Concepts of Change and Leadership in EFU General Insurance Limited
INTRODUCTION
Presently EFU is the leading insurance group in Afro-Asia excluding Japan, providing a full range of insurance services. This includes life, health and general insurance. A pillar of EFU's strength lies in its close and long-term (over 50 years) relationship with its main reinsurer, Munich Re of Germany, largest reinsurance companies in the world.
HISTORY OF LEADERSHIP & CHANGE IN EFU
From 1988 to 1996, EFU was under leadership of Saif Kalani, chairman of EFU. Leadership approach of Mr. Kalani was much directive (Leader-centric), at that time there was no concept of Emergence approach; environment wasn’t complex at that time. And all the major decisions including finance, management, and marketing were taken by Mr. Kalani (top management). During this time, Company was normal success. He retired in 1996, and there comes the new chairman, Umair Memon, who was a retired army officer, who was having reputation of being so harsh. As was expected, he applied strict policies to workforce and fired couple of employees who he didn’t like. Internal environment changed as workforce lost trust from new leader. And external environment begins to change as new competitor came in market. Market share of EFU decline in just one year, as a result, new leader fired some more member of workforce. This created lack of trust between leader and follower. Situation was going from bad to worse, profit was declining as a result of reduced productivity of workers due to change. Companies suffered loss in year 1995. Mr memon resigned and Arsalan Ansari took the charge, and is still in charge. And company has become top among top now.
CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP
Mr. Arslan came in charge when EFU was in serious crisis. Their market share fall and company was in loss. Then there was need for change arises. Mr. Arsalan saw the need for change and quickly examined the market, competitors, and identified potential problems and major opportunities that can viewed as kotter’s 1st step of eight stage model “establishing a sense of urgency”. Mr Arslan perfectly established sense of urgency and then created a joining team by assembling a team of people with sufficient power to lead the change to achieve while continuing to work as a team. That can well be seen as kotter’s 2nd step of “create a guiding coalition”. At the same time provide strategies to direct change efforts while developing solid strategies for completion and simultaneously communicated that vision to the entire workforce.
Leading Change was named the top management book of the year by Management General. There are three major sections in this book. The first section is ¡§the change of problem and its solution¡¨ ; which discusses why firms fail. The second one is ¡§the eight-stage process¡¨ that deals with methods of performing changes. Lastly, ¡§implications for the twenty-first century¡¨ is discussed as the conclusion. The eight stages of process are as followed: (1) Establishing a sense of urgency. (2) Creating the guiding coalition. (3) Developing a vision and a strategy. (4) Communicating the change of vision. (5) Empowering employees for broad-based action. (6) Generating short-term wins. (7) Consolidating gains and producing more changes. (8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
The concept of transformational leadership relies on appropriate leadership approaches for mission success. AFDD 1-1 describes three leadership competencies: person, people/team, organization Effective leaders (tactical level) need to build face-to-face and interpersonal relationships that directly influence behavior and values. Effective leaders (operational level) need to build team dynamics for small groups and squadrons. Effective leaders (strategic level) need to build strategy and provide direction in a broad spectrum.
In this paper, I will inform you about issues in globalization, power, followership and cultural change in the perspective of a health leader. I will identify three major health issues that are global but has the potential to affect the United States health care system. I will describe these global health issues influence health leaders. I will relate global leadership with transformational leadership. I will illuminate three elements of cultural and diversity within health care organizations. You will find a table of cultural attributes to be made aware of. I will categorize the differences in global leadership according to power, technology, and knowledge management and will explain two leadership approaches for implementing change.
What is leadership? “Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right”. The meaning of leadership can bring to a variety of images. For example:
Leadership is described as the behavior of an individual when directing the activity of a group towards a common goal (Al- Sawai, 2013). Healthcare system involves multiple related, interconnected relations with other departments and health care professionals from various cultural backgrounds; therefore, the understanding of individuals’ behavior and group dynamics within the healthcare organization is imperative for a leader and or organization to be successful (Bukowski, 2009). A transformative leader has the attributes that are necessary for twenty- first century leader to have to be an effective leader in a changing nursing service organization and the healthcare system. A transformative leader is a type of leader that collaborates, encourages, and motivates people adapt to changes with charisma (University of Kent, n.d). Study shows that some leaders fail because of
In his book, Leading Change, Dr. John P. Kotter communicates why organizations fail or succeed based on ten years of conducting research on more than 100 companies to see what contributed to their successful transformations and what hindered those transformations. “In October 2001 Business Week magazine reported a survey they conducted of 504 enterprises that rated Professor Kotter the number one “leading guru” in America.” The two significant aspects I took from this book were the reasons why change initiatives fail and an eight-stage process to lead the organization through a successful transformation.
We need to embrace change by having an individual take a leadership role. There can be more than one leader, but at least one person has to realize change is needed for the better and success of others. Another way to embrace change is by bringing the ...
Change is something that is necessary for the survival of a company, but can sometimes be difficult to instate. That is what is discussed in the book A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter. The central theme of this book is leadership, and how it is required to initiate change.
This paper will be broken down into six sections profiling each critical part of implementing and managing change in an organization. The sections included are; outline for plan creating urgency, the approach to attracting a guiding team, a critique of the organizational profile, the components of change, and how to empower the organization.
In today’s ever changing world people must adapt to change. If an organization wants to be successful or remain successful they must embrace change. This book helps us identify why people succeed and or fail at large scale change. A lot of companies have a problem with integrating change, The Heart of Change, outlines ways a company can integrate change. The text book Ivanceich’s Organizational Behavior and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change outlines how change can be a good thing within an organization. The Heart of Change introduces its readers to eight steps the authors feel are important in introducing a large scale organizational change. Today’s organizations have to deal with leadership change, change in the economy,
According to Yoder-Wise (2015), a leader can be defined as, “an individual who works with others to develop a clear vision of the preferred future and to make that vision happen” (p 35). As employees, we often have our own ideal of a good leader, which may be influenced by experiences and perception of workplace norms. While one’s opinion of an effective leader may vary, there are several recognized leadership theories. The following will focus on the transformational leadership approach.
Leaders benefit from building a team to create and implement change, this is a key theme in the Kotter model of change. This teambuilding engages employees throughout the process. Allowing employees to be a part of the change process gives them the opportunity and trust to be creative moving toward the future (Cochrane, 2002). Leaders can create opportunity for employees and leaders to dialogue about the change, which can help troubleshoot the process. Leaders who engage employees throughout the organization from various levels of the organization will receive perspectives from the entire organization helping them make better-informed decisions. Employees want to be allowed the opportunity to help an organization they believe in, in a way that enhances the
Why now? Why are we focusing on transformational leadership? Healthcare costs are continuing to rise. Some of the critical problems and active debates prevalent in many hospital organizations include the rapidly intensifying healthcare costs, funding and reimbursement cutbacks, and concern regarding the overall quality and safety of health care. “Healthcare systems have come under pressure to improve performance and manage productivity” (Botting, 2011). To be successful in the 21st century, there is a demand on healthcare systems to have a vision and executive and clinical leadership to inspire the change process and make the difference between success and failure in change.
The company has a clear lack of vision. This is because since the loss of Mr. McFettridge, the vision and plans he had are not known to anyone. This exposes the lack of structured top management. Also, the top management is having a lot of young employees which are accustomed to doing a clerical job. Their decision making skills are not developed due to improper mentoring. The work processes are more individual driven then system driven.
Managers are required to form a team that will be capable of leading the way during the organisational change and setting a positive