Topic 10 Materials: Situational Leadership.

In the article, “A Blueprint For Strategic Leadership” written by Steven Wheeler, Walter McFarland and Art Kleiner the
main topic of this article is building an organization in which executives will flourish. It is important the quality of a
leader’s character makes the difference. Being a leader does not mean just solving problems and handing them off.
Instead they help raise society as a whole to higher levels of motivation and morality. Leaders not only just “do things
right” they also “do the right thing”. There is no perfect leadership guidance, being a risk taker like Richard Branson,
charismatic like Lee Iacocca, pursing high performance like Jack Welch, or being relentless and rude like Steve Jobs. But
what matters the most in leadership, is being effective toward the surroundings.

The leader’s capability is structured by the top team’s quality and by the full capabilities of the full organization. In
essence, it is more than just being a manager or an executive and following the bare minimum when running a company.
Leaders, creates a sense of purpose, create effective leadership teams, prioritize, and sequence their initiatives carefully,
redesign organizational structures to make good execution easier and integrate all these tactics into one coherent
strategy. A CEO who has followed this similar approach is former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, A.G. Lafley. During his
tenure, he doubled the stock price from $30 to $0. But, looking beyond the stock price and other financial success, his
leadership created an effect throughout P&G by creating a sense of purpose, the strength of its top team and emphasis
on improving both processes and people. He showed change within the company by moving his executive office on the
11th floor near to the staff, donated the luxurious paintings to a local museum and converted the former executive space
into an employee learning center. Lafley emphasized on building long term capability for generating results.

Simply copying Laflely’s management style can be quite difficult, and in reality, it is not replicable in recipe fashion. But
companies can develop a design for strategic leadership. Looking into leadership styles and corporate performance for
the past 15 years, there are four criteria’s that demonstrates strategic leadership. The four are: the commitment to the
company’s purpose, the makeup of the top management team, the capabilities and motivation of people throughout the
organization and a sequence of focused, well choice strategic initiatives that can take the company forward.

A crisis is the most common trigger for change. The fate of the company often depends on how well a new leader can
draw upon leadership capabilities, his or her own, those of the senior leadership team, and those of people through the
company. In reality, 15% of companies voice a need for change are truly in crisis. But the most common situation
involves 60% of companies is in state of inconsistency. For instance, some questions which are asked are, “ Why aren’t
we getting a better multiple” or “How we can improve our poor performance”. Another 15% of companies, look for
guidance and seek how they can improve their ow leadership. These companies are doing quite well but they want to
explore new challenges. The remaining 10% of companies seek help to recover from a poorly designed full-scale
transformation. When a leader is looking for a major change or the board of directors seeks a leader to oversee change,
these are the starting points: crisis, inconsistency, complacency, or exhaustion.

During Michael Dell’s tenure as CEO for Dell Inc., they reshaped the personal computer hardware industry by providing
the highest quality customer service and support. However, when Michael Dell left in 2004, and management changed,
the focused on cutting costs to compete against the Asian market. With this cost cuts, came to cutting their support
department. Dell got worse in 2007, with the New York Attorney General suing Dell for deceptive business practice and
false advertising toward their customer service. In this situation, Dell lost their way, without their strong corporate
purpose, they did not know their “Why” purpose. Eventually, Michael Dell came back as CEO and regained their purpose
as a company. The power of “Why: is a clear focused explanation of a company’s purpose. Having a purposeful initiatives
is critical for strong leadership because it answers a series of questions of: what is the company here for, to discover
new things, dominate its niche, to serve others, to operate in a globally responsible manner? Once these answers are
questioned, leaders can create a campaign, a sequence of high-priority campaigns that reinforce one another and that
people throughout the enterprise feel comfortable with, even if those actions represent a dramatic shift in direction.
Having a balanced top team is important, but most executives select people who they are close with, and this lies a
problem. CEOs need to assemble candidates who are diverse enough in their personalities and backgrounds to play the
critical component of the overall business. Throughout their actions, leaders have significant influence over an
organization’s culture, but very little is distributed. It is important the leader shows his influence in the business, and
how this can be achieved is through changing the reporting relationships and structures, the networks through which
people exchange information, the motivators and incentives, and the decision rights in an organization, organizations
can shift their capabilities and motivate people to act in sync with the organization’s purpose.

