Week 4 Madonna

Madonna managed to sustain her success by diversifying her interest in different parts of the business. She never focused only on music. She was always in the trend, always working with successful artists at the time. Great bargaining power and influence over others. Powerful image, powerful brand which gave her a major competitive advantages in attracting more and more fans. Very ambitious person, very motivated. Came from a poor family. Always had the fear of loosing everything.  We have learnt from the strategic case study that a good leader can go and be part of any industry without even being very talented within that industry and be very successful. Madonna was never a great singer but she was a great leader, a great entrepreneur, she was and still is very ambitious and that made her very successful. She is not just a singer, she became an iconic person, a brand, a trusted brand that attracted millions of people across the world. We have also learned that luck can be of great importance. But most importantly is that once you get to have a great reputation many doors can open and opportunities jump n your way. Madonna made great use of her reputation and managed to spread her brand across other industries too, which is not always easy. More harm can be done by entering other industries, but Madonna managed to do it right and strengthen even more her position. We can compare this case study with Carrefour case study. The huge retailer also decided to diversify their brand by making great investments in organic food, which turned out to be very unsuccessful. Madonna decided to enter the movie industry which was a great success. If we look at these brands (Carrefour and Madonna), both have a great reputation, a great name, what made Madonna successful when she decided to enter different markets? Even though we are talking about different industries, I believe the answer can be found in the management style, the leadership style, where some are better than others.

Week 3 NHS

Gerry Robinson is a manager, which knows what needs to be done. But before that, the problem needs to be understood. And that is exactly what he did in the NHS case. He started by asking questions, getting the big picture. Asking the staff of their opinion. It didn't take long to realise what the problem was. Bad management of the organisation, too many empty surgery theatres, no clear structure in the organisation, lack of leadership, no credibility in the leadership. The most memorable Ineffective Strategic leadership example was the lack of communication between the leader of the organisation and the staff. Objectives were not communicated in the organisation. If for example, the entire organisation would have known that they are fighting for survival, the staff might have been more aware and more involved in changing what was wrong. They all knew that there was a huge waiting list but they didn't do anything about it. The most memorable effective startegic leadership example which was applied by Mr. Robinson was to ask questions. It is crucially important to identify the problem and the only way to find the problem is by talking to the people. This is where Mr. Robinson had performed very well, by using a bridging method in order to extract as much information as possible from the employees. Different styles of influence need to be use in order to be effective in the real world. Gerry Robinson used most of the Styles in the video case study. And we can very easily observe that he knows exactly when to use each one of them and that is very important. It is extremely important to understand your positon and the position of the person you are talking to. I believe in most cases it is a variation between two styles instead of just one. If we link it to the last week's case study, a very noticeable difference can be spotted. In the Carrefour case we saw a few wrong managerial decisions whereas, in the today's case study no decisions were made at all. The CEO decided to employ a team of consultants to identify the problem and to come with solutions. Another decision was to ask Mr. Robinson to come and help. Some of the people that were employed at the hospitant didn't know who the CEO is or what he looks like. A similarity between the two case studies might be that both leaders were not fit for the job. In the group we discussed the situation in which the organisation was in and the different styles of influence used by Mr. Robinson. We didn't have too much time to discuss it in detail but it was very interesting to hear what the others have picked up from the video. Overall it was a very interesting and useful session. After today's session we can really use what we have learned in order to achieve better goals.

Week 2 Carrefour

Carrefour is the seconde largest retailer in the world after Wal-Mart, therefore it has a huge working capital and it has many competitive advantages compared to other retailers. Carrefour was a very successful company until its shares fell down by 45% in 2011. They deliver good products and long queues.  The CEO in an organisation like Carrefour is very important. Key stategic decisions need to be made every day and if the man at the top of the organisation does not have the knowledge, the qualifications and the expertise to make decisions, then he shouldn't.  We can argue that he was under a lot of pressure because he was given a 6 months deadline to make things right. But in my opinion that wasn't the case for Mr. Lars Olofsson because as you can imagine a CEO at a company like Carrefour earns a few good million pounds a year. So I would say he wasn't under a lot of pressure. Yes, he was under presure to demonstrate the world and the bord of directors that he is a capable CEO and has the power to make things go back to normal where everybody was happy (making money).  Mr. Lars made hasty decisions in my opinion, with the Brazillian merger, with the 'Carrefour Planet'. If we think about Carrefour Planet, why have they invested so much in a project without asking their clients? What if the client doesn't want that? At this point a simple suvery might do the job and save millions... A good leader would make informed decisions in order to minimise the risk. He/she should be well aware of the fast changing environment and make changes to adapt to the environment so that the business would not have to suffer. A leader should communicate the objectives set for the company so that eveyone within the company is aware of what is required from him/her so that the company can achieve the objectives in the best possible way. A good leader will always consult with other people before making any decisions, he should have the final verdict, but he should ask and listen to other's opinions on the matter. I belive the group of people that I have worked with in class, has been a very communicative one. Every issue was discussed in detail. My participation was proportionate to others. Unfortunately we did not have sufficient time to debate more within the group. Sadly, I can't make a comparison with what has happened last week because I wasn't there. Hopefully this will never happen again. From today's class I remember we have to reflect on every action so that we can learn from every mistake and from every good aspect in order to make it (even) better.