Leadership Strategies

Question: Write an essay on Leadership? Answer: Introduction We will discuss about the companys strategies and the role it plays in the success and failure of the business through the case study. Google is one of the leading companies and has supremacy of the internet. We will research the reason for the success of the Google Company. Googles main aim was to improve the lives of the people and bring the world together through launce of Google search engine and Google Gmail. It made the website a top internet brand and the most recognized search engine in the world through its innovation in web search and advertisement. The main focuses of the company was search, advertisement, operating system and enterprises. The reason why Google is the best and famous is because of its powerful search engine algorithm, which can search a text in few seconds from thousands of sites. Google is the fastest growing company among the people and has been praised for its service it provides. After Google was launched it acquired many other companies, and YouTube w as one of it. Google acquired YouTube in 2006 and introduced operating system for android phones and launched Chrome web browser in 2008 which gave it a huge profit and a huge expansion to the company. Marketing and leadership plays a very vital role in the success of a company and with the help of good leadership and marketing a company can ensure future revenue. There are many types of marketing strategies and Google uses many marketing strategies to run its business in profit. Leadership and strategic development processes which operate within the innovative context at Google. The company has become one of the best and profiting companies with the help of effective and efficient leadership and strategy plan. For the success of any company an effective strategy and leadership is required and today we will discuss how these strategies have helped the company Google to grow and become one of the best company (Yeung, Campbell, 1991). Effective strategic leadership comprises five acti ons which help the organization to run smoothly and overcome all the difficulties it includes determining strategic direction, effectively allocating and managing the firms resources and capabilities, establishing appropriate balanced control, sustaining an effective organizations culture, and integrating strategy with corporate social responsibility. With the help of the case study we can conclude that effective leadership and strategy is required in all the fields and plays a vital role in the success (Campbell, 1992). Strategy development can be of two types Intended Strategy The top management is involved in designing of this strategy and is even known as design view of strategy development. This strategy is the outcome of strategic leadership and planning. Strategic leadership has a direct effect on the success and failure of the organization or the organization is influenced by the strategic leaders leadership hence it plays a very important role in an organization (Acur, Bititci, 2003). The leaders hold the highest position in the company and have all the authority to decide and take decisions. Most of the time the leaders are the founders or co-founders of the company and they are involved in making or designing strategies of the company. As per the case study Schmidt dealt with administration and the investors and had the most traditional CEO role. Page was concerned with the social structure of Google and Brin took a lead in the area of ethics. There are many benefits of strategic planning and it helps in determining the direct strategy, it helps t o understand the strategic issue, coordinate all the business levels strategy, helps in implementing agreed strategy and involve people and creating ownership of strategy (Khalifa, 2011). Emergent Strategy This strategy is an unplanned strategy which emerges in the organization as time passes by. Emergent strategy is mostly found in services like accountancy and health services. The operating unit is involved in making this strategy as they are well equipped with the skills and knowledge required for this strategy and the top management cannot make these strategies as they may not understand the techniques. The top managements role is to make strategic direction and co-coordinating and shaping emerging strategy from below (Mintzberg, 1987). Google: who drives the strategy? Strategy is a direction for the business and a scope for the business which helps the business to perform in a changing environment. And this can be done by arrangements of resources and by meeting the objectives of the company and the stakeholders. Today Google is one of the best companies in the world with high earning profit. Larry Page and Sergey Brin is the co-founder of the company Google and with their leadership skills and strategies Google was able to gain followers. Google used very different business strategies from the very beginning of their carrier. They decided not to use investment banks as dictators of their initial share price instead they launched an open IPO where the buyers decided the price for a share in the auction and not the investment banks. This broke the old method followed by many different companies and the company had to face many criticisms (Miles, Snow, Meyer, Coleman 1978). Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up the governance structure with a two-tier b oard of directors which was very unusual in USA. In this type of strategy it gave a managerial freedom to them to run their company in their own way and take their own decision and they were not answerable to any higher authority. The companys success depends on strategy development which has the following characteristics such as long term direction, scope of activities, fit between the firms. The resources and competencies and the external environment, seek to achieve competitive advantage, meet the expectations of various stake holders (Schilling, Hill, 1998). The leaders should be aware of strategic decisions which are taken in the different level of the organization. Many researchers have shown that managers and employees usually want a sense of identity, they wants something more than good pay and job security and that is a Sense of Mission. There are number of functions that aMissioncan have in any organization. These can be internal and external and even includes the below me ntioned functions (Lumpkin, Dess, 1995). It promotes shared values amongst employees which brings harmony in the company. It guides the resource allocation in a consistent manner and in a useful manner to reduce the wastage of the resources and full utilization of the resources. It inspires and motivates managers and employees of the company to higher levels of performance. (Sense of Mission) It helps in balancing the conflict interests of various organizational stakeholders. It provides a sense of direction to the employees and the managers. It even improves corporate performance. It even helps in focusing on the organization during crises. Four elements of Ashridge Mission Model These four elements set the goal of the organization and help the organization to achieve its target or goal. Purpose Purpose have three elements and these elements needs to be together to create a strong mission. For the benefit of a higher model, going beyond just satisfying the needs of its stakeholders. For the benefit of the shareholders For the benefit of all its stakeholders (Brezina, 2012) Strategy Strategy plays a vital role and helps the business to run smoothly and efficiently. With a good strategy and a good plan a manager of the company can achieve the companys goal and objectives. Values When the organizational value of the employee is aligned with the personal value of the employee it creates a sense of mission. Values are very important for the organization as it motivates the employees to work efficiently and effectively. They can provide a rational for behavior that is as strong as strategy. The organization can expect the full utilization of resources with an effective and efficient strategy (Peng, Heath, 1996). Policies and Behavioral Standards Policies and Behavioral Standards help the employees and the company to know what needs to be done in day to day activity. Googles growth and expansion is the result of unique management strategies and its implications. Hiring Policy The company follows a very unique way in selecting their employees. They believe in hiring the best employee as one exceptional employee is much more valuable than an average employee. By this hiring policy it makes sure that they have the best human resource for the optimum utilization of other resources in the company. And they even believe that if they hire good and exceptional employees then it will attract more good employees in the organization (Foreman, 1998). A dramatically flat radically decentralized organization As per few researches Google is organized as the internet itself. It is highly democratic, well connected and flat. Self-managing team Google is a self-managing team as employees who work in the development team works in small group and each team has as at least three engineers. For example project like Gmail has three to four teams and each team has three to four engineers who work in developing and enhancing the features of the product. They follow a very unique procedure which is not to be found in any other company and that is the team appoints the team leader and the engineers can switch teams as per there interest to work for a particular product without taking permission from the HR (Yukl, 2002). Rapid low cost experimentation Google book search engine started with the experiment aimed to answer a critical question and how long does it take to digitize a book. Page and Mayer started this by photographing each page of the 300 pages of the book using a metronome to keep pace. Google was invented not with a grand plan and it even believes in the philosophy which is Google Just try it (Mintzberg, Waters, 1985). It took 40min to turn the ink into pixels and an optical character reorganization program soon turned the digital photo into digital text. And in no time Page and Mayer found the software that could search the book. This is the kind of innovative ideas and learns as you go approach helped the company to make history and run the business in profit year after year. The company decided that it would devote 70% of its engineering resources in developing of the business and 20% of employees will be devoted to extend the related areas and 10% will be involved in innovative ideas (Vera, Crossan, 2004). Through these steps Google ensures the optimum utilization of resources for the growth of the company. With the above mentioned strategies Google was ranked the second most valuable company brand after Apple. With all its acquisitions it has multiplied its profit and revenue. In 2011 the companys value was $111 Billion. And is expected to increase its profit in the coming years with its innovative ideas and strategies (Hollander, 1995). Challenges faced by Google Google acquired many companies and had to focus on making strategies and plans for the acquired companies which shifted the focus of the company to mobile internet access, hence Google faced a serious issue in earning its revenue from advertisement that went from 97% to 96%. Cost per click went down by 12% year after year. The company did face issues due to the shifting of the focus to mobile internet access but the main issue faced by the company was from government and judicial arenas. The issues were in three main areas (Gardner, 1995). Privacy The government was concerned about the privacy of an individual data. The US federal trade commissions privacy frame work tried to make sure that Google cannot link its tracking data to identify individual. The regulators were concerned about the privacy policy that was introduced by Google on 2012 (Avolio, Bass, Riggio, Orr, Ciulla, Krishnan, Riggio, 2008). Antitrust Google dominated the internet search and meant that it had monopoly in terms of the competition law in many countries. The EU