Leadership Project: A of the Oman Cement Company - Case Study Example

Introduction: Company background

The Oman Cement Company was established in 1978 as part of the government’s initiative to support Oman projects that contribute to infrastructural development of the country. Its first plant, the Rusayl plant became operational in 1983, achieving a production capacity of 624 000 tonnes in the same year. The company has since expanded it production capacity, reaching a capacity of 1.4 million MTS of cement in 2008 to meet the country’s high demand (Al Badi, 2015). It is presently working at increasing its production capacity from 1.26 to 1.70 MTS per year. The company is currently listed in the Muscat Securities Exchange in 2005 with 33 million worth of shares and two years later in the Bahrain Stock Exchange. The company’s strategy is to pursue and achieve an advantage in an increasing changing environment through effective resource configuration and competence. The company employs a functional organisational structure characterised by the existence of different departments. Its major facilities at the moment include computerized manufacturing, a central laboratory, quality and environmental management systems and a pollution control system.

Leadership value system and structure of Oman Cement Company

Numerous management structures exist and are actively in use in the contemporary world. Since most, if not all, aim at enhancing leadership efficiency in an organisation, there structural basics cut across two pertinent features, either mechanistic or organic. Mechanist structure, to begin with, is characterised by rigid task definition, high degree of formalisation, centralised control, vertical communication, among others. Mechanistic structures are preferable in environments marked by high complexity (Jones, 2010). In such cases, individual employees are specialised in specific tasks and only make small contributions to the company’s output. In order to determine the manner in which execution of tasks take place, such structures emphasise technical processes. Many have pointed to its rigidity and slow adaptiveness to environments defined by changing conditions. An example is line management structure.

Rivalling mechanistic structures are the organic management structures, often defined by lateral communication, decentralized control, simple differentiation, flexible task definition and comparatively lower degree of formalisation, among others. Examples of structures that fall in this category include matrix and divisional organisational structures. According to Bombaci (2012), such structures are suitable for organisations that operate in highly unstable and uncertain environments but in which personnel have decision-making and problem-resolution powers. However, under circumstances where tasks are large and complex, necessitating for significant resource integration for effective goal accomplishment, organic systems tend to fail terribly. Other management structures include professional bureaucracy and adhocracy, both of which tend to be more organic than mechanistic, hence an intermediate of the two.

The prominent leadership and management structure in use at Oman Cement Company can be diagrammatically presented as below. The dominant management and leadership structure represented in the diagram is obviously mechanistic, while the less dominant is the matrix system. Evidently, employee specialisation is paramount to the functioning of OCC, yet each contribute marginally to the operations of the company and the production of the final product. However, within this mechanistic system lies a matrix structure, the evidence of which is the collective answerability of each department to the present, with the exception of the audit department. In so doing, the president brings together all the different departments for the pursuit of a common goal, that of improving functionality and production. As noted by Hall (2012), the system allows the company to shift the balance of power from structure to skills as observed in the case of OCC where ability to solve personal problems is paramount.

Source: Asia Cement Organizations analysis

In relation to OCC, the mechanistic system suits its highly complex system, at least in terms of the tasks involved, and at the same time ensures that individuals with specific specialisations such as engineers, auditors, accountants, etc. have the opportunity to contribute directly to the functionality of the business at independent levels. However, the less dominant matrix management and leadership structure allows the senior executives of the firm to monitor the entire operation within the firm much to guaranteeing efficient exchange of information, increased motivation of all employees and stakeholders, among others. For instance, the general plant manager is responsible for supervising two different plats, the assistant vice president is the immediate correspondent to all the present departments, the president presides over such committees as CSR, Credit, human resource, etc. With such comes effective transfer of information from one department to another until the final product is attained.

The present leadership value system at OCC is characterised by the authority reflecting a well-defined hierarchy in which the top management of the company bears the sole responsibility of making important company decisions. Since the company operates in a relatively stable environment, the necessity for complex decision-making processes that involves multiple parties is inexistent, hence the substantial level of independence observed. Additionally, the company engages specialised workforce that diligently deliver on their duties with little, if any, high-level supervision. However, just like communication, decision-making follows a hierarchical order, the simplest resting with the specific department and the most complex falling within the domain of the executive management. Furthermore, since job specialisation is the core of business, task assignment follows the same manner, much to the devolution of scope of control of the personnel involved.

