Impacting Leadership Wider Organizational Processes - Assignment Example

? Leadership in organizations Discuss how leadership can impact on wider organizational processes, particularly during a period of change? The attribute of leadership has long been a topic of interest among the historians and scholars as it is connected with the revolutionizing the world in a varied ways in different societal aspects. Defining the characteristics is indeed a complex process as it associates the notion of solution to diverse problems with varying intensity. In today’s world of cut throat competitive business environment organizational leadership is a huge area of study because proper leadership can uplift the performance of an organization from grass root levels to sky rocketed acceleration. Basically leadership includes an influencing relationship between leaders and the followers intended for bringing real changes and optimal policy ramifications which perfectly reflects the shared purpose. By picking up one of the definition of leaderships from a wide variety the most applicable in this can be stated as a shared mindset which acts a representative of understanding a fundamental way of thinking about, perceiving and understanding the mechanics of the business environment of today’s world (Daft &  Lane, 2008, pp. 5-7). Leadership is even more significant in crisis situation. Helio Fred in his article, “Effective leadership response to crisis’’ states that the organization generally survives a crisis with reputation by the timeliness as well as the effectiveness of the response which heavily depends upon the strategic focus and implementation of the policies by the leaders of any organization (Garcia, 2006). The paper directs towards the exhibition of leadership with respect to an organization in times of crisis situation and how the leadership maintain the pace of operation in difficult times and shows the way for future growth which will be highlighted in the subsequent sections. Problem statement & Discussions The positions of the leadership are established in the settings of the work of the organizations for the purpose of achieving the purposes for which their existence is omnipotent within a larger system. The crux of the paper lies with the notion of organizational leadership. In an organization, the processes of leadership are generally directed towards defining, establishing as well as translating the direction for their followers with the provision of the enabling the process for the achievement of the purpose. The operation of the leadership is vehemently attached to the continuous development as well as attainment of the goals within the organizations (Zaccaro & Klimoski, n.d.). The company which will be discussed in this paper is Hewlett Packard better known as HP. HP is an American multinational corporation with its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The sectors where the company caters are mainly small and medium sized businesses and large enterprises as well as customers in the government, health and educational sectors and the products delivered by this company are software, technologies, solution s and services (Hewlett-Packard Co, n.d.). In the time span of 1995- 1999, the company was facing several restraints like fierce competition from the traditional competitors as well as new competitors entering into the market. In the field of computer as well as corporate computer business the biggest rivals of HP were Dell and IBM. The company lacked performance in the sphere of technology as well as field of innovation and encountered slow pace of growth. The aftermath was that the company lost its competitive edge among its competitors unable to develop any path breaking strategy for growth. Another significant cause of the generation of crisis situation was that of the serious bureaucracy within the organization itself which practically paralyzed the day to day operation of the organization and initiated severe inefficiencies and heavy decline in sales (Hoopes, 2001, p.4). But the situation changed with the appointment of Carleton S. Fiorina as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company. The paper will aim at reflecting the implementation of unique leadership techniques in HP which brought profound transformation and acceleration in its business. Description of the issues during crisis Fall in profitability Prior to the appointment of Fiorina, the company went through a bad phase of two years with heavily declining sales with fluctuating profit figures augmented highly through the Asian flu, dipping computer prices as well as painful delays in the product deliveries. The Quarterly growth almost halted with a sharp fall around 5% year over year from the period of mid 1998 and so on (Burrows, 1999). Prevalence of high level bureaucracy One of the important areas of success of the company is that of the printers and personal computers. The success of the company in this departments was escalating the sales from around $13.2 billion to around $38.42 billion in 1996 but the grave concern which was indeed degenerating was that with a wide diversity of around 130 different product groups, the supremacy of bureaucracy was highly authorized with the framework of the company. One of the formal vice president of the company, Jeffrey L. Cooke told in a media report that, ''I left HP because I did not want to spend 80% of my time managing internal bureaucracy anymore,'' (Burrows, 1999). Demand decline In comparison with the other competitors, HP was often regarded as ‘a reliable but dull manufacturer of expensive hardware.’ It was also known that the target clients were mainly business executives and engineers and did not heed focus on the huge demand of teenagers and the students (Burrows, 1999). Emergence and deliverance of unparalleled Transformational Leadership (TL) Thus on the backdrop of this declining situation, C. Fiorina aged 47 years was appointed as the president and CEO of HP replacing Lewis, E. in 1999. Fiorina was the first lady CEO to receive such a big platform. Before joining HP, Fiorina spent a total of almost 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies where she successfully held a number of senior leadership positions (Hoopes, 2001, p.3). Thus getting appointed as the CEO Fiorina faced tremendous challenges in upgrading the then situation of the company. She applied her own unique leadership qualities in the development of the performance of the company which are discussed in the following sections. Getting rid of ‘HP’ way The company at that critical juncture was infested with its pale performance and over burdened by the internal bureaucracy. The company maintained its own ‘HP’ way culture within it. Dynamic policies were adapted by Fiorina. In the first phase, she implemented the policy of dismissing sales representatives with poor track records and rewarded the people who performed their heart out. She injected into the working force of the organization that exchanging productivity among each other leads to effective performance and leads to growth dynamics. Motivating the people to work and rewarding them was the basic agenda of Fiorina. She infused within the working culture a policy of telling (high task-low relationship) type of leadership instead of facilitating or sharing with her subordinates that she merely defined their job roles and assigned them their tasks (Burrows, 1999). Introduction of new marketing savvy techniques Fiorina also introduced innovative marketing as well as sales techniques. In the early 1998, the corporation Bell Atlantic Corp. wanted in cutting down the amount of time required for the preparation of the telephone equipments along with gears which routed the data and voice calls and it took 9 months for them. But Fiorina rigorously rallied her troops in executing the same work within a time span of 3 months. The President for services at Bell Atlantic stated that, ''She stepped in and made sure it got done’’ (Burrows, 1999). She also saw the business from an unconventional lucrative point of view. She pioneered in the engineering of the marketing campaign simplifying “hp” logo by dropping the founders’ names (Hoopes, 2001, p. 4). Neutralizing effects from external pressure and the merger deal with Compaq Fiorina also took crucial managerial decisions of the organization all by herself rather than depending upon the consultation and advices of the other people for attaining solutions. In this case it can be said that she faced tremendous pressures from opposition from inside and outside although she remained stunned in her decision to merge with the rival company Compaq – a land mark phenomena which turned out to be a success in the long run. Fiorina’s regime brought a new dynamics to the leadership paradigm of the organization. The merger although did not yield fruitful result but Fiorina justified her stance by emphasizing on the hardcore values of the culture of HP which directs towards creativity, change as well as innovation. She told in favour of transformation with respect to the merger that, “This company has never been about looking in the rear-view mirror. Standing still is the path of greatest risk, because our customers and the technologies we market will not stand still with us. Standing still means losing ground. Standing still means choosing the path of retreat, not leadership” (Hoopes, 2001, p. 10). Conclusion The paper dealt with the ways in which leadership can mould the destiny of an organization towards the dimension of invincible success from the times of crisis and difficult situation. Fiorina’s leadership brought about a fresh view of innovation and transformation in the structure of the company which in very short time escalated the performance of the company towards to a next level. It can be inferred that validation of leadership lies in not only leading the way towards optimism but it centers how the followers also walk in the same direction as directed by their leaders with utmost harmony. Her leadership also reflects the attribute of self sufficiency and feature of being herself and not succumbing to pressure under crisis situation. References 1. Burrows, P. (1999), HP's Carly Fiorina: The Boss, Business Week, Retrieved on July 20, 2012 from: http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_31/b3640001.htm 2. Daft, R. L. Lane, P. G. (2008), The Leadership Experience, Cengage Learning 3. Garcia, H, F, (2006), Effective leadership response to crisis, Strategy & Leadership 34(1), Retrieved on July 20, 2012 from: http://www.logosinstitute.net/PDF/Garcia%20Strategy%20&%20Leadership%20Crisis%20Article.pdf 4. Hewlett-Packard Co, (n.d.), Retrieved on July 20, 2012 from: http://in.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=HPQ.N 5. Hoopes, C. L. (2001), The Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Merger: A Case Study in Business Communication , Retrieved on July 20, 2012 from: http://www.awpagesociety.com/images/uploads/HP-Compaq-case.pdf 6. Zaccaro, S. J & Klimoski, R. J. (n.d.), The Nature of Organizational Leadership Understanding the Performance Imperatives Confronting Today's Leaders, Retrieved on 20 July 20 2012 from: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/07/07879529/0787952907.pdf Read More