Strategic Plan and a 3D Model Leadership Term Paper

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Leadership-Level Implementation of Strategic Plan

Good leadership is a key aspect of project management. Leading a project requires working with the manager and other staff drawn from the project's functional areas. It is not accurate to say that a leader only influences the subordinates under him. Responsibilities of a leader can go either vertically or horizontally. An effective leader will not only lead the subordinates under him or her, but also all the people involved in the project including those who are his seniors. A leadership model referred to as 3D model has been fronted by various players and promotes team leadership, self-leadership as well as teamwork that is leadership oriented. Effective leadership takes the ability to spot opportunities to improve a project and also execute on the project improvement. Besides the existing good personal traits, the style of leadership can be modeled through experience, training as well as dedication.

Individual Level

At this level, integrity trumps ethics. All things come back to the individual's character. It is the individual's character than can make him or her be known as compassionate, considerate, honest, ethical and transparent. Trustworthiness can be linked to integrity. Even though the definition may be vague, persons of integrity are counted upon by people to always be doing that which is 'right' as well as the expectations they are supposed to meet. At Zappos, Individual reliability and predictability in their dealings with other people and issues is an asset. They defend what is just, acceptable and fair. The model finds a basis in integrity; a leader who lacks integrity will not make it. Those who possess integrity will not spin facts or figures so as to gain personally. They defend the right thing and take care to keep the promises they make; and people can count on them to say what is true. In the model, integrity is the pillar on which leadership rests and does involve carefully balancing responsibility and respect. The important roles played by trust is dependent on the success of an individual professionally (Duggar, 2009). The breakers of rules are deemed untrustworthy; and when one lacks the trust of others, their value is badly damaged. Markets cannot function without confidence and trust. At Zappos, value will be definitely destroyed in such a case. Integrity has great significance in the workplaces. Competencies do not mean a thing if people do not trust you. Untrustworthy individuals are not bequeathed with responsibilities and opportunities and workmates will not want to work with them (Duggar, 2009). Thus leadership is measured along three independent variables (characteristics), those of Task Orientation, variable 'x', that of Relationship-orientation, variable 'y', and the third measure, that of 'effectiveness' 'z'. Effectiveness was the outcome of mix of other two features used as per the demand of the situation (3-D Leadership Model, n.d).

Traditional and Virtual Teams

As opposed to a traditional team, virtual teams are not limited by space, boundaries of the organization or time as they make use of technology and the internet for communication and collaboration. Nonetheless, at Zappos several best practices for the two types of teams are the same. Virtual teams vary significantly from traditional teams. The conventional traditional team has its members working close to each other while the virtual team members do their jobs in different places or locations. Also the traditional team has its tasks' coordination very straightforward and done by the members of the team while in virtual teams, tasks are highly structured. Also the virtual teams depend on electronic modes of communication unlike the traditional team members that communicate face-to-face. It is unlikely that virtual teams will replace traditional teams entirely. They do not fit into all organizational arrangements. They will, however, continue to be very important in the current and future workplace (Ale Ebrahim, Ahmed & Taha, 2009). As in three dimensional geometry for actualizing a solid figure, the qualities of leadership can then be measured by assessing Task-orientation, Relationship-orientation and effectiveness, correspondingly abbreviated as 'x', 'y' and 'z' respectively. The 'z'-co-ordinate is the effect of application of 'x' and 'y' in the context of leadership. (3-D Leadership Model, n.d).

In the enterprise, there are interdependencies in all kinds of collaborative work. However, it is argued that the geographic distances that exist between members of a team increases the difficulty of managing the interdependencies. Nevertheless, at Zappos coordination is all about the management of interdependencies that are there between activities or individuals. For group leaders to be effective, they must effectively coordinate the interdependencies in a way that the inputs made by various team members are incorporated into the project so as to end up with a product that reflects the shared aim of the group.

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Under such circumstances, there should be trust. Trust at Zappos ensures that the members of the group are reassured of the intentions of other members of the group and that they are pursuing the goals of the group. Trust can be established through frequent communication among group members (Weistband, 2013).

Department

Some enterprises may have full departments who have the responsibility of coming up with strategies and also the execution of those strategies. The departments, however, may not have staff for planning at division or unit level. Also, some enterprises might have structures that are decentralized with the central department at corporate level performing the duties of strategy formulation and planning in the organization at the functional division levels. A pattern of this nature can be found in multinationals as well as companies with several divisions. In a structure like this in Zappos, the staff at each division are actively involved in the formulation of the goals of the division. They also formulate the strategies, goals and plans for operations in the areas they work following the guidelines of the framework set by the central department. Corporate level strategic departments in Zappos are actively involved in the integration of business strategies of the units as well as the functions of the divisions and units (Srivastava & Verma, 2012). Thus, strategic decision making is an alignment of leadership at two levels, comprise of Task-orientation, the' x-coordinate'; and Relationship-orientation, the 'y-coordinate', at the central and divisional levels, according to Reddin that combine to produce the third feature or co-ordinate, Effectiveness (z-co-ordinate) (3-D Leadership Model, n.d).

Inter- Organization

Managers' awareness of how important knowledge is in the sustenance and the enhancement of the company's competitive advantage put the getting of organizational knowledge among the top priorities of the managers. Because not a single firm has all the needed expertise and knowledge to produce cost-effectively, firms are adopting various kinds of arrangements for collaboration like joint ventures, strategic alliances and forming of multinationals so as to access capabilities and knowledge absent within the organization. How effective the transfer of knowledge is influenced by a host of factors. At Zappos, knowledge-specific issues like complexity and tacitness is a big consideration. The multi-stage model that is considerate of cultures has many strengths. First, the model identifies 8 culture-specific contexts that are important in the process of transfer of knowledge from on organization to another, for instance, cultural traits of the recipient and source firms at the different four levels (national, societal, occupational/operating, and corporate). Describing relationships can be done by considering three aspects, that is, complementarity, alignment and similarity. Similarity refers to that shared values that exist between two culture contexts. Complementarity involves complementary values that exist in the two cultures. Alignment relationship cuts across the levels of a similarity relationship in the same organization (Abou-Zeid, 2005). As in co-ordinate geometry, where the 'x' and 'y' combine in a definite way to give rise to 'z' co-ordinate, in leadership roles, too, Reddin draws upon this analogy to state the combined effect of task-orientation and relationship orientation (respectively equivalent to 'x' and 'y') in manifestation of Effectiveness (z) in leadership domain. (3-D Leadership Model, n.d).

Partnership

At times organizations operating in one sector will find out that no value exists in coordination. There are situations that call for businesses to work together by appreciating their different strengths. Instead of Zappos handling its own security, it contracts the security function to security companies that are experts in that field. The IT security firms give specific of technical offerings to assist customers, although the firms might not share marketing strategies for the products under development (Kloth & Applegate, 2004). Reddin identifies three variables, namely task-orientation, relationship-orientation and effectiveness in leadership roles that he corresponds with the three co-ordinates of measurement, x, y and z in that order. His contention is that the measure and application of the first two is seen in that of effectiveness, the third (3-D Leadership Model, n.d).

Other agencies and businesses realize that their shared objectives can be best realized by opening the boundaries of the organization wide enough so that they can share what could be considered as proprietary information. Zappos, for instance, can partner with an IT security company to assist it in the development of its strategic plans. They….....

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