Leadership challenge and possible solution

The ‘MEME Stack’ system attempts to explore the managerial minds that underlie different organisational principles as well as their structural attributes. Conventionally, memes are used to identify behavioural patterns displayed by people with respect to individual actions, whether conscious or unconscious. In an organization setting, memes are employed to chat the course of leadership and management (Rumsey, 2013). In order to effect a change in an organization, six pertinent conditions are necessary, the potential of change, existence of unresolved lower order problems, feelings of dissonance with the existing meme system, sufficient insight into the course of dissonance, concrete identification of the barriers to change and presence of support systems for the desired change (Beck and Cowan, 2014). Consequently, among others, memes reflect a world view, valuing system, an organizational principle, a way of thinking and a level of psychological existence. This section attempts to explore the extent to which memes systems shape leadership and management discourses without delving into the spiral central core of memes defined by different spectral colours.

OCC’s most important value is empowerment and the avoidance of micromanagement. The company believes that management should help employees realise their individual career development goals. To this end, it focusses on openness, general ethics and corporate citizenship as a means of motivating workers. The company’s management behaviour encourages respect for the rights and dignity of every individual, to which it attaches its objective of availing quality products to the Oman market. In terms of actions, especially those targeting marketing of the company’s products within the domestic market, customer obsession emerge as the core value. At OCC, leadership decisions and company operations begin with the customer in mind after which it works backwards. However, this does not mean that company casts a blind eye to its competitors. Instead, OCC identifies that market consolidation is more of winning the heart of customers rather than concentrating on the actions of the competitor.

The recent expansionist strategies adopted by the company has exposed to myriad challenges that include among others HR issues and employee management. With increasing number of employees, the existing management structure seems to be overstretching beyond its limits. Though designed to handle larger companies, the existing strategies often appear unnecessarily bloated thus necessitating for restructuring of departments. In order to mitigate the potential negative effects resulting from expansion, the company has initiated employee-training programs designed to expand their skillsets. With such, the company aims at enhancing the capabilities of employees in the relevant domains in order to cut on costs associated with maintaining an unnecessarily large workforce. With such, employees will be able to work efficiently, with the effect that the company does not need to engage multiple employees or contract work to external agents. Another emergent HR problem has been the potential loss of employees as a result of adoption of new HR management practices. However, the company has in place measures that assess the impacts of such changes on employee motivation with an objective of initiating corrective mechanisms. The company perceives as highly detrimental any loss of skilled and/or specialised employee.

The current challenge faced by OCC leaders relates to the creation of an innovative culture that is both bottom-up top-down and at the same time possessing the capability to identify and draw on the best talent available with the company’s talent pool and business ecosystem. Such a change, by virtue of being highly adaptive, demands a response beyond the current repertoire (Fullan, Cuttress and Kilcher, 2005). In fact, the adaptive work necessary to narrow down the gap between the company’s aspirations and the reality it faces requires difficult learning full of extensive effort. Given the specified nature of the necessary change, quantum change of epochal proportions emerges as the best solution to effecting the necessary change. The quantum change employs premodern, modern and postmodern discourses as well as the integration of all the transitions necessary to legitimize and facilitate it. The approach takes into consideration major sea changes, massive challenges and millennial-like turns.

The solution to the problem is nothing but the evolution of leaders to managers capable of promoting innovation, avail unwavering support to any change prospects deemed useful to the business and constant encouragement of employees to experiment with new things. While such are the measures supported by the quantum change approach, it is imperative that effective leaders be able to maintain a clear and healthy balance between conferring employees with a free-reign environment and availing a clear governance framework. Furthermore, the need for highly dynamic leaders in effecting such a change must be taken into consideration. While most managers have tended to show inability to keep abreast with technological advancement of the day and instead showing signs of being rooted in the past, adoption of robust and pragmatic approaches towards practices such changes within the organisation is imperative. To this end, the quantum approach consistently engages premodern, modern and post-modern discourses in order to bring all stakeholders up to speed with the prevailing trends and condition in the market and within the organisation.

In order for OCC to realise effective transition, an open value system that allows for open-collaboration between the different departments and stakeholders, from marketing to communication to value creation, among others. From a sustainability perspective, such a system, as opposed to closed and arrested systems, avails mechanisms of non-control and open-access while at the same time guaranteeing all the functions integral to the firm (Foster, 2014). The simple fact that an open value system defines structures at four different levels, namely project-level, open-enterprise level, network level and global level implies that the company can leverage the resulting synergies to collaborate and address the demands imposed on the firm by environmental changes in the market. Additionally, the open value system provides a means with which the firm can determine the structure and infrastructure necessary to map milestones achieved within the change discourse. Another important aspect of the system relates to its solidarity mechanism and accords compassion and risk distribution benefits to the organisation. Through this, the system avails partial rewards for unavoidable failures such as process complexity, uncertainty, etc.

