Strategic Leadership Lecture 3

This week case study is about the National Health Service (NHS),the name  is used to refer to the four public health services of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, individually or collectively, though only England's NHS officially has this title.  It is one of the biggest employers in the UK.

Regarding to the issues discussed with my colleagues on NHS, I believe that the key problem was the organisatioanl structure.   An important component to the success of any organisation is the type of structure it implements. Organisational structure determines the number of layers of management and how departments interact with one another. In NHS, it was not cleared who was leading the organisation, and therefore there was not a chain of command. As the result of that, a poor organizational structure in NHS has created a variety of problems such as bloated management, poor communication and so on.

In addition, when the Carrefour case study is compared with the NHS one, it can be seen that there are certain similarities and differentiates.  Primarily, in terms of differentiation the two businesses do not operate in the same commercial environment. For instance, one is a public limited company in care service and the other one is private limited company in retailing. Hence, one could argue that different organizational structures and strategies are required for each circumstance. However, a person number 2 may well argue that successful leaders have similar characteristics and thus they have the same reaction to the situation.  The similarity of these two leaders is, they are not effective at all.

In conclusion from this week class, I picked up the first art of effective strategic leadership. Bridging, which will be one of my three key lessons and it will be strategy 1.

(A student DJ).

Strategic Leadership Lecture 2

                                                                                  

Last Tuesday, we did a case study on Carrefour a French multinational company which is in turmoil. According to the Case study, Lars olofsson, the CEO was given another six months to revive the firm and his time is up at the moment.  

After all the analysis with my group members, we concluded that Mr olfssson was running the company as a marketing department director and therefore he was not qualify for the job of CEO. This is due to the Fact that he was just concentrated on the firm marketing aspect not on the other functions such as the financial area.  For instance, he has invested hundreds of millions of euros in a revamp called Carrefour planet which is known in marketing term as rebranding.

 It is known that a successful CEO should consider all aspects of the business before starting any strategy, and an effective leader should have clear goals and objectives. Therefore for Carrefour to have a brighter future, they should search for a CEO who has familiarity in all facets of a business.   Carrefour was not able to adapt to the environment they were operated and that was the main difficult. The important thing l learn from this case study is that, how a bad leadership can be a cause of fading of an organisation and the vital role a leader plays in an organisation.    

(A student DJ)

Strategic Leadership Lecture 1



Successful and Strategic Leader

I have started a new module call Strategic Leadership and l found the subject challenging and interesting.  As the result of toady lesson, l am able now to define the topic and also l realised that there are multiple definitions of Strategic Leadership. It can be said that there is not a wrong or right answer on the topic. Additionally, I have worked in group of three individual and each member contributed in the conversation.   To sum, l have had a good impression of my first class of Strategic Leadership environment, which includes how the module is designed, my classmates and the teaching method. Therefore, if l had to do the same class again at the same time, l would do nothing differently.

(A student DJ)