ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR ASSIGNMENT -1 LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character —Norman Schwarzkopf

The above quote truly summarizes my leadership orientation. Strength of my leadership lies in my ability to craft a vision for my team and structurally creating a plan to achieve the objectives. I create a vision for the team by understanding past of the organization and communicate the vision effectively to the team. During uncertain times, rationality becomes inadequate. To increase predictability in such times, I inspire people to think imaginatively and creatively. I vitalize the team with my compelling stories. I like to reward and celebrate initial breakthroughs. I take responsibilities for my actions and hold myself accountable. Structural thinking helps me build an implementation plan and develop coordination strategy to achieve my goals. I can plan for short term victories and
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create structures to support the change. Thinking structurally helps me to deduce next logical steps and increase my efficiency of execution. It also has helps me evaluate my skills and address my performance gaps. I need to work on my political and human resource frames of leadership. I have to develop the channels of informal communications to build alliances. Even though I decide my strategies structurally, I have to learn to anticipate other’s strategy and change my strategies accordingly. I should develop more stronger relations with opponents to facilitate negotiations. Networking more with key players of political clout will help me build the power base. I have to work on building the team consensus and focus on building relationships among the team members. I should invest more on providing right knowledge, tools and support to empower the team. Providing more liberty to team members will increase their participation of team. Previously, I was working with Accenture and my client was an electronics retailer. My team was spread across three countries. I had to interact with other cross functional teams spread across five countries on three continents. The holiday season is the most critical part of the year for my clients. Substantial amount of business is done during this part of the year. Hence, stability of systems
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was very critical during this part of the year. Co-ordination of multiple teams is required to make our systems stable and I was leading the effort in Vancouver as an onsite representative for our team back in India. During the last holiday, I had an unexpected workload. Using our typical schedules, we prepared our plans keeping December as the target month. Due to new business requirements, clients wanted the systems to be ready by first week of November. Client informed me of the new plans only by the last week of October. We had very less time to prepare our systems. I had to totally develop a new plan and I immediately called a meeting with all the teams required. In a short amount of time, we developed a new plan. But this required our team members to put extra hours. I made sure that all the teams responsible are aware of the new plans. Our plan required that all teams work very closely as their tasks were inter- related. Any small mistake in the order of the tasks would cripple the whole process. We would have to start the whole process from the beginning. As we had very less time there was no room for errors. Considering the Structural frame, I developed the coordination strategy among the teams. I made an agile project plan considering the external factors. I was also consistently evaluating the project plan during the implementation to make the

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process more efficient. To handle issues more efficiently , I created new escalation structures. These structures helped us to be faster is our reaction to resolve the issues. As we were working across multiple time zones, reaching to different teams and getting them involved at the right time was a challenge. Hence key people were identified and delegated as point of contact for purpose of communications and to attend meetings. All the tasks were divided as per the structure of the teams. This increased efficiency of the execution. With regards to the human resources frames, I involved some of the best talents available in our teams. I addressed all the concerns of our team members regarding the tasks assigned to them. I took consensus of the team members before making final decisions. I held regular meetings and made sure that every team member understands the importance of the task and completes his task with utmost diligence. Required resources were made available to team members to perform their duties. In terms of political frames, I identified and reached out to key members of other multi-functional teams to develop traction among their teams members. One of the team was very rigid and was not ready to accept our plan. I convinced them to go an extra mile as their task was finally impacting the business of clients. I also

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made assessment of resistance I might face as the team members had to put extra efforts. I reached out to corresponding teams and negotiated with them. This was important considering that I had to get tasks completed from people all across the globe. Coming to symbolic frames, I made sure that every team member is aware of goals we had to achieve. I lead by example. I made myself available all the time and led the teams during critical activities. I rewarded and appreciated the team members who took the extra mile and contributed to success of the project. This motivated the other team members. Whenever we faced problems during the implementation, I encouraged the team members to think imaginatively. I gave them the liberty to try and experiment new ideas to overcome the problems. Going through this experience, I believe that structural and political frames provide the best possible methods to achieve our goals. Structural thinking was very much a necessity in this case as the tasks have to be planned in an order. Structural thinking also helps me identify the changes required for the current structures to achieve the objectives. Completing the changes required to structures before the implementing the plan, makes the plan more reliable.

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Considering that team members were spread across the globe, it was very critical to develop a co-ordination strategy. The co-ordination of team members was very critical for the successful implementation. This strategy controls and aligns the work of the team towards the goal. The co-ordination strategy also help division of labour and hence increases efficiency. Every team member knows his part of the task and hence accountability increases. Political framework play crucial during the implementation of the plan. As this task involved role of multiple teams, there were difference in interest among the teams. These differences have to negated by negotiations. These negotiations have to be carried out with key people who have significant influence on the teams. Once these key people are contented, automatically everyone else agrees and the difference are removed. Hence networking with key people and gaining their confidence helps in such cases. Words : 1174

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