy for workers that ensure minimal absenteeism while saving costs associated with workplace injuries and also motivating them to enhance efficiency (Isdell & Beasley, 2011). The company is dedicated to promote health and happiness in its workforce through encouraging a healthy way of life. Reasonable work-life balance is a major component of the employee welfare program as the organization diverges from the common belief that wellbeing is merely a matter of disease prevention and avoidance of injury. To accomplish this mission, Coca-Cola has developed an internal health and safety training curriculum that helps it to enhance healthy lifestyles among employees. The company compensates for overtime work and also offers transport allowance for employees. Bonus payments are paid for holidays to motivate workers. These are the strategies applied in the employee benefit schemes that are part of the staff welfare program. Leadership development is meant to improve the skills of workers that are encouraged to utilize available opportunities to enhance their skills. The program has been significant in developing high commitment among employees and hence increased organizational productivity (Brown, 2007). A.C. 4.2 - Discuss how a staff welfare environment can affect achievement of organisational objectives The staff welfare environment is critical to the accomplishment of organizational objectives. It is difficult for an organization to realize its strategic objectives in the absence of a reliable, steady and motivated workforce. These characteristics are achieved when a staff welfare environment is established by the organization’s leadership. A mission statement that is people centred and a work place environment that is informed by employee welfare policy and values is necessary in enhancing loyalty and commitment. Work-life balance is one of the important aspects that may affect employee productivity if not well addressed. Employees need to have a comfortable life outside the workplace and may not be productive if organizational tasks affect their lifestyles. Coca-Cola ensures employee commitment and productivity by helping workers to attain personal goals. Offering holiday and travel allowance ensures that employees feel appreciated thereby inspiring loyalty to the organization (The Coca-Cola Company, 2011). Emotional wellbeing is necessary to maintain creativity in the workplace as well as to avoid anxiety. Flexible working hours allow employees to accomplish personal tasks and also participate constructively in the workplace. It helps to maintain morale and hence keep the desired talents in the workplace. Dissatisfied employees leave the organization seeking better working conditions that competitors are ready to offer. The welfare program ensures low staff turnover and absence, which may lead to low productivity. It also helps in developing a positive public image, which is necessary in the avoidance of trade union disputes and strikes. Basic medical services, periodic health assessment and counselling services are necessary in promoting the health of staff. Maintaining effective workplace ergonomics and advising on health and safety helps to maintain a productive workforce is not expensive for the organization as opposed to treatment of disease and injuries. It helps to reduce costs associated with legal suits and loss of lifelong talent (Nazeri et al. 2012). A.C. 4.3 - Consider the influence of a corporate commitment to staff welfare on the development of organization Organizational development significantly relies on a healthy and innovative workforce. The values of an organization outline its beliefs and guidelines that govern its administration. They represent the organization’s philosophy and the maintenance of its culture. There is a significant influence of corporate commitment to staff welfare in the process of developing organizational principles. The ability of an organization to promote efficiency in the workplace through staff welfare benefits the employees as well as the organization. Employee loyalty increases thereby enhancing their productive capacity while on the other hand the organization benefits from increased commitment. The organization is able to attract the best talent in the labour market through its staff welfare policy as people will prefer to work in an organization where they feel valued and where their interests are given special consideration. Satisfied employees are likely to play extra roles in the organization as a way of showing appreciation for the goodwill extended to them. Such employees remain in the organization willingly and are ready to act as advocates whenever need arises. The employees develop a civic virtue whereby they are ready to represent the organization in activities that allow them to portray a positive image of the organization thereby promoting its competitiveness and prosperity (Brown, 2007). Organizational commitment is seen through positive behaviour among employees such as reliability and honesty, assisting others who are overwhelmed by tasks in the workplace, taking the initiative towards innovation and voluntarism. Commitment to employee welfare promotes sportsmanship among employees, which is necessary in developing creativity rather than criticism. It helps to promote teamwork in the workplace as employees readily engage in consultation with regards to important issues affecting the organization. Commitment to staff welfare demonstrates welfare and justice in personnel administration, which on the other hand promotes staff retention capability. High staff turnover is expensive for the organization as the resources are lost in terms of funds used in recruitment and selection as well as developing competence through employee training (Nazeri et al. 2012). The organization spends resources in maintaining the staff welfare program but the gains are more in terms of accomplishment of its objectives. References Allen, F.L. 2010. Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in the World, London: Harper Paperbacks. Brian L. 2010. Design thinking – a new mental model of value innovation, London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Brown, M. G. 2007. Beyond the Balanced Scorecard: Improving Business Intelligence with Analytics, New York: Productivity Press. Jean, H., Dye, K. & Mills, A. J. 2008. Understanding Organizational Change, New York: Taylor & Francis. Isdell, N. & Beasley, D., 2011. Inside Coca-Cola: A CEOs Life Story of Building the Worlds Most Popular Brand, London: Pan Macmillan-St. Martins Press. Nazeri, A., Meftahi, M & Kianipour, R. 2012. “Relationship between welfare staff and organizational commitment in the control center of the central registration office”. Management Science Letters , 2(5), 1779-1784. The Coca-Cola Company, 2011. Hours of Work Improvement Guide, The Coca-Cola Company, Viewed on 4th May. 2015 at , Read More