competition commissioner had four concerns and notified the company about the concerns it had from their business and those were restricting its competitors items appearing on their page and the portability of Advertisement campaigns from Googles Adwords system, the promotion of Googles items in the page of their rivals, its copying and displaying of the content from restaurant sites (Avolio, 2007). Patent infringement claims Google even faced the issue of Patent infringement. Oracle claimed that Android infringed its java patents and it was one of the biggest infringement claims. The main aim of the company is to manage the growth of the company by maintaining the equality of the product and services. The company needs to keep improving the operational, financial and management controls and even there reporting systems and compliance procedures in order to maintain growth of the company. These cannot be neglected as it can damage the growth of the company and there profit. It may even affect the goodwill of the company (Lowe, Kroeck, Sivasubramaniam, 1996). As the company is growing there has been a significant increase in the in there headcount and operations, which demands effective management, operational and financial infrastructure. The company faced many issues with the acquisitions of the other companies as the management focus shifted from their own business to the acquired business and had to pu t more effort to decide how to managing or control and how to implement the procedures and policies at the acquired company. Because of the focus shifted towards the acquired company Google had a decrease in the revenue and faced many issues in managing their own company (Bass, 1991). Conclusion From the case study we can conclude that the company can make optimum use of resources and make profit with an effective strategy and leadership. And while managing strategies and development the managers faces many challenges such as managing the processes that may give rise to emergent strategy to which they may not know the techniques and how to act (Yukl, 1999). They even need to use different strategies to for different situations in the company. It is very important for the company to distinguish between intended strategy the desired strategic direction deliberately planned by managers and emergent strategy which may develop in a less deliberate way from the behaviors and activities inherent within an organization. Formal strategic planning has many advantages and disadvantages. However, there is evidence that shows that such formal planning is not sufficient explanation of strategy development that is practiced. The strategic management process guides in decision making and ha s 4 elements that help the organization to run its business and they are as follows setting the vision and mission, strategic position analysis, strategic choices and strategic actions (Piccolo, Colquitt, 2006). Introduction Leadership in an organization plays a very important role. Leadership is a skill of a person that he uses to motivate the others to get the things done or achieve a target. With a good leadership a company can succeed or fail in earning profit. Some believes leadership as characteristics such as demographics, skills and abilities, and personality traits, predict leadership effectiveness. Leadership is required in all the fields of the business and with efficient leadership skills a leader can turn a non-profiting company to a profiting one by motivating people to work with great enthusiasm to achieve the objectives of the company (Bass, Steidlmeier, 1999). Leadership skills differ from person to person and different leadership skills are required for different situations. Today we will discuss about Transformational leadership which redefines peoples missions and their visions; it even changes their commitment, and restructures their systems for goal accomplishment through a relation ship of mutual motivation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and leaders into moral agents. Transformational leadership inspires people with their vision and take them into confidence to believe in their vision and motivate them to achieve those mission for the achievement of the goal. Transformational leaders inspire their followers to perform better for the sake of the organization. Transformational leaders are people with vision and with a mission to motivate the followers to accept the new goals and new ways of doing things and achieving these goals (Steiner, 2010). The leadership style and theories changes with the change in the business environment. The transformational leader should have good communication skills, competence or knowledge, interpersonal skills, good judgment and confidence in order to motivate the followers for the growth of the business (Jarvis, 2011). Lets discuss the Transformational Leadership characteristics that impact organizational growth The ability to make difficult decisions The work of the transformational Leader even includes the ability of taking difficult decisions. It is a part of leadership skills and the transformational Leader should always be ready to take a difficult decision and face it. When the leader has a clear vision, values, goals, and objectives it becomes easier for the transformational Leader to act on difficult decisions (Welford, Gouldson, 1993). Internal motivation and self-management Transformational Leader needs to be highly motivated from within so that they can effectively manage the growth of the company by motivating the followers to achieve the goal and objectives of the company (Chesbrough, Appleyard, 2007). Willing to take the right risks Transformational Leader should be very calculative in taking any risk as it affects the performance of the company directly or indirectly. The leader should make sure that all the researches have been done and there is no risk involved in the action. They should even make sure that the risk does not harm the business growth (Teece, 2010). Check their ego The transformational Leaders should never let their egos come in between