1.

FIVE SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS BY THE LION BREWERY (CEYLON)

PLC DURING THE PAST FIVE YEARS

I. Grand “Gold Medal” award from Monde Selection

The company has been awarded a Grand Gold Medal and a high quality award for Lion
Stout and a Grand Gold Medal for Lion Strong at the Monde selection 2013. The
awarding body is considered as most authoritative annual beer competition in the United
States.

II. Recognized as the “9th” most valuable Brand in Sri Lanka in the year “2013”
Lion brand was chosen as the 9 th best valuable brand (Sri Lanka) in the year 2013
according to the Brand Finance-the global experts on brand value-the highest rank
achieved by a listed FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) Companies in Sri Lanka
with a brand value of Rs.10, 132 million.

III. Achieved huge savings by implementing quick win reward and incentive schemes
for manufacturing and packaging divisions
The company increased savings in various ways by implementing quick win reward and
incentive schemes. Mainly the savings include water, electricity, carbon dioxide,
increased packaging efficiency and reduced machine down time.

IV. Achieved exceptional sales and revenue growth during past five years
(Annexure xxx)

V. The brewery expanded its production capacity from 1,000,000 hl to 2,500,000 hl per
year
During the past two years, the company completed upgrading its brewing facilities. What
remains now is the upgrading of its canning and bottling facilities and supporting
infrastructure, which has completed about 75% up to now. Once these are fully
completed, the company will once again be in a position to supply demand in full via the
local production.
 2. KEY LEADERSHIP CHARACTERS OF THE ORGANIZATION

Considering the key achievements stated above, the success reflects some key leadership styles
implemented by some leaders of the organization. Among them, the Chief Executive Officer
(CEO), Marketing Manager, Quality Assurance Manager and the Chief Engineer were
highlighted. The company’s practice of team work concept during the last ten years, therefore
every manager commonly practices that experience when achieving aforesaid benefits during the
past five years.

2.1. CHIEF EXCECUTIVE OFFICER (CEO)

2.1.1. Personal characteristics: Energetic, intelligent and having expert knowledge in the areas
of business management. He is a well known as one of the expert business consultants in Sri
Lanka with having strong communications skills. He holds many positions in Sri Lankan
business societies and even in the Asian region. Currently he holds the position as the
“Chairman” of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. Observing his busy schedule, he is a strong
character who is able to carry out many tasks with in short time periods and work on time.
Among other important characteristics, he is a man with qualities such as achievement driven,
enthusiastic, and persistent against obstacles.

2.1.2. Leadership style: The key role of all business leaders is to define long term strategic
goals for their organizations and aligning/sharing those efforts with all organizational members.
As an experienced goal oriented leader, the CEO completed many successful tasks during under
many difficulties raised by the government and the societies. Due to the culture of the country
against the alcoholic industry and create struggle with the Sri Lankan society, the CEO carried
out contingency planning considering many situational factors when implied long term strategic
plans such as,

 International per capita beer consumption and demography with cultural and religious
factors.
 Social problems from different nations and villagers living in the brewery premises.
  Environmental factors in product environment such as emission standards of noise,
effluent water etc.
 Facing with competitors, substitutes, financial crisis, political situations, government
rules and regulations and natural disasters etc.
 Technical factors, such as lack of raw material, technology updates etc.

His plans consist with clear objectives and vision. Observing his leadership style, it is more clear
and familiar as a “Transformational Leader”. Therefore, it is better to discuss his achievements
under the four components of transformational leaders.

