Leadership at NissanNISSANDetail how Ghosn demonstrated the 3 basic leadership competencies (Personal, Team, and Operational) in his rehabilitation of Nissan. What leadership styles (or combination of styles) did Ghosn use at Nissan? (Charismatic, Transformational or Transactional) Support your answer with examples (10)Answer 1: Ghosn demonstrated all the three basic leadership competencies in his rehabilitation of Nissan:-Personal: (Continuous learning initiative and risk taking, honesty and integrity, flexibility, self –confidence). Before assuming the position of COO at Nissan, Ghosn met hundreds of people to include employees, union officials, suppliers, and customers etc. to learn more about the company and its strength and weaknesses. His creation of the cross functional teams at Nissan were unusual in a Japanese company, where a team of managers determined change. He along with his executive committee signed a pledge that in the event of a failure to reap profits by 2000, the team would resign demonstrating sincerity and commitment. Team: (Judgement and problem solving, teamwork, creativity, innovation, change communication and influence). From meeting the above mentioned groups of people Ghosn realized that dictating changes would yield no results. So he created cross-functional teams and gave them responsibility the future action required to revive the company. He did not set himself apart from his employees and did not want to change Japan, but change Nissan.         He toured the company, shop floors, and explained the employees the need of the hour to be precise, factual and measurable evidence to prove positive results. He also helped the Nissan team come out of depression of a long time by re-establishing their self-confidence that they were capable of competing with rivals Honda and Toyota.
Operational: (Responsiveness to internal/external customer planning and organizing, quality results, orientation). The cross functional teams identified many interrelated problems which matched Ghosn’s initial impressions about the company. The management was in-coherent and without customer focus and stressed only on production and profit. He took strategic steps to increase efficiency by closing five factories and laying-off more than 21,000 employees.  The employees were not given a shock and were explained gradually over a period of time about the issues faced by the organization. The ill effects of job loss and factory closure were reduced by giving them early retirement benefits, using natural attrition, other part time opportunities etc. The suppliers were reduced in numbers and bulk orders were procured, thereby reducing costs.
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At the beginning of the project, we asked our management to share our plans about the future prospects of growth for the next five years and also the future costs of the project. It was obvious that the “realizing our company value” would be our job after 10 years and we were not prepared at all. In fact, we did not really know that it was the job of the management to “sell the company” – that is, to provide us with the highest value for our time and money, when we have other interests and if they could be bought from us. This was even more important for our current customers. Our only hope was to be the one to make and sell a good brand that will help the customers. We did that by opening a third one and doing a marketing strategy, which we learned very soon after its establishment that was also a top priority: building a social media community, so that it could attract new and experienced users to our brands, to have more interaction over mobile and online spaces. This was part of the original plan for the management to have them be responsible for improving the quality of everything. The initial implementation of this strategy had started off as the following, using a small sample-size (8 people), followed by two more small samples with many small participants (around 30 people). Although it seems to be quite simple, its fundamental purpose is to take it a step further and get it to be as effective as possible. We could start with three (and not so many) small experiments. If we do not produce results, we have to pay a whole share of our own money, so those new followers of our brand (we can even pay for them without the approval of the original employees) should get a higher amount than that given their support. If we produce only some results, we could do some better with a larger sample size, for example by going out and raising social media support, for the entire enterprise. The next phase in the new project is going to take into account future results of the company itself and its social media community. This will involve building a new social media culture which would help all users feel part of the organization and to have the quality of content in their profiles as well as that of each follower. If we create a separate social media channel to make an impact on other social media communities in the enterprise, that would be a great success since it would be able to make certain people feel different, to know that our company is alive and healthy again, and to build a social media community around our new brand (which is not always good, given the social media infrastructure that exists in the enterprise). The next step will also be to put these new users who have already joined our brand within our platform, along with the current network users, and their feedback about their experience of building an effective social network and social media-wide. Our network-users are important in our brand since they will become a part of our customer relationships. This social media channel is something that we will continue to work on as part of the project. If we find the right person to manage our