Personal leadership capabilities and CPD plan

Several elements form part of what amount to core capabilities of an effective leader. While these may vary greatly among people of different perceptions, some tend to remain relatively constant especially when assessed based on contemporary leadership. For instance, Varghese (2010) highlights sense making, relatability, visioning and invention as the core elements pertinent to being an effective leader. In this context, sense making entails the ability to make sense of the context in which one operates. Unless a leader has a very good sense of the circumstances around him, the decision on what to do or the next move to make could be daunting to a leader. The ability to relate with others is another element that Varghese considers important and notes that it allows the leader to understand the people and environment around him. Visioning is simply the capacity to create a picture of what could eventually come to be. Visionary leaders are able to discern a different picture of the future from what the ordinary people can perceive. The last element entails the ability to invent a structure or a process that eventually shifts the way people perceive something. Inventive leaders thus are capable of not only recreating existing structures but also creating new ones.

My choice to explore the aforementioned four elements relates to the fact that to some extent they define my development discourse in leadership. The easiest among the four, the ability to relate, seems to occur, either consciously or semi-consciously to all humans nearly at all times. To me, every encounter is an opportunity to relate with someone, an aspect that has helped me learn different personality attributes and other aspects of life. Secondly, whenever one attempt to pursue sense making, invention or visioning, relation definitely plays a role. The numerous opportunities that I have had to work with people have availed me with avenues to create and/or sever bonds with people. Thus, in order to make positive milestones in the course of developing to an effective leader, one needs to do a lot of sense making together with the other three elements quite a number of times since the pursuit or achievement of one in any given setting inherently leads to the realisation of the other three.

One lesson that I have come to master over the course of my leadership development is that while the pertinent leadership capabilities are applicable across different organizations, the scope and reach of the individual elements vary immensely with the prevailing settings. For instance, a leader working in an environment where inter-cultural exchange is paramount, assume the case where a native Briton moving into a management position locate somewhere in a South Asian country would need to be much more keen with his sense of relation in order to be successful. Just like transformational leadership, of course transformational leaders are naturally effective leaders, the leader in the said situation must stick to the long-term objective of the organization while at the same time create a balance with the short-term priorities (Trevor and Hill, 2012), in this case identifying the structural behaviours of the natives prior to making personal judgements.

To make this clearer, allow me to delve into my continuing professional development plan that I have operated for the last 12 months. The plan came into existence after I attended a youth leadership development program in which one of the facilitators challenged the attendees to avail the milestones they have made in the last six months regarding their journey to becoming great leadership. One prominent advise that I managed to pick is that leadership development begins with direct involvement with people in a similar capacity, whether real or implied. Thereafter, I sat down and decided to develop a short training program on human resource management. The objective with was to enable me have a conscious reflection on the current teaching and learning discourses that can avail effective human resource management techniques within the shortest time possible. As I would learn though, the establishment of such a program is a demanding and challenging task that requires extensive commitment into research, the very basis of problem-solving abilities in leadership. While this may not have been very successful, I intend to develop a comprehensive guide on the same in the near future.

Three months after the said attempt, I managed to secure an opportunity to review and re-write curriculum Higher Diploma in business management. Upon reviewing the existing curriculum, I realised that the content had remained unchanged for nearly the past four years, hence lacked most of the recent development in business management realm. More fundamentally, while research and application of business management knowledge had changed immensely over the years, the curriculum had not been updated to reflect the same. The exercise contributed immensely in horning my business management and strategic project management skills, revealed the extent to which I need to lay emphasis in regular consultation with different stakeholders, among others. While I may not be presently involved extensively in such reviews, I believe I will need the very skills I so acquired in future. First-hand experience in reviewing, reformulating and redesigning similar projects enables me to be more proficient.

About three months ago, I managed to secure a contract to mark college examination scripts. Part of my role was to develop well-researched answers to some of the questions. While the same offered me an opportunity to spend time constructively, the experience was both traumatising and rewarding. The precision with which the responses were to be developed is not anything to go by. Secondly, I learnt on how to understand a question from different perspectives and formulate relevant and suitable responses. Additionally, I also learnt the essence of seeking objective assessment from colleagues regarding the appropriateness of my findings. The exercise proved exceptionally rewarding in the sense that it sharpened my research and writing skills, my knowledge interpretive skills, among others.

Finally, worth adding to this list is that presently I am a mentor to an intern with whom we work with. I accepted this position as I figured out it would enhance my skills, understanding and awareness of the concept of being a mentor. For the said interaction so far, I have learnt the importance of communication and the establishment of a relationship between workmates based on trust and mutual understanding. For instance, simple acts such as passing a morning greeting proved to be very important in letting one’s partner aware of another’s presence just in case one should have a pressing issue worth sharing or consulting about. Regarding what I have obtained so far, I have enjoyed the experience as it has served to reveal to me the importance of having time to support one another in an organisational setting. Furthermore, I currently have an idea on how to handle similar relationships whenever I run into them during my long journey to becoming an effective leader.