2.1.3. Individualized consideration: The CEO’s one of the most result oriented strategy is to
use modern technologies to accomplish tasks rather than allocating an employee. Therefore, he
tends to train and motivate the employees to do many tasks. The incentive and quick wins
scheme which was stated in section 1.III has encouraged the employees to discover new
improvements and huge savings to the company during the past five years. To accomplish these
tasks, the management carried out both in house and out side trainings for every employee. Work
teams were implemented in all departments and allocate them to specific goals towards
achieving organizational objectives through introducing the balance score card. As an individual
measure, a detailed appraisal system and new HR policies were implemented. Considerable
amount of training budget was allocated for the improvement of individual knowledge which has
become a compulsory requirement. Even though it was a huge cost for the company, the results
showed positive and became much higher than the expenses. When the government increased
taxes and banned advertising, the organization could have been achieved maximum process
efficiency in order to compensate the losses. In conclusion, a mechanism has implemented to
enabling participate every level of employee to suggest their ideas and plans to lead the brewery
ahead in order to achieve the organizational goals.

2.1.4. Intellectual stimulation: Lion brewery acquired more than 85% of the beer market share
in Sri Lanka as a pioneer brewer. The top management does not have any experience in facing
major competitors in the brewing history. CEO’s thinking that any time may suddenly change
the beer market under the new business trends and tactics. Therefore he believes and advices that
all employees should powered to face such challenges that they would change their attitudes
according to the situational factors in order to keep the business consistently. Training programs
were conducted about motivation, innovation, and creativeness to take different perceptions,
suggestions and views of the team members. In practice, following are some actions taken during
the fast five years with the direct intervention of CEO.

 Formed an innovation center by appointing a manager and executives to centralize the

manufacturing operations.
 Installation of new office areas considering psychological aspects.
 Redesign some work procedures to minimize the stress levels of the employees with
more freedom, but more innovative result oriented, and redesigned the problem solving
process with fair and transparency.
 Some designations were re-named to improve the mental health of the employee.

2.1.5. Inspirational motivation: This refers to the degree to which the CEO articulates the
vision, mission and other important objectives that is appealing and inspiring to followers. The
CEO addressed a monthly meeting (town hall meeting) for all employees to communicate about
future goals. In this context, every employee can suggest ideas in live. He believes that the best
decision makers and the biggest asset of the organization are its employees. Therefore all
suggestions will be taken in to the consideration and find alternative actions after deep analysis.

Company’s sales and revenue figures will be presented during the aforesaid monthly meeting to
build up good sense and motivation about future goals among the employees. This idea was
generated by the CEO and it gained that the followers are willing to invest more efforts in their
tasks. They are encouraged and optimistic about the future and believe in their abilities.

2.1.6. Idealized influence: The CEO applies idealized influence on his followers including
mainly for the divisional heads to gain the trust and confidence of the fellow members.
Conducting daily meetings for the divisional heads, he articulates the organizational objectives
and explains how been high level of ethical and moral conduct. That means he believes the
mentally readiness is most important when fulfilling organizational objectives and as a result, the
organization could have would achieve the aforesaid results as a whole.
2.2. MARKETING DIRECTOR

Marketing of beers is one of the challengeable tasks in Sri Lanka. There were many barriers
against the alcoholic industries in several ways. That is,

 Religious and Social factors against alcohol consumption – Consuming alcohol is not
recognized by certain religions such as Buddhism and Muslim societies.
 Banned advertising
 Increased government taxes
 New rules and regulations arise with serving alcohol in public areas.

Although, there are a very few opportunities available in marketing, the marketing director
launched several alternative solutions to market beers both locally and internationally, hence has
been able to enter new international business opportunities under his leadership style.

2.2.1. Leading with diversity: The marketing director shares his responsibilities with
subordinates assigning specific targets and goals. As a democratic leader, he gives top priority to
conducting meetings, group discussions and online conferences with managers and executives
who are involved in various functional activities in many places in Sri Lanka and outside Sri
Lanka. Due to this high level of diversity having under his scope, he facilitates them with
modern communication equipment and transportation in order to keep the connections alive.
Further more, he is highly concerned with employees continuous development, thus the large
training budget were reserved in each year and measures the progress to know further
developmental needs.

