Session One - Strategic Leadership

Write down one thing you’ve learnt about Strategic Leadership

I learnt that as the world is becoming more globalised and complex in a very dynamic environment, organisations and leaders need to have comprehensive approach to plan for their companies and ethics is becoming very important in the wake of human caused financial crisis.

I also learnt  there are various definitions to Strategic Leadership catering for today's dynamic environment and  there is a need to research the literature further.

Session Five Challanger

1. What can we learn about effective or ineffective strategic leadership from the Challenger case?

In the case of Nasa and the shocking explosion of challenger we learn that the leadership of Nasa followed the common mistake of over prioritising productivity and in the process compromising quality or ethics which when one looks at it deeper will realise there no point or profit for organizations to press ahead with quantity only. It always results greater damage to the reputation of the company and the revenues. For example Nasa’s operations were suspended for years as the result of the challenger explosion not to mention the irreversible of loss of life and reputation. Therefore we learn good strategy must  be synonymous with balance which plays crucial role  in the long term success and survival of any organizations ‘balance of productivity and quality’ in the case of Nasa it is safety. Another example of this rather routine mistake can be seen in the clothing giant Gap as they outsourced their production to Chinese and Indian manufacturers whose human rights record is low and practice child labour and eventually stained their reputation to ever literate consumer in this information age.

2. What are the underlying reasons why the mission went ahead? Who or what was to blame?

Indeed there are factors that pressure the administration of organization like Nasa such as datelines, gov’t expectations, public expectations and even world expectations that Nasa is the world leader in astronomy, hover the leadership knew very well what they compromised in their secluded meeting when they said “ put managerial hat on and take off engineering hat”  meaning lets prioritise and expedite production and assume or hope the best whether the rocket is actually fit for mission despite clear and dangerous warnings from the engineers who has first knowledge of the subject matter, which is complacency as well as lack of transparency from the Nasa’s management.

3. What else should the engineers have done to stop the mission?

Where there is evidence or high probability of loss of life such as the case of challenger with major safety issues the employees or the engineers in this case should stop the catastrophe from occurring by all means available including leaking the fault to safety agencies like the FDA in the US, the press and/or even the police.

 It is matter of training /informing employees in their inductions preserving the right to life outweighs any management decision which was clearly gambled with when the engineering hat was disposed, consequently the safety of the shuttle crew was disposed and the engineers knew the magnitude and the repercussion of the information withheld from the knowledge of the public and those whose lives were directly involved and did not do enough to stop it.

4. How are the sort of issues that Carrefour or the NHS or Madonna face similar or different to the Challenger case? (Is it possible to compare them at all?)

There are similarities in the NHS and Carrefour, in the case of NHS there were no legitimate communication between management consultants and nurses as a result management does not have any power to lead the company to satisfy the need of patents which again is issues of lack of transparency, which again involves health and life of people.

In the case of Carrefour the company’s goals and strategies were trapped in short term circle as it was giving in to the pressures of creditors just as Nasa’s  strategies were driven by the issues of satisfying the publicity and expectations resulted by the external environment which driven both strategies of these companies to be overwhelmed in short term goals hence compromise the ultimate vision.       

Session Four - Madonna

Madonna has always managed to be modern ,contemporary, relevant and re-invented herself. This has allowed her to have sustainable success.

Madonna has always used her image effectively a sex iconic to attract wide customer base. However, Madonna at the age of fifty must realise to maintain competitive advantage she needs to find new talents and recruit them, in other words, she should be a producer and develop her own prodigy.

Icons like Madonna applied the true sense of flexibility, staying relevant to her industry by adopting culture of constant renewed challenges to status quo and hence remaining relevant in the minds of people which is the essence of why she is the highest ever paid female singer. What is unique about Madonna is her recopy for success is un-replicable by her rivals.