Effective Leadership within Successful Company - Coursework Example

Leadership Problem

For centuries now, change and its implications in many organizations has been an issue just as it has been to normal human life. Change is always hard to come by and be accepted since it demands that people move out of their routines and comfort zones and adopt doing new things in new ways unknown to them. The net impact of change is to make people feel uncomfortable and adopt a change in habit, attitude, believes and cultures. So has been the problem of change in organizations. If for example in an organization a manager is used to a certain method of decision making and then the executive demands of him to adopt a newly devised method of carrying out the decision making function, it will be difficult for the manager and the fear of unknown will definitely engulf the manager. It is a venture just like any other and it is normal for people to hate struggling more especially if whatever they have been doing was working for them and the organization. Change has become inevitable in the modern corporate world given that we are living in the information era where customers are more knowledgeable and systems need constant upgrades to keep abreast with competition. Further, the rates ate which employees are changing employers plus the unstable economic performance across the globe i.e. recessions and economic booms are alarming and are ever shaking businesses. The dynamism in the business world has just reached another with international threats of terrorism, natural calamities like typhoons etc. Both the internal and external environments for businesses can never be predictable meaning that the performance of the organizations is as well uncertain. Changes in any of the factors surrounding an organization has the potential to cause havoc even to the extent of having the business close down its operations especially if the company cannot adopt to the specific changes affecting its operations.

Also, in some organizations, there is a lapse in communication especially if the management has attitude or trust issues as far as the subordinates are concerned. Communication is the life blood of any organization without which there would be no organization and coordination hence there will be a shortage of harmony in the operations of the organization. In cases where the managers and the executives fail to keep the subordinates updated on matters pertaining the operations, the vision, the mission and the longer term goals of the company, the company is bound to experience serious challenges. Communication lapse demonstrates itself through lack of involvement of the junior staff in decision making process as well. If the subordinates who are the implementers of such decision are not involved in their drafting and passing, then the reached decisions will face challenges of being accepted and lack of knowhow in terms of putting them to practice which is a bad situation any organization will not want to find itself in.

A further problem that leaders have had to face in running companies is where there exists a mismatch between the personality, skills and competency of the leader and the organizational expectation. A leader should be a person whose presence is felt by all across the entire organization. He should be influential and captivating as well as a warm person to engage. However, in many instances, the management and organizational leader have been nominated and reached the top level management through fraudulent means like corruption. They therefore end up finding themselves in unlikely positions they are not familiar with and they are the people the entire organization relies on through the shots they call. Their uninformed decision purge the organizations into management limbo and the end result has been some giant companies ending up being closed.

Another leadership problem that has hindered companies from achieving their potential is the failure by the leadership to understand and exploit the power of a good customer service function. Customers are among the most important asset to any organization and the way they are taken care of can either break or make an organization. In many failed organizations, the leadership has failed to come up with viable customer service strategies that aim at adding value to the customer and their experiences as well. A well-treated and satisfied customer is the best advertisement media through which the right and positive information about an organization can reach its potential customers by word of mouth. However, a dissatisfied customer will still spread information about an organization only that the message will be negative and one that works against the progress of the organization. Many organizations have however failed to tap on this opportunity since the leaderships does not realize the power of word of mouth and referrals.

Moreover, in instances that the leaders don’t understand that the organization is an entity that should function together as a machine, there is a high likeliness of failure. So-me leaders due to their weak leadership qualities tend to use divide-and-rule strategies or use threat to lead. Divide-and-rule strategies as well as use of threats in leadership leads to radicalization of the people that are led and instead of continuous adherence to the issued instructions, they at some point resist whatever the leadership proposes and that defines the end of a leadership era in many instances. Use of coercion in any way undermines the independence and the originality of others. As a result, the led people will tend to leave everything to the leaders and give an excuse of not acting. Moreso, coercion inhibits creativity and innovation since people are not at their bets and they are not settled mentally to think right. People feel out of place and not appreciated and what follows are cases of high staff turnover and increased costs of operations that come with such scenarios.

Possible explanation to the leadership problem

The business used to have challenges before that made leadership within the sector a headache to many managers in 18th century. However, the leadership problem has never been scary as it is in thee 19 the century. Among the main contributors to the problem is technological advancement. As much as technology comes with bounty of benefits to the business sector, so are the shortcomings as well. First, technology is responsible for the increased levels of competition being experienced by organizations for the last two decades. Through technology, more and more customers have become enlightened on their rights and privileges as customers. They get the information on factors like prices being charged, the availability, convenience of buying from a certain business etc. at the comfort of their homes thanks to online shopping platforms. Shopping has never been easy than it is now since the customer does not have to walk into any business physically to inspect whatever is on display like before. It therefore implies that for businesses without online presence they end up losing customers to those with online selling sites. Further, the online shopping platforms have reduced customer loyalty by far meaning a customer can buy from any seller provided they meet their expectations. As a result, market dominance is no longer possible as it used to be in some decades ago. It is therefore upon the business to ensure it remains relevant through the right adoption and use of information technology since it is an unignorable change in the 19th century. While it is a benefit to the customer, technology presents a unique problem to the company leaders in terms of finding the right way to put it to use to the advantage to the company since obsolescence is eminent if they fail to mitigate the impact.

Another possible explanation to the leadership problem is the low level of education among some leaders. The low level of education in some cases comes in when a family business is involved. The executives might happen to be a grandfather or a father to the Chief Executive Officer. What the founders of many of the family fail to understand is that not all entrepreneurs can make good leaders and managers as well. This explains the advocacy in leadership principles to divorce leadership from ownership if businesses have to succeed. Failure to divorce brings about not only lack of professionalism but also conflict of interest sets in affecting the independence and the legal rights of the company as entity. That explains why companies like Microsoft Inc., its founder Bill Gates has had to employ people who are professionals in their areas of duty hence propelling the company to the levels it is now.

