Seminar 4

How has Madonna managed to sustain her success for so long?
Due to her ability to sustain her reigns as the queen of pop. How? By trying hard to be controversial but staying marketable.

Madonna

• survived each setback and emerged strengthened
• creates trends that others follow
• changes her personality in order to always suit the mood of her fan base
• built and retains a committed team
• collaborates with producers, musicians, choreographs, designers, publicists, etc. successfully
• is persistent and did not give up

What can we learn about effective Strategic Leadership from the case study?

1. Be focused, targeted, business minded: requires a clear vision
2. Forecast and collaborate with others
3. Be adaptive& diverse to minimise risk: requires continuous renewal
4. Build up a loyal customer base: requires a deep understanding of customers and the industry
5. Build up sustainable competitive advantages (brand, album base, financial power, experience): leverage competences and address weaknesses

How does this case study compare with Carrefour or Gerry Robinson?

= similarities?

• To Gerry Robinson: "Can do" approach; business minded (as Gerry Robinson said, no matter what business, it can be made to work well)
• To both: competitive environment

≠ differences?

• To both: extremely adaptable, flexible
• To both: clearly communicate goals, promote history and broadcast achievements
• To both: use competitive advantages effectively
• To Carrefour: bringing people to actually do like what you are selling
• To Carrefour: Forecasting to be aligned with the trends of tomorrow

What else you want to remember from today?

1. Sustainable competitive advantage: You have to find something you are good at, customers must value what you do and what you do must be hard to copy
2. If you get the seven S's to get work well, you are (should be) successful

Seminar 3

What can we learn about effective Strategic Leadership from the Gerry Robinson case study?
One statement by Gerry Robinson I want to keep in mind (and more or less answers the question) was that any business can be made to work well - whether you are running a corner shop or a large hospital. Because good management is good management.

Memorable examples of effective or ineffective strategic leadership:
Effective

• Bridging (as an influencing style): To keep on asking employees across the organisational ladder
• "Can do" approach: support people's ideas, get things to happen, success breeds success (encouraging if people see that some things can happen), look at what the problem is, solve it and move on

Ineffective

• Laissez-faire leadership style when not everyone is skilled sufficiently and responsibilities are allocated
• Not facing the problems at the sharp end, spending to much time with the big picture, "talk about issues but do not actually do something" attitude
• Totally separated parts within the organisation, no shared values, lack of communication

}
What I learnt about persuasion & influencing from the case study and from today’s session.

• When you are not certain yourself it is quite difficult to influence others
• Power has to be established
• If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail à therefore: different influencing styles
• Persuading
• Asserting
• Bridging
• Attracting
• (Disengaging)

 

How the NHS case study compares with Carrefour.

="similarities" 

• CEO is not a credible strategic leader
• Lack of flexibility& adaptability
• Outdated& ineffective business model
• Lack of communication

≠ "differences"

• Where as Carrefour provides products that nobody wants, the demand at the NHS would be there (makes that things better or even worse?!)

What went well/ not so well with the group work?

+  1) Ex. "Persuasion& Influencing": Briefly summarising the key points an then applying it to the case
+  2) Ex. "Effective and ineffective strategic leadership": All team members contributed to the group exercise in a similar extent& quality. That led to a broad variety of examples

+  For both: Attentively listening to each other. Led to a respectful and pleasant atmosphere

-  For both: Time management

Should I reconsider my career aspiration?;-)

Of those funny circulating posts, I like this one in particular!



Seminar 2

What do I think about Carrefour and the CEO?
Lars Olofsson as the CEO and navigator of Carrefour failed - in my opinion - to manoeuvre his organisation "through the rough sea" of increasing competition. That lead to a situation where Carrefour is

• selling products that nobody wants
• at prices that no one is willed to pay
• using a business model that every one knows is outdated
• caused by insufficient stakeholder communication & lack of trend analysis

Could the CEO have done a better job?
Sometimes it might be better to first think and then act instead of deciding overhasty and trying to deal with the consequences afterwards. In other words, it might be better for Olofsson and his company to convince investors of a long-lasting strategy instead of focusing on short-term price fluctuations of shares. However, what rests unclear to me is: Is it the CEO or the cards he was dealt with who leaded to this fiasco? 

What would a good strategic leader do?
Follow the Deming Cycle:

• What issues do we have?
• What data is missing to answer these questions?
• Which model(s) should we make use of in order to make decisions?

My participation in the group exercise differs from last week as follows:
This time I kept my nose out of leading the discussion. Mainly because other team members seamed quite experienced in solving case studies of this format. As last week I proposed an approach to get all strategic issues that affect Carrefour listed and gave some inputs to the group.

+ What went well? 

• Focus on the task

- not so well?

•  Divergencies lead to discussions within the group (which in my opinion gets ineffective at a certain point because a consensus is not mandatory in this case)
• Team play

 What I want to remember from this week.

• Reflecting in action: Talking to people and analysing& reflecting immediately their reaction
• Reflecting on action: Sitting back, taking some time, "what real lessons can I take from a specific situation?"
• The closer to the action - the more effective reflection on it

Talking of Strategic Leaders...

At least committed. But also effective as a Strategic Leader? - Steve Ballmer (chief executive officer of Microsoft)

Seminar 1

One thing I’ve learnt about Strategic Leadership!

One thing I have learnt about Strategic Leadership as a combination of Strategy and Leadership is that a Leader should take into account both – an individual related point of view including the question “how to manage employees through a vision, objectives and tools” as well as a focus on the company’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats - in order to gain competitive advantage.
 

}How did I contribute to the group exercise?

From my point of view I took charge by first of all proposing to make a kind of a brain storming so as to define the term “Strategic Leadership” subsequently and second of all contributing some of the key aspects. At the same time I tried to respect dissenting opinions.
 

}What I might do differently if we were to do a similar exercise in future.

If we had to do the same exercise again, I would propose to part the process of defining the term even more meaning first to think about the task every group member on it’s own, then to brainstorm and finally try to find a consent. That would probably help to achieve a more diverse solution at the end.
 

What I want to remember from Seminar 1.

• Strategy: Mostly about the scope of an organisation
• Leadership: Mostly about influence
• Strategic Leadership: Does not happen in isolation; "In truth, any individual with responsibility for the performance of human capital and/or a part of the firm is a strategic leader"