Zuckerberg's Effective Leadership - Essay Example

FACEBOOK 4 What entrepreneurial traits does Zuckerberg display that convince you he can lead the company into the next phase of development for facebook? As the case shows, Zuckerberg displays a type of charismatic leadership that motivates his employees in a relaxed, confidence-inspiring environment. Leadership style has a big impact. Positional leadership can be detrimental to groups; not all leadership is good. For example, in some activities, a leader is chosen arbitrarily, and they don’t even want to take command of any decisions or group goals. They just take the leader position as a boost to their personal authority over others, but get nothing effective done in terms of being constructive or building a bridge towards shared team goals. In other cases like Zuckerberg’s, where leadership seems to be more authentically connected to team rather than personal goals, the groups tend to work more effectively and move together towards goals more saliently. This can be related to rational systems theory, when aligned with these theories of leadership. “While focusing on the growth of the user base, Facebook also paid close attention to the revenue side of the business. The company had several sources of income: direct brand sales, online sales, working with the top 200 advertisers in the USA, etc” (Facebook, 2010). At Facebook, Zuckerberg shows how effective leadership is perhaps the most important factor in creating successful partnerships. True leaders are able to motivate and provide vision while still subscribing to a basic pattern of teamwork and support that engenders an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect. Too often leaders are more interested in leading than in providing fundamental solutions to the problems at hand. In today’s dynamic society, leaders are also increasingly adhering to a pattern that accepts change, rather than stability, as the standard. This creates an environment in which dynamism is supported and can lead to new creative solutions. It is sometimes easy for a business or corporation to accept its position as the status quo without realizing that the world has a habit of changing very quickly, as today’s giants can become tomorrow’s vacant office blocks. Therefore, effective leaders must see the change inherent in the outside environment and project it inwardly to adhere to the vision of their organization and supply real-world solutions to the problems at hand. “Communications processes both internally with employees and externally with customers are integral parts of a system… while some advocates of systems analysis were suggesting that managers look at inputs, transformation processes and outputs, other systems advocate were developing quantitative techniques to aid in decision making” (Hellriegel et al., 2005). The case shows Zuckerberg as not just a leader, but also an effective planner. Leadership needs to be effective through dynamic planning and the ability to stick to a plan and follow through. #2 How would you leverage the value of the facebook brand going forward? The internet has changed the world a lot. For example, nowadays mainstream political and advertising campaigns are rushing to invest time and money in networked systems, so as to enhance consumer and potential voter responsiveness and information access, and also to quicken information and campaign marketing delivery time, and the industry of which Facebook is a part supplies solution to these problems. The reduction of administrative costs is also a concern, as is the issue of improved efficiency and ergonomics. More than ever, the value of Facebook as a brand can be leveraged through information management and risk elimination. Although no individual system is 100% foolproof, many campaigns employ a variety of security options to minimize risk in this competitive environment. Effective security prevents loss of revenue and time, detects possible illegitimacy, determines the value of the company’s positions, protects their integrity, and distinguishes leaders and innovators from stability-obsessed reactionaries to technological change. “Social networking is a complex, large and rapidly expanding sector of the knowledge economy. There are as many organizations as there are ways of connecting with people. The social networking ecosystem is rife with companies offering diverse services” (Facebook, 2010). For Facebook, value is about showing innovative leadership and service. There are styles officially that tend to polarize leaders as either positional or creative, which strays to the positional side of the equation. In this paradigm, planning, strategy, and positional authority is exemplified. “In its established usage, a paradigm is an accepted model or pattern, and that aspect of its meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to appropriate paradigm here… like an accepted judicial decision in the common law, it is an object for further articulation and specification under new or more stringent conditions” (Ritzer, 2002). This means measuring pros and cons tended to outweigh the aspects of solution-finding. Zuckerberg’s behavior in the Facebook shows how a willingness to change one’s perspective is a critical element of creative decision-making in all sorts of group situations as well as in business; professionals can look to creative-decision making as a fresh approach to which there are few limitations from the open or natural systems perspectives. #3 Instilling and managing innovation has been a critical factor in the success of facebook to date; discuss. It is true that Facebook has remained innovative ina very dynamic and competitive market, and this is perhaps because the company has been able to avoid conformity and industry Groupthink. When people form insider social groups instead of work groups, they tend to stall innovation. In groups as in business, as mentioned in many studies, Groupthink can be an obstacle that is the result of too much social and not enough professional cohesion. This situation, “is an agreement at any cost mentality that results in ineffective work team decision making and may lead to poor solutions. The fundamental problem underlying groupthink is pressure on members to concede and accept what others think” (Hellriegel et al., 2005) Motivation is also an essential subject to look at in aligning and contrasting group planning and business planning in regards to management concepts and structural innovation at Facebook. If the commander or group leader is able to effectively motivate the person using leadership in the open-systems environment of the struggle, this reflects well on the group. And if a manager is able to effectively motivate an employee using leadership in the rational-systems environment of the business, this also reflects well on the first conditions. From a rational perspective, then, both employee and group training is the key focus of motivation in terms of planning scenarios The basic assumption of the case seems to be that Zuckerberg’s role and leadership shows it is not only the manager who is responsible for making creative decisions in a company: effective management decisions must be a team effort among a group of people who share a common vision. Leaders who accept too much responsibility for their decisions are denying the fact that they are by nature working within a supportive community which surrounds them, and which is the nature of their responsibility. This includes a wide range of employees who are also part of this community. They must not lose sight of the implications of their decisions on others. REFERENCE Hellriegel and Slocum (2005). Management. New York: Pearson. Ritzer, P. (2002). Charismatic leadership. Organizational Dynamics. Facebook (2010). Case: available online. Read More