TerraCog has many tensions that are causing the company to suffer. The company has an unstable executive team that lacks true leadership, there are no clear departmental or individual objectives, group structure is lacking, the team lacks a decision making process, and there are many team conflicts that lacks negotiating.
Richard Fiero, President of TerraCog since 1985, does not realize all the tensions his leadership team is causing for the company. Fiero has tasked a new Vice-President, Emma Richardson, with leading the Aerial project which includes a change of decision making. The absence of the president and leadership within the design and development and the sales department is evident. Since Emma is tasked with changing the decision making process where is Fiero and Whistler in this transformation? According to Kotter (2001), “They don’t make plans; they don’t solve problems; they don’t even organize people. What leaders really do is prepare organizations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it.” This organization lacks a clear defined decision making process – Emma is trying to build a consensus with each functional area. It is hard when the team only cares of their functional areas and decision making decisions. The executive teams show the silo syndrome – concerned with only their function/divisions. A team is the only way to assemble the knowledge and breadth required to pull off the complex tasks of TerraCog. Does Emma really have a team here? I would say there is a lack of Group Structure. According to Gratton & Erickson (2007), “8 Factors that lead to success are:
1) “Investing in signature relationship practices” – the team has conflict and lack of communication during pre-launch meeting;
2)...
... middle of paper ...
...Greg Laurie. Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2006.
Karlgaard, Rich (2004). Peter Drucker On Leadership. Forbes.com, Inc.
Kotter, John P. (2001). What Leaders Really Do? Harvard Business Review.
Kotter, John P. (2007). "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail." Harvard Business Review
Macmillan, Pat (2010). Building High Performance Teams. Retrieved from Blackboard Course
Documents.
Martin, Roger (2007). How Successful Leaders Think. Harvard Business Review. Hbr.org
Patrick, Lincioni, The table group, A Patrick Lencioni Company
Northouse, Peter G. Leaderhip Theory and Practice. Ed. Fifth Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc, 2010.
Rogers, P. & Blenko, M. "Who Has the D?" Harvard Business Review (2006).
Vermeulen, Freek, Puranam, Phanish and Gulait, Ranjay. "Change for Change's Sake." Harvard Business Review (2010).
John P. Kotter, a worldwide famous expert on leadership at Harvard Business School, was a graduate of MIT and Harvard. He joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1972 and who was voted tenure and a full professorship at the age of thirty-three in 1980. Kotter's honors include an Exxon Award for Innovation in Graduate Business School Curriculum Design and a Johnson, Smith and Knisely Award for New Perspectives in Business Leadership. He again gained the title as the #1 ¡§Leadership Guru¡¨ from a survey for 504 enterprises that was conducted by Business Week magazine. Outline of this book
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2012). Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin
Pierce, Jon L. and John W. Newstrom (2011) 6th edition. Leaders and the Leadership Process.
Kouzes, J., & Posner, B., (2007). The leadership challenge, (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-
Lord, R. (2000). Leadership. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology, vol. 4. (pp. 499-505). Doi:10.1037/10519-216
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,
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
“Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail” is an article written by John P. Kotter in the Harvard Business Review, which outlines eight critical factors to help leaders successfully transform a business. Since leading requires the ability to influence other people to reach a goal, the leadership needs to take steps to cope with a new, more challenging global market environment. Kotter emphasizes the mistakes corporations make when implementing change and why those efforts create failure; therefore, it is essential that leaders learn to apply change effectively in order for it to be beneficial in the long-term (Kotter).
Kotter, J. P & Schlesinger, L. (2008). ‘Choosing strategies for change’. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 130-139.
As John P. Kotter suggests in his article "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail," not establishing a sense of urgency is a number one failure for leaders. Lacking a great enough sense of urgency, senior managers in Engineered Woods Division did not cooperate in moving the division from commodity to a specialty business and the efforts remained fruitless. This was a leadership issue that few members of senior team were motivated and passionate about the transition.
Kendra, C. (2011)’ Leadership Theories - 8 Major Leadership Theories’ [online], available: http://psychology.about.com/od/leadership/p/leadtheories.htm [accessed 14 April 2013]
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary
Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
It is very clear that the problems experienced in the companies are not lone standing but in most of the cases they are dependent on each other and there are strong bonds or relationships with regards to the cause and effects between them. It is therefore important to form or establish a strong cause and affect between them.
The following review presents a discussion of five articles related to leadership. This discussion will identify themes shared by the five articles followed by a presentation of the author’s recommendations for applications of the concepts presented in the articles.