their work. It is important for the transformational Leader to keep their ego in checked. They should make sure that they do not misuse there power and think of achieving the companys goals and objectives. They should first think about the companys gain and not about their personal gains. It is believed that when an organization succeeds a transformational leader succeeds (Hall, Johnson, Wysocki, Kepner, 2008). Organizational consciousness Transformational leaders share a joint conscious with the organization. The growth of the company ensures their growth. As their values are aligned with the growth of the company they just dont view their position in the company but even thinks about the growth of the company and how their action will affect the companys growth. They know what action to take and what action to avoid that will benefit the company (Dvir, Shamir, 2003). Adaptability Transformational leaders should be more adaptable to the changing business environment. Transformational leaders need to be more open to the new ideas and innovative ideas of working that can benefit the company. The transformational leaders should never stand stillas the competitors may overtake them; hence they should always be ready to learn new things and adapt it quickly. Willing to listen and entertain new ideas The transformational leaders should have the skills of listening as listening encourages both way communication and it encourages the followers to share their ideas without any hesitation. Transformational leaders should understand that success of the organization is a team effort and the success of the company lies in the hands of the followers (Nielsen, Randall, Yarker, Brenner, 2008. Inspirational Transformational leaders should make sure that they understand their followers individually and just dont recognize the follower for the good job. By knowing the followers individually the transformational leader can understand the follower and can understand what motivates them or inspires them to work efficiently and effectively. Proactive Transformational leaders needs to take proactive decisions sometimes and cannot wait for other to take decision. They do lot of research on the new innovative ideas and make sure that the risk does not have any impact on the growth of the company. They are the leaders who are risk takers and try new ideas and innovative ideas for the growth of the company. Visionary Transformational leaders are visionary and have the ability to communicate their vision to their followers, and convince them to believe in their vision and work toward the vision by communicating the vision with passion and clarity and forcing the followers in the achievement of the companys goal (Zhu, Avolio, Walumbwa, 2009). Following the below mentioned steps a leader can encourage and motivate followers to achieve higher levels of performance Intellectual Stimulation The transformational leaders encourage the followers to be more creative and innovative. They support the followers and encourage them for their new and innovative ideas. They make sure that the followers explore new ways and techniques of working. They even give new opportunities to the followers to learn new things and techniques. Transformational leaders question assumptions and beliefs and encourage followers to be more innovative and creative towards resolving old problems in new ways that will benefit the company. Individualized Consideration The transformational leadership should make sure that they communicate with the followers so that that they share their ideas that will help the transformational leader to recognize the follower for its contribution and new ideas. It also involves supporting of the followers and motivating them. By recognizing the follower for his innovative idea the transformational leader can win the trust of the follower and motivate to work with more zeal (Acur, Bititci, 2003). Inspirational Motivation Transformational leaders have a very clear view of the future and they even offer followers the opportunity to see and understand the meaning of their work and set high standards. Transformational leaders have a very clear vision which motivates the followers to achieve the goals. They encourage followers to become part of the overall organizational culture and environment.This can be achieved by motivating speeches and conversations with the followers. Idealized Influence Transformational leader builds a confidence and trust and acts as a role model for the followers The trust acts as the foundation for accepting organizational change by winning the trust of the followers in their leaders.The follower who is sure of the virtues of their leader will be less resistance to any change in the organization. Hence with all the above mentioned skills the leaders can motivate the followers to achieve their goals and objectives of the organization which will ensure the growth of the organization (Acur, Bititci, 2003). Conclusion Transformational leaders have vision, develop a shared vision, and value the contributions and efforts of their co-workers in the organization. Through individual consideration, intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation, transformational leaders have great potential to increase the efficiency and performance beyond expectations and bring a growth in the organization and even help the individual growth. It can be concluded that with the effective transformational leadership an organization can work more efficiently and effectively. Transformational leadership helps to understand the concept of effective leadership, especially the need of leadership in changing organizations and how it helps the growth of the organization. It can even be concluded that there are some risks associated with this form of leadership, particularly with respect to idealized influence. The organization can be described as a powerhouse of emotions and employees does not always behave rationally the y sometimes behave emotionally and takes decision for their interest. 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