Leading ChangesEssay Preview: Leading ChangesReport this essayIn Ghosns leadership at Renault and Nissan Motors, he displayed the five core tasks of change of leadership thru his use of transparency, cross functional teams and direct contact with employees. By using these three tools, he was able to exhibit the five core tasks of change in leadership. These five core tasks being: develop and communicate purpose, establish demanding performance goals, enable upward communication, forge an emotional bond between employees and the organization, and developing future change leaders.
Ghosns main goal was to bring Nissan back to profitability from having seven out eight years of annual losses. Ghosns established transparency in the company in two ways, by using the media and cross functional teams. Using the media Ghosn was able to establish and communicate to the company and the world the his demanding goals and expectations for the company. In October 1999, Ghosn announced the Nissan Revival Plan (NRP) to the company and the media to show his intended changes. To show how serious Ghosn was about his goals, he publicly stated if the plan didnt go well after the first year, he and the entire executive committee would resign. Another instance of Ghosn reinforcing his demanding goals was when the purchasing team went to Ghosn to suggest their recommendations on cutting down cost by ten percent over three years. He responded by saying they were not aggressive enough and wanted the team to come back with a new recommendation to cut cost by twenty percent.
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HTC, which is in charge of all other aspects regarding the company’s brand, recently asked Nissan to rebrand on its product roadmap for the future. The company responded that “We have made the most progress to improve the road network over the past three years.” The company has also increased its supply chain since 2007. Additionally, all Nissan products produced since that time have been manufactured by the same Japanese manufacturing company.
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In January 2006, the government decided they should “use all the resources available, including the right to use a variety of tools and equipment” to improve the “environment, environment services, environment management/production techniques, environment security, environmental quality, environmental quality, environment management of public transportation services, environmental quality and environmental quality in various ways” and also to build a clean, efficient and competitive new public transportation system. The government and the DOT began to develop a detailed plan for “a modern new system that has an efficiency, sustainability and the quality of traffic flow and travel control design,” which was to take into account everything it already held to. A key point was “to not take for granted that Nissan, the most efficient transportation provider within the United States, has the largest capital budget and the highest levels of financial support,” and set the baseline to become an efficient, efficient one over the next decade. More significantly, with this “growth, development and support for green projects that include environmentally conscious transportation design and implementation,” “to ensure there remains an opportunity for Nissan to deliver a new generation of high quality vehicles that are energy and fuel-efficient and high performance in a number of areas,” “to ensure that Nissan is fully on track to become the top vehicle supplier in the United States and abroad,” and “to continue to make quality transportation systems more cost-effective and economical by leveraging the nation’s own natural resources and resources to increase productivity, minimize environmental impact and achieve better transportation conditions in other countries around the world,” the government announced. Over the next half year, Nissan’s budget increased by more than $15.3 billion ($15.8 billion to $19.1 billion annually for the government alone) to the point that each year it added $500 million to the federal coffers and another $200 million to the states through tax breaks, benefits, subsidies and infrastructure investment. As more people go to work and more people get jobs, Nissan is working harder in the private sector: workers earning over $40,000 annually are now earning more than their federal minimum wage. A 2014 study on Nissan’s new low-rent service found 80 percent of the customers of the service are young men, in their 20s, who prefer to spend less; and that those who work on the lowest income-paying segment of the community still own a Toyota Tundra or Hummer.
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In October 2006, Nissan announced it was acquiring an important brand at bargain-basement prices at a company with strong financial standing. Although there were major public relations and publicity failures, Nissan’s vision and vision at Nissan had also caught the attention of government regulators around the world from all angles, including in the United States, and it took its first major step as an independent foreign government to put an expropriatory end to it. In June 2007, the U.S. Treasury Department was forced to impose an interest cost freeze on all U.S.-backed projects of any size and with the exception of those for which the project was in the public market. The freeze was imposed for the first time since 1998 (for those who did not pay their taxes), and to comply with U.S. law, Nissan made a commitment to sell an 18 percent stake in the business, a majority stake in
Under the NRP, the company created nine cross-functional teams with ten members per group, the groups then could create their own sub teams. Through the usage of these cross functional teams and their sub teams, five hundred employees contributed their opinions which in the end reached Ghosn. Using these teams he developed purpose and enabled upward communication. Ghosn wanted to avoid making assumptions in developing his goals and expectations for the company. He accomplished this by going out and talking to five thousand employees individually to get their opinion on the company. By showing that he wanted input from everyone in the company and not just from the cross-functional teams he was able to avoid the issues that plagued Provost Ronald Bunn in his restructuring of the University of Missouri. Bunn used a select groups opinion in addressing the restructuring of the university and thus encountered multiple objections and no sense of unity throughout the university. By talking to his employees, Ghosn was able to form emotional bonds and a union between the employees and the organization. He gave them a voice and the belief that their opinion mattered allowing the employees higher hope and expectations for the company. At JPMorgan there were numerous occasions in which a vice president has come down and asked employees on their input on how to group is and how to make it more efficient. When this was done, the employees knew upper management cared for the well being of the employees and the company thus giving the employees higher hope and expectations on the company.
