Case study 1 – What Leaders really do? By John P. Kotter

Case study 1 – What Leaders really do?

By John P. Kotter

01. What is the Article saying about leadership?

According Kotter (1990), leadership is not mythical or mysterious. Most of the developed companies nowadays are trying to practice leadership in their day to day business activities for their success. Most of them do not wait until leaders come for the organization. They use to find leaders who within the company. According Kotter (1990), leadership and management are two different factors, but one fact cannot function without the other factor. Effective and efficient performances can be seen if the person have combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.

Leadership is about coping with change. With the changes in the business world, with the increscent of this complexity, neediness of leadership is increasing to be a success. To manage the complexity in the environment, leadership is practicing three actions. Such as,

1.      Set a direction

Develop a vision for the future and decide the needed strategies which needed to achieve the defined vision. 

2.      Align people

Communicate new direction to the people in the team who are capable enough to understand the vision of the team and are able to give commitment to achieve the vision defined. 

3.      Motivating and inspiring

Keep people move in the corrective direction as defined in the very first stage, despite the major obstacles for the change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.

02. What is he saying about difference between leadership and management?

According Kotter (1990), leadership and management are two different factors, but one fact cannot function without the other factor.  Each of his has its own functions and characteristic activities.  Some of them are,

1.      Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.

With the emergent of large complex organizations, management brings key dimensions such as quality and profitability of the products and services a consistency and a degree of order. Leadership basically with the changes in the business word, the more it gets complex, the more leadership is needed. For an example, in a peaceful time an army can survive with a hierarchy that have good administration and management from top to bottom and good leadership at the top level of the organization structure. But when there is a war, leadership is wanted at all the levels of the hierarchy for survive.

2.      Managing complexity in the environment

Leadership and management the both are doing the same actions which are,

·         Decide what to be done

·         Create networks of people and relationships to achieve goals and objectives

·         Ensure that people do their job effectively

But each achieve above three actions in different ways.

·         Decide what to be done

Management first does the planning and budgeting which includes setting goals and objectives, setting milestones and steps with details and allocates resources and capabilities to accomplish the set goals and objectives. But the leaders with the change of the organization, leaders first set a direction by developing a vision for the future and decide the needed strategies which needed to achieve the defined vision. 

·         Create networks of people and relationships to achieve goals and objectives

Management does organizing and staffing. They use to create organization structures, set of jobs with roles and responsibilities to achieve the defined goals and objectives, staffing qualified skilled people for that job roles, communication them about the plan, delegating roles and responsibilities and also devising systems to monitor implementation. But in leadership, they use to align people, which involve communicating new direction to the people in the team who are capable enough to understand the vision of the team and are able to give commitment to achieve the vision defined.    

·         Ensure that people do their job effectively

Management practices the controlling and problem solving at the final stage. They use to monitor the results by comparing to the plan via having meetings, checking reports and using other tools, identifying the deviation and the gaps, and planning and re-organizing to solve these problems. But in leadership, they practices motivating and inspiring at this stage. They use to keep people move in the corrective direction as defined in the very first stage, despite the major obstacles for the change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.

03. What does each of the case studies highlight?

·         Lou Gerstner at American Express

Basically in this case study, it is discussing how the Lou Gerstner who president as the Travel Related Services (TRS) arm at American Express, practice main three leadership actions in the company in order to face for the challenging business environment.

First Gerstner and his team asked many fundamental questions from the people who are running the card business on the company market, economic, competition and etc. to get a vast knowledge about the situation. And then first he has set a vision for Travel Related Services (TRS) arm at American Express, which is one of the main actions of leadership.  

After that Gerstner has hired and trained people to operate the business who will thrive in it, and also he has communicated them the overall direction. This can be identified as the second action of leadership, which is aligning the people.

After that while the process is going on Gerstner and the top managers rewarded the risk taking employees and “Great Performers program” to recognize and reward truly exceptional customer service, a central tenet in the organization’s vision, to motivate them on what they are doing. And also to make entrepreneurship easier among the team members, they discouraged unnecessary bureaucracy. Also he has upgraded hiring standards and created the TRS Graduate Management Program, which offered high-potential young people special training, an enriched set of experiences and an unusual degree of exposure to people in top management. In which all the mentioned processes can be categorized under the third main action in leadership which is Motivating and inspiring the team.

