Leadership Performance Of Marks and Spencer And Tesco

Leadership Performance Of Marks and Spencer And TescoLeadership is the process of influencing other people to accomplish an objective and direct them, as individual or as a multitude, which makes it more than cohesive and coherent. Kurt Lewin (1939) led a group of researchers to identify different styles of lead.Authoritarian or AutocraticThis concern style is used when manager or leader sets objectives and tells employees what to be through with(p), how it is to be accomplished without getting any advice or feedback from them and strongly encourages obedience. In this case the group becomes dependent on the leader which often leads to frustration with the wariness often resulting in high supervision, micro-management, and loss of cohesion.This style should be used only on rare occasions like on a new employee who has except started the job. A dynamic leader would prefer this style of management when he has entirely the information to deal with the problems, he is running sho rt of time and his employers are well motivated.Illustration by AuthorParticipative or DemocraticAs the identify suggests this style encourages the participation of staff and employees in the decision devising process. Being asked for their ideas makes employees feel they are important part of the organisation and encourages them to put in otiose effort. The final decision of making authority rests with the leader. This style of management is a positive sign of strength and trust which will make employees respect you. high-powered leader will use this management style when he only has part of information and needs input from his employees. Leader might know more than most of his employees but still he does not know everything and that is the reason for employing experienced and skilful people to help him.Delegative or Laissez-faireIn this management style the leader al abjects employees to make the decisions freely within broad limits. This results in relaxed atmosphere as there are very few guidelines to adhere to which may lead to lack of motivation and low productivity.This style is to be used when the employees are capable of analysing the problems and are experienced enough to know what is to be d integrity and how. This style should not be used as a tool to blame others when things go wrong.The best leader is the unmatched who does not follow one particular style but tries to achieve a balance between these three styles depending upon the situation.Leadership And Change ManagementThe most important part during the process of change is the ability, competence and skill of leader to manage the whole process. Kurt Lewin identified stages of change viz. unfreeze, transition, and refreeze (Strategies for managing change).RefreezeTransition runIllustration by AuthorUnfreeze or Preparation For The ChangeWhat we mean by preparing for change is creating the right environment, preparing resources and processes that might take pasture in future. Just like a healthy individual is more capable of coping with diseases and infections similarly a well prepared organisation is in better position to cope with effects of changes. The leadership will play an important role by means of sensible planning and decision making abilities.Transition or Implementation ProcessThis is the fondness consummation from the announcement of the change complete to the productive installation of the change. This is the most critical point during the change process marked by the instability, lack of room and low motivation of employees due to fear of their instable future. An effective leadership during this period will be focused on helping employees understand the future direction of the organisation after change and secondly by making the change meaningful. People will go to extraordinary length for causes they believe in and a powerful leader will convince the employees on the importance of change to get maximum out of them.Refreeze Or Conclusion Of Th e Change ProcessThis is the period that comes after the initial phases of instability and insecurity, which has now subsided and due to effective role of leadership the employees let become more focused towards the new direction of the organisation. An cost-effective leadership will during this process work towards improving the work life of the employees and assuring them about the positive direction that the organisation is moving in.Strategies And Policies At MS And TescoThe major general strategy available to leaders of all major organisation including Tesco and MS is that they either choose to be the lowest cost retail merchant and become market leader or differentiate products and services so that it is valued by customers to the extent that they are willing to pay a insurance premium price. When it comes to MS in their core products (food and clothing), they attempt to achieve differentiation from others. Tesco on the other hand has focused to attract more customers by be ing low cost retailer.Both Tesco and MS are most successful organisation in UK and both of them consider readying and development of their employees as very important for their business. Training and development forms important part of organisational strategy of Tesco and MS mostly because their success has been characterised by their expansion. Moreover to ensure that they remain ahead of competition they place high importance on training and development. Management realized that there is no better way to achieve this rather than through the use of training and development. (Paisley, 1999).The initiative of Lead to succeed by the MS leadership is an example of the importance they attach to identify and train future leaders. This programme is being announce as the flagship development programme and is considered to be a key component in its future people strategy. (Verity Gough, training zone,08/11/2010)Tescos slogan every midget helps which shows their commitment to reduce price s and increase customer service is now used in their staff training as well. Tescos leadership believes that any intervention