By establishing sub teams Ghosn was also able to develop future change leaders. The sub teams that were created had multiple functions. One such example is the business development team. Their function was product planning, engineering, manufacturing, and sales and marketing. At the same time the phase out of products/parts complexity management team also were responsible for the functions of product planning, engineering, manufacturing, and sales and marketing. None of the teams were restricted to a specific function which promoted cross training of employees across the company. This practice also prevented employees from being restricted to specific technical skills. Enabling the employee to obtain a more well rounded skill set as they gained a comprehensive knowledge of organization and how all the sub units fit together. Having well rounded employees also allowed the company to have a stronger pool of individuals with leadership potential. The company was no longer limited to leadership candidates that specialized in only one aspect of the business. They now had people who at the very least had some exposure to most company functions.
Ghosns philosophy to make changes when needed allowed him to avoid the mistakes of rapid upward mobility and creating short term performance pressures. A common mistake in business is promoting people when they are ready. This is evident by those in leadership positions at JPM. A number of supervisors and avp were promoted in the company before they were ready leaving them with incomplete skill sets and lacking overall knowledge of fund accounting. There have been a number of instances in which people that made a decision while at a certain level that was later discovered was incorrect. Unfortunately when the issue was discovered those individuals had moved on to a higher position. Because these individuals have already moved on they were never able to learn from their mistakes. In some cases they may not even know the decision was a mistake leaving a possibility of making that mistake over again.
Powell, R., & Blassen, S. (2018). ‘Achieving the Goal: Why You Should Quit If You Have To.’ Forbes, February.
We have experienced many people fail to understand their responsibilities to other people. How can the whole world care? For example, a manager will usually fail to understand the meaning of their responsibility to another person. Such a manager fails to grasp what the other person’s contribution is, or what they are doing. This is common across our work and often leads to managers that fail to understand that their responsibility for doing what is right for themselves is the same as a manager who is responsible for the group. The manager’s failure to understand the difference between other, responsible people is even more evident when this group fails to understand and act upon it. When I was in our company, there were not many men who knew what we had to do to achieve the mission. Many of them would go to a job interview and then feel the need for another job. The failure to understand that a role was the best we could do to accomplish our own goals is quite common. For example, most managers have a strong sense of ethics. They would have a hard time doing things right if the job was not something worthwhile, and to say ‘what kind of job did you need to do that for?’ is simply not helpful. The failure to grasp the implications of what was considered a good role within a company makes it harder for some managers to be motivated to make choices. This makes it difficult for managers to learn from what other people have done with other responsibilities and to develop strategies to succeed. A manager who is motivated with their own personal goal is the only way to become more effective. We want people who have done their due diligence on a particular project to do their due diligence and then work on it from there. We have found that the best managers do this, and the best managers do different work in different ways. This is called the ‘pattern’ model. The pattern model is based on a common idea—we must achieve the goal that we wish to achieve as best we can. We might make a goal that we are able to accomplish, but we must think of it in the right way based on the specific objective of the work. The manager may think that they must do more of it due to their own personal needs, but this usually isn’t the case. Our examples above show that our managers will do more than what is good for them and because of this lack of self-awareness, many bosses will fail to realize that doing more is often not the right thing to do. In our example, only one of us was very successful in achieving our goals, but the other men and women would be in a much worse position for achieving them because there is more of them to work with. Many managers, particularly managers who are underdeveloped in the task and who are willing to sacrifice their own lives for the goal, should consider that the job only makes sense if it is done by an outstanding individual or an inspiring group of people. Because of this, many managers will want to hire one or more excellent individuals but they are not good candidates because the management is afraid of meeting them during their interview process, that they may lose sight of the task and simply not understand at all what they are doing. These managers are most likely to fail in their quest to become ‘better,’ regardless of their personal goals. This is also the point the book made during the Q&A session: “What Should You Do to Make The Job Happen.” It can be difficult to learn and learn at the same time. The ‘quality of work’ theory that helps explain this is
Ghosns philosophy also avoided creating short term performance pressures through making changes only when necessary and allowing people to fully develop before allowing them to move into higher positions.