Companies’ sales, marketing and distributions were spreads all over in Sri Lanka under the
different ethnic groups, cultures and languages etc. Appointing staff considering with those
differences would be much help in achieving consistent sales growth in the past decades.
(Annexure xxx) Especially the company achieved exceptional sales growth from north-eastern
areas after the civil war ended in Sri Lanka. The major reasons to get this success are,

 Immediate adaptation of operations in those areas

 Staffing different ethnic groups with training & development
 Allocating targets under incentives and rewards schemes
  Flexible work environment and close relationship with top management

2.2.2. Leading with international businesses: The marketing director begins its export
marketing function in new dimensions with opening regional offices in Maldives and India. In
addition to this the company was able to sign export agreements with many Asian and European
countries. The lion brand was able to win grand gold medal awarded from “Monde selection” for
2013 and for several other years. (Annexure xxx)

2.3. CHIEF ENGINEER

With his charismatic leadership style, the most highlighted benefit received by the company was,
increased operational efficiency. Analyzing key performance indicators (KPI) during the past
five years, all the indexes were gradually increased (Annexure xxx) and many of them now has
reached the optimum level. The truth behind this achievement is the implementation of various
development programs. The below mentioned is as follows,

2.3.1. Employee motivation program: One of the main tasks of the engineering division is to
reduced machine down time. This needs employee’s active participation with good maintenance
knowledge. At the beginning, this was a major issue as many employees practiced conventional
methods and their own stereo type behaviors. Some of them were lack of new knowledge. There
were several in-house out side training programs received by all the manufacturing staff
members as the first stage. Secondly, they formed work teams with the consideration of existing
knowledge, skills and attitude of the employee. A coaching program and continuous performance
monitoring program revivals the exceptional out come of the most employees. As a result all
KPIs have improved gradually (Annexure xxx).

2.3.2. Quick wins reward system: A quick wins rewards ceremony was held once a year in
2008 to 2012. Due to this became to most result oriented program of the manufacturing and
packaging divisions, the program has been re-scheduled to be conducted once in every three
months. In here, employees have opportunity to suggest or do improvements and modifications
in their work areas. The leadership allows them to think freely on their ideas which lead to
achieve the organizational goals and to facilitate actively implementation of such projects.
The most significant task has to be done by the charismatic leaders, to inspire and motivate
others to do more than they would normally do. Due to the chief engineer’s close and friendly
relationship with different levels of employees, it makes the stress less work environment. He
empowers and mostly trusting his subordinates when accomplishing tasks as a result oriented
approach. Therefore it can conclude when accomplishing a task in the aforesaid style is the
unique reason to achieving best KPIs and other operations to lead towards huge savings to the
organization.

3.CONCLUSION

This study revealed that the effective leadership in the Lion brewery (Ceylon) PLC provides to
achieve organizational objectives under many constrains. The study also revealed the effective
leaders are more than managers. They have vision, develop a shared vision and value the
contributions and efforts of their subordinates in the organization.

Secondly, the CEO’s Transformational leadership style spreads over his managers, as a result it
creates more comfortable work environment for team players. It enhanced the employee
motivation, creativity, innovation and continuous improvement.

Thirdly, it is proved that, aforesaid key leaders could have been change the employee
knowledge, skills and attitudes towards to achieve best results over the past five years. This is an
understanding on effective leadership, especially the leadership needed for changing
organizations and furthermore, the situational adaptation became succeeded by leaders and their
situational approaches, but not by the traditional managers.

Finally, the brewery expansion of its capacity from 1,000,000 hl/year to 2,500,000 hl/year is
reflects that the key leadership achievements as a whole.
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profiles-15/: Accessed on 12/06/2014
3. Wirithamulla,S:Class notes: Leading as a mgt. function
4. Annual report (2011):The Lion brewery(Ceylon) PLC
5. Annual report (2011/2012):The Lion brewery(Ceylon) PLC
6. Annual report (2011/2012):The Lion brewery(Ceylon) PLC