by them will lead to an increase in the knowledge and expertise of their workforce.In 2007 when Sir Stuart Rose, was leading MS he announce a policy document to tone the green credentials of MS. According to the policy document presented by Sir Stuart Rose MS would commit to a range of actions at the cost of 200 one thousand million over the period of next five years. The aim of this hundred-point five year plan was to reengineer the companys activities to meet a range of socially responsible goals including ethical trading, health promotion products, sustainable sourcing, and carbon neutrality thus making MS green leader in retail market. This initiative by Sir Stuart Rose was wide seen as an example of creative leadership skill. (Leaders We Deserve,2008).Again in April 2007 there was an episode which presented a leadership dilemma for Sir Stuart Rose. Br yan Ferry who was at that time poser clothes for MS was embroiled in a controversy regarding his admiration for Nazi iconography. Following Ferrys apology over the matter MS distanced itself from singer and officially released a statement that it did not give its opinions on views that were expressed by people in other situations and refused to comment further on this surface. (Leaders We Deserve,2007).Present nous executive of MS is Marc Bolland. He served as chief executive of supermarket chain Wm Morrison and beat MSs internal candidates to bag this post in 2009. In November 2010, he announced a large number of changes to the policy and strategies followed by his predecessor Sir Stuart Rose by stating that MSs goal is now to become an international retailer. In a multibillion flummox revamp he announced scaling back of his predecessor plans of retailing various branded groceries like Marmite and Coca Cola and withal axing portfolio fashion-for-fifty somethings. He also plan ned to open more simply food stores less than 2 years after Sir Stuart close 25 of them, scrapping retailing of household gadgets like TVs and iPods. He also announced plans to spend 300 million a year for next three years on revamping UK stores which recently under Sir Stuart had 3bn makeover.Bolland used expertise of management consultants from McKinsey to come up with this grand plan. His research picked that among other things the customers struggled to navigate MS stores( he tested 30 colleagues to find five items in one hour, only eight succeeded), customer had problems understanding in-house brands like Per Una, Limited and Autograph, and that only one in five shopped in homewares department -thereby making sales feeler in that area key focus. During this analysis he also talked to surviving members of the founding families of MS and concluded that MS should do things that other brands dont do. In 2008 MS annual profits reached a 1bn but due to recession it was down to 700m . New leadership has not made any promises but Mr. Bolland is confident of his plans. (guardian.co.uk, 2010).Tesco, originally Sir Terry Leahy took control, was just a market follower with the strategy catch-up. It was Sir Terry Leahy who directed Tesco towards leading through market knowledge and in process making it largest in the UK. He transformed Tesco into a customer-centric organisation. His strategies including diversification into non-food retail moves into clothing, banking, and its international expansion helped Tesco become the biggest and most profitable in the UK. He was responsible for the Tesco Clubcard. It was because of his successful strategies and policies that he was voted most admired leader eight times in the past decade.Recent announcement that Sir Terry Leahy will step down sawing machine Tesco shares drop by 2.4% this gives an idea of importance of Sir Terry Leahy to Tesco as an organisation. He will be succeeded by Philip Clarke who will be brining his o wn brand of leadership. In case of Tesco this change may have various implications as at the end of such a long and successful tenure of Sir Terry Leahy its not just the investors who are liable to anxiety. He was strongly associated with Tesco brand so effective succession planning will be critical and its going to be tricky for his successor. Board members who missed this top position will be major problem for Philip.( Personneltoday, Beth Holmes, June 2010).There are various situations where the leadership skills of Tescos management have played a significant role in overcoming hurdles. One such incident can be recalled in their joint risk case in 1999. At that same time the French hypermarket named Carrefour had tried to enter Korean markets but it failed miserably. However, in the same year Tesco entered into a joint venture with Samsung under the name of Samsung Tesco Homeplus. The Korean population have preference for local supermarkets chains. This fact was ignored by Carre four but Tescos management took this localization factor seriously and tried to give this joint venture a local outlook resulting in its success. This joint venture faced difficulty in 1999 just after the merger. The main reason behind this was the low morale of the employees because of various cultural differences arising out of the merger. However to avoid the mistakes which resulted in Carrefours failure and to tackle this issue the leaders at Tescos and Samsung started the Shinbaration task force initiative. This initiative went a long way in balancing out the major differences between the work forces of these two organisations. As a result of this positive approach of Tesco leadership it was able to get a strong foothold in Korean markets and had recently announced it expansion plans by opening eight additional outlets in the country (ISN, March 2010).CONCLUSIONThus we note that the tremendous success of both MS and Tesco can be to a large extent attributed to the effective and competent leadership skills demonstrated by their leaders whether be it in terms of transaction with their competitor, changing business environments, or internal troubles. The new leadership of both these organisations has so far been able to cope well with the handover process.