·         Chuck Trowbridge and Bob Crandall at Eastman Kodak

Basically in this case study, it is discussed on how Chuck Trowbridge and Bob Crandall align people in the organization to face for the challenges in an effective and efficient manner to achieve company set goals and objectives.

First Chuck Trowbridge has discussed with each and every key person inside the group and people elsewhere at Kodak who are much important to operate the business activities to understand about the current situation in order to solve the problem. As the main crucial area was engineering and manufacturing organization, Trowbridge has joined with Bob Crandall who is the head of that organization in Kodak. First both of them together have set a vision “To become a world-class manufacturing operation and to create a less bureaucratic and more decentralized organization”. This can be identified as setting direction the first action of leadership.

As the message of the vision is difficult to convey because it was such a radical departure from previous communications, Crandall set up dozens of vehicles to emphasize the new direction and align people to it. And also he has implement,

1.      Weekly meetings with his own 12 direct reports

2.      Monthly “copy product forums” in which a different employee from each of his department would meet with him as a group to discuss on recent improvements and new projects to achieve still better results.

3.      Quarterly “State of the Department” meetings where his managers met with everybody in their own departments.

4.      Once a month, Crandall and all those who reported to him also meet with 80 to 100 people from some area of his organization to discuss anything they wanted.

5.      To align his biggest supplier–the Kodak Apparatus Division, this supplied one-third of the parts used in design and manufacturing–he and his managers met with the top management of that group over lunch every Thursday.

6.      Created a format called “business meetings,” where his managers meet with 12 to 20 people on a specific topic, such as inventory or master scheduling.

7.      Trowbridge and Crandall also enlisted written communication in their cause. A four- to eight-page “Copy Products Journal” was sent to employees once a month.

8.      Program called “Dialog Letters” gave employees the opportunity to anonymously ask questions of Crandall and his top managers and be guaranteed a reply.

9.      In a main hallway near the cafeteria, these huge charts vividly reported the quality, cost, and delivery results for each product, measured against difficult targets. A hundred smaller versions of these charts were scattered throughout the manufacturing area, reporting quality levels and costs for specific work groups.

Throughout this mass project what Trowbridge and Crandall were trying to do is Communicate new direction to the people in the team who are capable enough to understand the vision of the team and are able to give commitment to achieve the vision defined which is aligning the people.   

·         Richard Nicolosi at Procter & Gamble

By considering the case study is mainly discussing on setting direction, aligning the people and Motivating and inspiring the team to overcome the challenges in today the company is facing. Though there is a vision in the company Nicolosi has introduced that vision with a new direction included a much greater stress on teamwork and multiple leadership roles.

Nicolosi has appointed a group groups to manage the division and its specific products as a strategy. And also he has established “category teams” to manage their major brand groups (like diapers, tissues, towels) and started pushing responsibility down to these teams. This is, delegating the power among the employees of the company which can be identified as aligning the people which is the second main action in the leadership.

Nicolosi has selectively discussed with advertising agency and got to know key creative people and talked more to the people who were working on new product development projects, which set the employees much motivated as the general manager deal with even lower level employees. And also Nicolosi asked the marketing manager of diapers to report directly to him, eliminating a layer in the hierarchy which motives the employees. This process can be identified as motivating and inspiring the team.

After getting more information from the employees Nicolosi has announced a new organizational structure that included not only category teams but also new-brand business teams, this can be identified as delegating the roles and responsibilities among the employees which is aligning the people.  

Also On June 4, 1985, with the gathering of sales district managers and paper plant managers– several thousand people in all in local Masonic Temple, Nicolosi and other board members described their vision of an organization where “each of us is a leader” which motives the employees of the company. And also the event was videotaped, and an edited version was sent to all sales offices and plants for everyone to see which can be analyzed as setting the direction (make aware the each and every person on what is the company vision is).

Also in spring of 1986, as few of division’s secretaries, feeling empowered by the new culture, developed a secretary’s network and established subcommittees on training, on rewards and recognition, and on the “secretary of the future”, it let the employees felt motivated and give their maximum commitment towards the company goal achieving.

All above mentioned activities helped create an entrepreneurial environment where large numbers of people were motivated to realize the new vision. This can be identified as motivating and inspiring the team which is the third main action of leadership.

04. What could those business leaders do to improve those things today?

All the leaders must be much more in touch with the technology as in today most of our day to day activities are linked with the digital. We call today as a digital world. In order to become more successive effective and efficient leader, he or she must be align with the digital world and the changes in it.