Is Leadership the same everywhere?

 

What is leadership? To you, a leader might be your college principal, dance teacher, or the President of the nation. To me, it might be my mother, my father, or even my best friend. What most of us fail to realize is that a leader lives in all of us. Most of us don't even understand that when the time comes, the leader in us will emerge and lead the way. However, there are several challenges that one has to face when it comes to leading a company or even the armed forces.

A few days back, I got the opportunity to watch two brilliant movies- Guru and Few Good Men. In Guru, the movie talks about the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, and how he rose to power. Albeit a few fictional songs and some aesthetic scenes to add to the beauty of the movie, it gives the viewers a pretty good idea about the hardships he went through to establish a titan of a company, Reliance Pvt. Limited. However, his life and his life's achievement was not without its challenges. While being the leader of a company there are several challenges that one will have to face. 

1. Being an inspiration to others: This is the challenge of being able to motivate others and inspire them enough to work for your company. While it sounds like an easy task, it is not one that you dole out to your employees. You have to drill it into your employees' minds that what they are working for is worthwhile, what they are doing will bring a change in the world. 

2. Having self-confidence: Although it sounds easy, being self-confident is not a simple task to accomplish. While it may seem like all those who become leaders are self-confident, they always have a grain of self-doubt in them. A good leader is one who overcomes it and manages to confidently lead his/her company. 

3. Managing stakeholders: This basically encapsulates the management of relationships, politics, and image. While managing a company's stakeholders, a leader has to ensure that they gain managerial support, managing the company-stakeholder relation, and getting buy-ins from other departments, groups, or individuals. 

Like mentioned before, I also watched Few Good Men. Other than having stellar performances from Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, the movie is a brilliant insight into the true workings of the armed forces. The story is about a soldier who dies just days before his transfer. When red lights start popping in his death, a court martial is ordered to figure out if a "code red" had been carried out to kill the soldier. A brilliant commentary on the sinister faces of the armed forces, the movie also talks about the leadership challenges the armed forces face. 

1. Leadership for new roles: Being a leader in the armed forces not only is a lot of pressure, there is a lot of adaptability involved as well. Based on the operation you are undertaking, your role will change. The non-traditional roles like peace corps, non-combat roles, etc keep on growing based on which your leadership style may change. 

2. Increasing non-traditional roles: As mentioned above, being a leader in the armed forces is not easy. We can see an increase in the number of non-traditional roles a leader has to portray. So based on that, leaders will need to have an expansive knowledge set and additional skills to adapt to whatever situation befalls them. 

3. Maintaining technologically driven change: Future warfare seems to be that; futuristic. We will definitely be seeing a lot more of modern technology being used in wars. The technological revolution is likely to intensify, leading not only to new weapon systems, but also to information revolution which will change the nature of war. Technologically-driven change puts constant pressure on military organizations to reinvent themselves. Successful leaders have to be proactive engineers of change.

As we all know, there are lesser women in the corporate section. While there may be 20 men CEOs, the women CEOs might just be 3. Although they work just as well as men do, women don't seem to get the recognition they deserve. With ideas and thoughts that are powerful and can bring changes in a company, women get paid very less when compared to men who do the same job. No matter what, be it in a sexist or non-feminist way, we can definitely see gender influence playing a major role in various companies. 

Moving on to the armed forces, the grass is definitely not greener on the other side. Even there, it looks like women are grossly under-represented when compared to men- especially in combat roles. Most of the armed forces feel like women are not as capable as men when it comes to combat and can also cause 'distraction' on the battlefield. Be it the lawyers or even Army doctors, they too are always considered feminine and suppresses by saying that a man can do their job better. 

Does Culture Influence Marketing and Business?

People around the world know the importance of making a business succeed. However, most of them think a business is just about principles and making money out of the business. A layman ends up assuming that culture and its issues that may follow do not matter. But, what we have to understand is that people will only do business with people they trust and like. And for this to happen, culture plays a major role in it. 

Like you would be thinking right now, the impact culture has on a business or management principle is indeed high. Culture is a decisive factor in how employees are treated in the company and what values and priorities are followed. It also influences the decision taken in the functional areas of marketing, sales, and distribution. You might have not heard this before, but culture can also influence a business's decision on what is the best way to enter new markets. Let's take a look at how culture can influence various businesses and markets in different countries. 

Starbucks, one of the best coffee retailers in the world, faced a financial crisis in 2008. Due to the rapid expansion, they were undergoing, Starbucks ended up facing a financial meltdown that was more than they could overcome. One of the major reasons for this crisis was the economic crises in the US and the world economy. The second reason was something that was mentioned before, their rapid expansion strategy. These two factors and an added competition from McDonald's resulted in them losing their customers and audience. By March 2008, their profit had fallen 28% as compared to last year's. As a result, they also had to lay off 12000 job positions. Even loyal customers who were interested in only buying from Starbucks switched to other brands as the rapid expansion caused the customers to lose out on the unique experience they enjoyed while they ordered from Starbucks. Now, how did Starbucks solve the crisis? Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks realized that their growth strategy was the root cause of their downfall. To come back stronger than ever, they decided to implement a technology-oriented strategy. A community involvement tactic was introduced to include both customers and employees. In 2008 itself, Starbucks came up with an idea called "My Starbucks Idea" where customers could voice their opinions on everything from management to instore music. This idea ended up becoming a huge success. From this, over 100 ideas were implemented. This helped them reignite the brand trust they used to have before. They also introduced another idea where customers could personalize their drinks and others could buy them as well. This was known as "My Starbucks Signature." They also included the employees and baristas who worked for them to put in their ideas and concerns. This was how Starbucks helped itself come out of the financial crisis they were in. 

In Japan, Odakyu Electric Railways are one of the major players when it comes to transportation. Every day, they carry around 2.1 million passengers to their destinations. Odakyu also owns the largest fleet of buses in Japan and taxis as well. In recent years, Odakyu has been fighting actively against climate changes and looking for eco-friendly options to travel. As an addition to this, Odakyu decided to partner with Shotl, a mobility platform in Spain. Through a network of small buses and vans, they aim to reduce the carbon footprint transportation causes on the environment. The goal of this company is to give valuable options of transportation to areas with a higher population. In 2019, Odakyu was looking to partner with a company to develop a new on-demand public transport. That's when they heard of Shotl and decided to partner with them They wanted to build an on-demand transport that picks up and drops people in real-time based on their demands. This partnership also looks at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. This is also aimed at people who can travel freely without having any restrictions due to their age, physical fitness, or other issues. 

The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd or AMUL in India has one of the best success stories ever seen in the world. It involves the production of milk, cheese, and various ice cream flavors. These products are marketed through 50 sales offices throughout India and 50,000 retail stores. When they realized that the traditional way of marketing will not help them reach their goals. In 1995, AMUL decided to adopt the "Information Technology Strategy". Ever since then, they have seen a great rise in their sales and marketing. All the employees who work there since then, have had to receive training in e-commerce. Now, they only recruit e-literate people. AMUL cyber stores have now been set up in 150 areas around India, the United States of America, Singapore, and Dubai. All of these run-of-the-mill changes were accomplished in less than five years, especially when AMUL was categorized as an infrastructure that had weak technology and heavily relied on "look and feel" of their products.