In the article, “A Knowledge Innovation Kaleidoscope KM Coming of Age”, the author has a different perspective about
situational leadership. The author starts off with an introduction about the kaleidoscope and in this device, we see
different colors, and as we turn the barrel, the images change shape by a small amount. As you turn the machine, the
images change by a small amount. This kaleidoscope represents change, and in the moment when something goes off
path, we have to learn how to adapt and move forward. The author says enterprises have gone through unprecedented
changes, and for the past 20 years an agenda has been created for the millennium. The author later states how
knowledge is defined in terms on intellectual capital, and this is a source of economic wealth. Knowledge is seen as
being valuable, but knowledge operationalized is more valuable. The author provides three definitions about knowledge:
knowledge-based economy, knowledge innovation and knowledge innovation zone. The main objective, the author
wants us to take away from this article is moving beyond traditional business practices is not easy, but the rewards are
high. The author wants us to shift into the kaleidoscope Knowledge based economy (moving beyond the traditional
business practice) because it requires a new mindset and classification schema, the scaling and measurements systems
and the compass to chart new directions.

From the YouTube video Situational Leadership, there is a 4 by 4 box chart that shows the different skills of being a
situational leader. In general, the three skills for being a situational leader are diagnosis, the ability to diagnosis or asses
something, the ability to be flexibility and partnering for performance, how do you partner with someone to perform
something well. The first part for leadership are skill, knowledge, or competence, which are how much training does a
person need, how much does a person perceive their role properly, do they understand their task and experience. The
second group is called will, motivation, or commitment. These are the desire to achieve, incentive, security, and
confidence. Going into the actual model, starting with the beginner. This is a person who was just hired or starting their
new role. With the beginner they may need to gain the skill, will, and confidence. However, since this person was just
hired and is given an opportunity, they will show their high commitment. The beginner is identified by readiness level 1
and the appropriate situational leadership style (S1) is the directing style. The beginner is in orientation mode, so the
leader or manager is taking the time to show the new employee the responsibilities of the job, a high task direction and
a supportive relationship. The new employee will later adjust to his or her role, gain experience and by than will shift
into readiness level 2. At this point, we see improvement because they have a higher will compared to readiness level 1
in which he or she needs will. When they reach to readiness level 2, the situational leadership style changes from
directing to coaching. The employee is showing they can get the job done, and the relationship is becoming more
supportive. Moving forward to readiness level 3, we see a significant shift, the skill of an employee is already developed
and he or she will potentially create new skills. But this employees now is cautious, needs will and variable commitment.
In this situation, the employee is burnt out in readiness level 3 and the leader in this category does not have to place a
heavy emphasis on training. The leader needs to emphasize support, building a strong relationship and figuring out ways
to get the employee motivated. The final stage of situational leadership is readiness level 4. This is the best stage an
employee reaches, and in my opinion his or her highest potential. The employee has the high skill, high will, and high
commitment. They are also self-reliant. The leader’s approach to this readiness stage is delegating and the leader
engages in low task direction, low to medium and is a supportive relationship.

From these two articles and the YouTube video, we can see situational leadership upfront through cinema. The Miracle
on Ice film represents leadership in which the coach, Herb Brooks was disappointed with his team not understanding
when they play on the ice, they represent the United States. It got to a point where he felt the need to physically send a
message to his team and made them do an exhausting drill until the players understood when they play hockey it is for
the United States not just themselves. In the Gettysburg film, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain speaks to deserters on the
eve of battle. The purpose of Colonel Joshua’s speech, is to represent America as a free ground, not divided by a free
state and slave state. He concluded by saying we are fighting for each other and wanted to send a message to his army
how significant this war is.