According to my understanding from Adair, (2005) on "How to grow leaders", the first concept highlighted is the strategic management in an organization which entails three on going processes are analysis, decisions, and actions. Furthermore the leaders in the organisation are people who make strategic decisions. These decisions, broadly speaking, address two basic questions: What organisations should we compete in and how should we compete in those organisations and last are the actions that must be taken. This requires leaders to allocate the necessary resources and to design the organization to bring the strategies to achieve goals and objectives. This is an ongoing, evolving process that requires a great deal of interaction among these three processes.
Second, the essence of strategic management is the study of why some firms outperform others. Thus, managers need to determine how a firm is to compete so that it can obtain advantages that are sustainable over a lengthy period of time. That means focusing on two fundamental questions: How should we compete in order to create competitive advantages in the marketplace? For example, managers need to determine if the firm should position itself as the low-cost producer, or develop products and services that are unique which will enable the firm to charge premium prices-or some combination of both.
Leadership is an art of influencing a body of people to follow a certain course of action, the art of controlling them, directing them and getting the best out of them. A major part of leadership is man management.
In simple words, leadership is an art or quality inside the person to motivate the group of people to act or do the work towards the achieving the common goals and objectives. A leader is someone who can visualize a better world in the future and is able to convince others to join him/her on the journey. Leadership is the ability to guide and motivate a group of people to a common purpose. Leadership is not the office that you hold or the job you do, but rather the attitude with which you approach your involvement in a project. Leadership is about having the foresight to see the future needs of an organisation, the commitment to providing whatever effort is necessary to move.
As the definition explains what is strategic management and leadership is all about.
Without a good leader no strategy can work or function smoothly and a person cannot be a good leader unless he/she has a good strategy to achieve certain goals and objectives. A good leader having a good strategy can make things work. A proper plan for achieving something and under proper guidance of a leader will help to reach that objective. A leader needs to have a plan, procedure, vision, mission and proper resource to achieve any task. So leadership is a quality which will help to lead the team to achieve the process in the competitive way.
Impact of management and leadership styles on strategic decisions in Sky Express Travel Ltd (SET Ltd).
Case Study.
SET Ltd is a travel agency situated in Berkshire, running successfully for the past 17 years, with another branch in Leicester.
The organisation is a member of International Air Transport Association (IATA) and
Air Travel Organisers' Licensing (ATOL) and it is also limited company registered in England & Wales.
The company sales are approximately £5 millions for this year and well achieved their targets. There are 30 members of staff in the organisation.
The kind of management in the SET Ltd is very Authoritarian and Beauracratic management. The owner of the company is an Asian and the way it is been operating as Asian style of management. They take all the decision in any cases or problems without discussing with the employees. Their main motive is profit at any cost. They want to run SET Ltd in their way and achieve the goals and objectives according to their plans. The leadership style is also very autocratic leadership. The leader delegates the work to the employees and expects the work to be done on time without analysing the work load, work pressure and time to be taken to complete the task.
The management takes all the decision in the SET Ltd. For example when there was an issue regarding volcanic ashes which halt all the flights and travel in UK, republic of Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Finland and also entire northern Europe.
The management decided to work 24hrs in rotating shift to provide all kind of help and services to all the passengers and other customers to book their tickets to travel as quickly as possible by providing them alternative route. In this case the authoritarian management style was effective as they took decision to work 24hrs to provide services to all passengers and in result, company made a huge profit as competitors were not able to support much to their passengers and customers.
The customers became permanent and SET Ltd was able to gain their trust and confidence in their clients. This was a decision made by the management without consulting the employees but still they were able to stand firm and act accordingly. Some decisions are very authorative but good and useful to all the member of the SET Ltd. This decision in turn made companies goodwill and made lot of money, which helped the organisation to come out of financial burden and crisis. The employees were also paid incentives and bonuses according to their work and time contributed towards this goal.
SET Ltd also face a problem of high cost of staff turnover during last two years and this was due to lower salary as compare to other competitors, lack of job satisfaction and lack of training. The management and leaders in the organisation took a decision after analysing the reason why there is a problem by conducting one to one interview sessions and questionnaire given to all employees to identify what is the problem in employees and why the productivity is going down.
After analysing the problem the management took a proper decision for the problem by identifying the market current situations about the salary and putting those salary structures in the organisation. After this SET Ltd also started providing proper and well training to all the employees in the organisation so that they can perform better and gives more productivity. A proper plan was placed for the employees, which motivated the employees to perform their job better and achieve goals and objectives.
The employees were motivated by getting pay rise, proper training and well office environment which made SET Ltd able to attain their goals and make profit. This kind of decision in the organisation not only benefits the employees but also have an impact on organisation growth and success.
1.3 leadership styles can be adopted to different situation in SET Ltd
There are different types of leadership such as participative, autocratic and delegative leadership. In reality the good leaders always use the combination if all these styles to achieve the good results and attain the goals and objectives. It is also depends on leaders personal and professional skills, but normally the situation and current position decides what kind of leadership styles should be followed.
In SET Ltd, situation where there is too much work pressure or lot of work to be done in a specific time, then leaders normally adopt autocratic authority. This does not mean they don't think of employees, but the priority is of getting work done in specific time. If they become lenient with employees or give less work, then the organisation will suffer and job will not be done on time, so delegate style of leadership will be good and beneficial. In this leader has the full control on decision-making and tell the employees to follow his instructions.
But in a situation like where work need to be done with employees, then participative style of leadership was adopted. When there are lots of tickets to be issued, the leader of SET Ltd help the employees in fares filing, updated booking and authorizing the bookings so that employees can issue tickets quickly and there is less space for the error. This will also help the work to be completed on time. This style of leadership helps the employees to participate in decision-making and wok together, though the final decision lies with the leader only.
In another situation in SET Ltd where employees have to deal with passengers independently for their bookings, then delegate style of leadership was adopted. In this style, employees who are trained and well experience in customer handling can take their decision without any continuous supervision from the leader. They can take decision on customer and run the business as per their knowledge and skills. Though this kind of leadership is very risky but at certain stage this helps and boosts the employees to take decision on their own. Sometimes it may give wrong decision taken by employees who will affect in business and low productivity, but if the leader is able to trust the employees then this style can be adopted.
