Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide - Research Paper Example

? Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide Ultimately, when a troubled and ailing firm seeks to select a new CEO for leadership, they are oftentimes specifically interested in an individual will be able to maximize a degree of profitability and provide certain fundamental changes within the existing structure of the entity or firm in question. With regards to the case of Charlotte Beers, the following analysis will seek to discuss what Beers ultimately sought to accomplish within her role as CEO. Moreover, the analysis will also consider whether or not Beers, and her team, got the vision right. Moreover, the analysis will seek to analyze the means by which Beers and her team members engaged in a creative process for developing division which will be elaborated upon. Finally, the analysis will consider whether or not Beers and her team effectively communicated the buy-in for all respective compliments of the question. Through such analysis, it is the hope of this author that the reader will gain a higher level of inference with respect to some of the best practices for business leadership and management as well as some of the key pitfalls that might exist with regards to a new CEO/leader seeking to affect key changes within an existing firm/organization. With respect to what Beers was attending to accomplish as CEO of the firm in question, it can definitively be stated that she sought to reengage a level of success and profitability that had been experienced in years past. As the case study defined, Ogilvy & Mather was once a market leader and exhibited best practices that served to promote its vision and name throughout the market (Starr, 2011). However, in the recent past, this level of profitability had diminished and the firm was no longer a market leader with respect to the specialty upon which it was founded. Crafting a new vision for an existing firm is oftentimes dangerous process. This is due to the fact that even though the current vision might not be effective, it is oftentimes not the fault of the vision itself; rather, it is the fault of the level of implementation that patient is experiencing. This was very much the case with regards to Beers and the way in which her team sought to extrapolate and redefine the existing vision of Olgilvy and Mather Worldwide. Similarly, as a function of crafting this particular approach, she and her team went through a series of steps through which they assess the current vision and sought to approach whether or not it could continue to be relevant within the current environment. This was a highly effective approach due to the fact that it helped the team to realize some of the existing strengths that the firm still could leverage without fundamentally shifting the focus that had previously defined such a level of success within the past. Moreover, with regards to analysis of the actual process through which Beers and her team came to analyze and craft the redefined vision, it is the understanding of this author that this particular approach was both enlightened and highly effective (Mink, 2011). Rather than merely coming into the scene and demanding a rapid level of change to increase profitability, the CEO instead sought to engage stakeholders within the firm and encourage their input into improving the process as a whole. Realizing that she had a certain disadvantage in understanding the situation, Beers leveraged the expertise of her team in helping to craft the vision that would seek to promote the future profitability and survival of the brand in the future. Lastly, the question of whether or not Beers and 13 were able to effectively communicate the buy-in for this project to the respective stakeholders in middle and lower management within the firm comes into a degree of question. Whereas the process through which stakeholder buy-in within upper management was leveraged as a means of furthering the best interests of the business entity highly was highly effective, the communication necessarily broke down after this upper-level management. Although it might be easy to blame Beers or the process that she engaged for this breakdown in communication, it must be understood that the international structure of Ogilvy & Mather was such that a communication breakdown was all but guaranteed. Ultimately, the division heads of each of these respective regions were brought in to give their input with regards to the best path forward. However, upon returning back to their respective divisions, each of these stakeholders continue to maintain a level of personal bias and misunderstanding with regards to the best path forward; as had been explicated within the meeting in Vienna. In this way, the failure of Beers approach was not due to the fact that she was not able to integrate with the senior decision-makers of the firm in question; rather, the failure in this particular approach was due to the innate biases and unique means of implementation that such a large multinational advertising company must necessarily exhibit. All in all, the case study at lose the fact that in excess of 270 worldwide offices for the advertising agency existed (Ibarra & Sackley, 2011). As such, even though Beers was able to integrate with the ideas and vision of several of the strategic managers of these visions, it was all but impossible to affect a broad systemic change with regards to the way in which business was accomplished within the lower and middle management of the firm in question. As such, the case study helps to exhibit the fact that even though certain best practices can be followed in helping to integrate positive change within an organization, it is necessary to take a very broad systemic understanding of the means by which organizational changes affected in order to impact positively upon the future profitability and viability of an ailing business entity. Furthermore, although Beers plan necessarily exhibited certain drawbacks, some of the best practices that she engaged upon are likely to have far-reaching impacts and continue to develop the firm to a future level of success. This is due, and small part, to the fact that the advertising agency is a well-established entity that has a high degree of financial reserves upon which to draw. This provides a type of insurance that even if a particular vision is misapplied and a region struggles, the business entity as such will not entirely or completely become bankrupt for collapse under market pressure. References Ibarra, H., & Sackley, N. (2011). Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide. Harvard Business Review. (9-495-031). Mink, M. (2012). Charlotte Beers’ brand. Investors Business Daily, A03. Starr, A. (2011). Charlotte Beers’ toughest sell. Businessweek, (3762), 56-58. Read More