Leading Change
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Introduction
In this paper I will be discussing the Leadership challenges that Good Sport face at and different strategies to deal with changes. Good Sport is fitness equipment maker that sells fitness equipment to clubs, hotels and residential houses. Recently it had good success in selling the fitness equipment to hospitals and the company is expanding from Florida to multiple neighboring states. As any other player in fitness equipment industry Good Sport is also always under pressure to launch new products to meet the latest trends. Company is well structured into four departments. First one is R&D responsible for transferring ideas into prototypes and testing them. Second is Sales that do the marketing and promote the products of Good Sport. Finance department controls the finance of the company and is responsible for all sort of funding. Finally Production department which takes the prototypes and make the real products ready for market.
All the departments have unique culture and their way of doing things that is quite typical for the corporate. Informal culture is encouraged in the sales department. Sales people love to meet colleagues outside and adopt informal attitude. They believe in following icons and treat customer as king. They do not like being dictated by others and love to get support to their own ideas. On the other hand Production department has developed unique work culture in which they are only impressed by facts and love creative challenges. While they do not like interference from other departments in their routine and prefer to work independently but do like to express their views when prototype is being built. Current organizational culture at Good Sport has worked so far as the company has grown and expanded to multiple states in matter of only four years. All the departments have unique work cultures but all are dedicated to their work and lead to launch of many successful products in the past.
Key Concepts
Organizational Structure: Organizational structure refers to formal aspects of organizational functioning, such as the division of labor, hierarchical authority, and job descriptions. Structure typically includes whether the firm is centralized or decentralized, whether it uses a divisional, functional, matrix, or networked organization, its reporting relationships, and its reward structure. Organization structure at Good Sport is the one that we see in most big corporations and departments are created and they match with the work they do. All VPs from different departments report to CEO who is running the company from last 4 years. At lower level individual employees report to Team Managers who in turn report to Senior Managers who are answerable to VPs of the particular departments.
Organizational Culture: Culture refers to the shared values, basic assumptions, and behaviors of organizational members. Elements of culture include whether the organization values individuality or teamwork, whether bigger is better, and whether risk taking, is rewarded or reproached. Like organizational structure, culture can influence the outcome at any organization. Many companies tend to struggle when their organization structure turns negative and focused more on bringing in more profits. Organizational culture stems from having a balanced leadership system within the company. In many instances, a lack in effective leadership leads to a development of a negative organizational culture. If leaders are focused on making money, then these attitudes will spread to all levels of employees. There will be a lack of focus on other issues such as job satisfaction, integrity, or motivation. At Good Sport the each department has unique culture that is based upon the work they do. Sales team got very informal culture while production team is reserve kind and is only impressed by facts and likes not to be disturbed by other departments.
Power Structure: John Gardner, writing about leadership and power in organizations, notes, “Of course leaders are preoccupied with power! The significant questions are: What means do they use to gain it? How much do they exercise it?” To what ends do they exercise it? He further states, “Power is the basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action or, to put it another way, the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.” In a similar vein, Richard Nixon wrote, “The great leader needs . . . the capacity to achieve. . . . Power is the opportunity to build, to create, to nudge history in a different direction.” Dahl writing about the pervasiveness of the concept of power states, “The concept of power is as ancient and ubiquitous as any that social theory can boast.” He defined power “as a relation among social actors in which one actor A, can get another social actor B, to do something that B would not otherwise have done.” Hence, power is recognized as “the ability of those who possess power to bring about the outcomes they desire” (Salancik and Pfeffer 1977). Good Sport is pure hierarchical organization headed by CEO, who is responsible for running the company and making it successful. CEO got the power to get things done but he is also responsible for creating positive work environment. Each department at Good Sport is represented by VP that are second in power structure after CEO. Senior managers report to VP and they have to power to manage Team managers. Good Sport, a hierarchical organization, is an organization structured in a way such that every entity in the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. This is the dominant mode of organization among large organizations; most corporations, governments, and organized religions are hierarchical organizations. Hierarchies denote a singular/group of power at the top, a number of assistants underneath and hundreds of servants beneath them.
Leadership: Effective leadership is one of the most important traits an organization needs to survive the business world. Leadership is important from entry-level positions all the way up to the CEO. As defined by McShane & Glinow, “Leadership is the influencing, motivating, and enabling others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members.” The most successful companies tend to have a meshing of this skill at each level where all employees are able to set positive examples for each other. Effective leaders tend to have the seven competencies of emotional intelligence, integrity, drive, leadership motivation, self-confidence, intelligence, and knowledge of the business (McShane & Glinow, p. 5).
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