Further, companies clogged with poor performance have registered a problem with the setting out of a vision and mission statement by the leadership. A poorly stated vision and mission statements implies lack of a horizon which the employees should work towards achieving. Equally, if the vision and mission statements are there but they are not well communicated or are not fully implemented the problem of lack of sight is experienced as well. Lack of sight brings about a feeling of confusion and uncertainty pertaining what the employees should do or not do since they do not know the much they are supposed to achieve. Poorly stated vision and mission statements further lead to poor alignment between the jobs and the people performing them since it is the long term plans i.e. the vision which is used to draw the short terms course of actions i.e. the job descriptions which in return would determine the kind of person needed to fill in a certain position.

Scholars have also used the culture of mediocrity or poor organizational cultures in general to explain the leadership problems in organizations. Culture can be defined as to what an organization is best known for e.g. an organization may be known for quality products and services or even for offering good remuneration to its employees. Culture dictates how things are done and why they are done that way in an organization. if it gets to a point where the employees are mistreated or feel unappreciated by the management, a culture of mediocrity sets in. the employees will attend to their jobs and responsibilities without delay but they will be there for other reasons like the earnings to keep them going till the leadership decides to do something to have things change. In some cases, the employees will attend their duties because they signed a legally binding contract with the company and so they are there unwillingly. The net effect of such a culture is employees who are not productive and they are ever waiting to be pushed around. Low productivity will imply that the company’s capacity is not fully utilized and that is a loss to the company. Being pushed around on the other hand means time and resource wastage which are expensive resources to an organization.

Besides, if there exists gaps between the coming up with a strategy and its final execution, then the leadership of such an organization will face an uphill to run the entity. Business strategies at whatever level i.e. the corporatism nosiness and the global level do not have any impact unless they are successfully implemented. It would only amount to a waste of time and resources to draw so expensive an item and then all the effort goes into waste at its very final stages of implementation. Failure to implement strategies is a common characteristic of companies that end up failing. A strategy bears the roadmap of hown, when, who, where and why an organization will undertake a certain course of action. With such blueprints, the company can even survive in its future without necessarily the management or even thee managers that run the entity presently. Business strategies aids in the lignification of the company vision and mission statement. The strategy has to bear the ideology of the vision in order for it to be relevant to the company. Therefore if the company does not put in place strong systems and people to implement and monitor the progress of strategies and visions, then the company is normally bound for leadership problems.

Discussion

In the current business environment, effective leadership a very crucial role in the management and daily running of the affairs of thee company. This is because the old ways of managing businesses have proven not enough to sustain companies in the modern markets. , leadership and management may two absolutely different systems but to the surprise of the company, it might happen that none of them is suitable to the company context that it is being applied which suggests further problem rather than bringing solutions. It is therefore for the organization to consider matching the right skills, talents and competencies to the right jobs since personality plays an important role in leadership. Failure to match thee right people to the right roles implies an operational disaster with the potential to degenerate into other factors like demotivation, absenteeism, labor force turnover, missed targets etc. all of which bear negative impacts on the organization.

Technology is a necessary evil in the business sector. To address the challenge of technology, all organizations should embrace technology but not blindly. Technology will ensure that a company gains global reach unlike the case with physical operation where a company is limited only to a certain portion of clients. However, the use of technology should be measured against several parameters like the cost implications to the company, the expected returns, whatever technology the competitor is using as well as the industry demands as of that particular time. Relevancy of the technology a company is using to me is key and it is an asset with potential to open new avenues to a business.

On there being gaps between strategies and their possible executions, my take is that the problem lies squarely on the leadership. May be the leadership might have refused to provide the necessary resources to facilitate the implementation of strategy or, it may be that the strategy was developed out of fear by the management or, it may be that the strategy was drafted for formality reasons. For whatever reason, the organization must ensure that it has the right people and resources, the right attitude and reasons to develop the strategy as well as be aware what the strategy aims at achieving in the long run otherwise it will be a waste of time and resources.

Conclusion

In order to sustain organizations, change is the key factor that leaders should aim at managing. The paper has discussed various factors all of which results in change in organizations. As expected, making accommodation for change is difficult and sometimes the changes are resisted permanently. It is therefore upon the leadership to ensure that they motivate and encourage employees to continuously adopt change and remain flexible to adopt any further changes that may occur. Mental preparedness is an asset in the present day corporate world since times and changes are fast moving. To deal with such problems, the leadership therefore has a role to play in ensuring that the company adopts innovative and creative means of production to survive the dynamic environments. A world class example of the failure to adopt to change is the case of Nokia. The automobile manufacturer was a global brand but in the age of smartphones, the company fell to zero because it failed to adopt to changes in technology.

Further, effective leadership earns the management trust form bout the employee and the customer which in turn the operations easy. Trust is crucial in building of relationships and the leadership needs both the customers and the employees to trust them if progress has to be witnessed. Trust and healthy relationships also makes shaping other factors within the organization easier too. A good example of a function is affected by trust and people relationship is the culture of an organization. On the large scale, the culture determines the relationship of the company ti others within the industry as well as the government. Such relationships are crucial ones in carrying out business since some are influential and can be used to cut deals. Besides, healthy relationships within the organization are important in that the people can communicate, work and learn from each other with ease. Working together encourages teamwork an important characteristic of successful organizations.