Leadership Performance Of Marks and Spencer And Tesco

Leadership Performance Of Marks and Spencer And Tesco Leadership is the process of influencing other people to accomplish an objective and direct them, as individual or as a group, which makes it more cohesive and coherent. Kurt Lewin (1939) led a group of researchers to identify different styles of leadership. Authoritarian or Autocratic This management style is used when manager or leader sets objectives and tells employees what to be done, 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 management 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 just started the job. A dynamic leader would prefer this style of management when he has all the information to deal with the problems, he is running short of time and his employers are well motivated. Illustration by Author Participative or Democratic As the name suggests this style encourages the participation of staff and employees in the decision making process. Being asked for their ideas makes employees feel they are important part of the organisation and encourages them to put in extra 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. Dynamic 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-faire In this management style the leader allows 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 done and how. This style should not be used as a tool to blame others when things go wrong. The best leader is the one who does not follow one particular style but tries to achieve a balance between these three styles depending upon the situation. Leadership And Change Management The most important factor 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). Refreeze Transition Unfreeze Illustration by Author Unfreeze or Preparation For The Change What we mean by preparing for change is creating the right environment, preparing resources and processes that might take place 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 Process This is the middle period from the announcement of the change complete to the successful installation of the change. This is the most critical point during the change process marked by the instability, lack of direction 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 The Change Process This 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 have become more focused towards the new direction of the organisation. An efficient 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 Tesco The major general strategy available to leaders of all major organisation including Tesco and MS is that they either choose to be the lowest cost retailer 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 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 being low cost retailer. Both Tesco and MS are most successful organisation in UK and both of them consider training and development of their employees as very crucial 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 heralded 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 little helps which shows their commitment to reduce prices 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 announced a policy document to strengthen 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 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 widely 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. Bryan Ferry who was at that time modelling 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 issue. (Leaders We Deserve,2007). Present chief 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 pound revamp he announced scaling back of his predecessor plans of retailing various branded groceries like Marmite and Coca Cola and also axing portfolio fashion-for-fifty somethings. He also planned to open more simply food stores less than two 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 improvement 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, before 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 saw 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 own 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 venture 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 Carrefour 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 Sa msung 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). CONCLUSION Thus 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 dealing 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.

Biofuel and Aquaculture Essay -- Biodiesel, Natural Resources, Environ

Biofuel and aquaculture are two of many industries that extract resources from ecological systems. For either corn-based biodiesel or finfish farming, the production process acquires feedstock from energy-fixing ecological systems such as farm fields and oceans. In cases such as intensified salmon farming, large amount of supplement is applied including fish meal and fish oil obtained from other ecological systems such as wild ocean (Naylor et al, 2000). For residue-derived biofuel and shellfish agriculture, energy input from external ecosystems, although relatively small, is still necessary to meet the energy needs. These intricately linked ties of interaction determine that impacts of resource utilization shall diffuse to related systems at different scales. Some people trumpet the expansion of either industry. They claim that both industries are socially benign in such way that biofuel lessens dependence on fossil fuels and aquaculture contributes to alleviate world hunger problem. On environmental grounds, residue-based biofuel can allegedly reduce carbon emission and shellfish can improve water quality by removing nitrogen that is more than needed. However, notwithstanding those seemingly strong arguments on larger scale, it is also to be noted that local communities are paying high prices for the development of either industry when additional energy materials are included. Problems such as reduced land productivity and eutrophication are becoming more evident. Biofuel-initiated land conversion from natural forest to monoculture of corn entails huge ecological impacts and introduced exotic species in aquaculture threatens the genetic integrity of native wild species (GESAMP, 2008). When people are trying to resolve thes... ... is by no means stable. Once broader economic situation suffers turmoil as it happened around 2008 and the demand for biofuel plunges, benefit can hardly be kept uncompromised. On the other hand, research up to date still cannot address the ecological interactions specifically on every local scale (McKindsey, 2006). In bivalve aquaculture, the ability of shellfish to filter out particles and purify water is subject to phytoplankton population growth and seasonal variation (Dumbauld, 2009), obscuring the evaluation accuracy of this ecological benefit or cost. These realities add to the uncertainties in assessment and form risks in making decisions about particular resource extraction activities. To minimize those uncertainties, more researches are needed as to establish the solid scientific grounds upon which to conduct case-by-case local benefit and cost analysis.

History of Dance Essay

INTRODUCTION: Once upon a time there was dance! In dance there are many forms. There is Ballet, Jazz, Tap, Hip hop, partner dancing, modern, and country and western. Dance originated many, many years ago. People used it to express emotions and stories. As time went on so did new dance techniques. Ballet came into the world around the 15th century Italian Renaissance and it slowly became the backbone for all dancing styles. As Albert Einstein said â€Å"dancers are the athletes of God. † SPEECH: Danced changed throughout the centuries *Centuries* As stated earlier the 15th century was the beginning of Ballet. During the time of both the 15th and 16th centuries ballet was only performed in royal courts where performers would get the audience to participate. Male dancers were the majority of dancers during this time period. To portray women in their performances they wore masks. In the 17th Century King Louis XIV (14th), who also was a dancer, performed in The Sun King ballet de la nuit. Louis XIV also founded Academie Royale de Musique (The Paris Opera. ) Ballet was becoming more theatrical during this time period, and female dancers were becoming the majority of performers. The ballet Les Indes Galantes (the gallant Indies) was the first ballet to feature women. During the 18th century the costumes were very extravagant. These costumes included masks, wigs, corsets, and hoop skirts. All were big and voluptuous. Two rivals, rebels, and amazing dancers at this time were Marie Camargo and Marie Salle. Marie Camargo started dancing in 1726. Because of Camargo’s gracefulness and quickness she ditched the traditional costume by shortening her skirt and wearing slippers to improve her techniques (leaps). Salle who started dancing in 1721, danced in a muslim costume (greek robe like), hair down, and unornamented to express that dance should be natural and expressed. Both dancers opened many new doors in the world of ballet. The 19th century was the time where ballerinas were the most popular performer in Europe. The Romantic Movement evolved during the 19th Century. Which was concerned with the supernatural world of spirits and magic and often portrayed women as passive and fragile. The use of pointe shoes were increased during this time period. Pointe shoes are satin shoes with wooden blocks in the toes to keep dancers on their toes all the time. Each pointe shoe is constructed to the dancer, no two pointe shoes are alike. As dance continued in the centuries it continued to change and flourish. The 20th century was the century where different styles and forms began to break away. Traditional ballet was still there but a more modernized version came into play. In order to move forward from this point you need an understanding of the types and styles there are in ballet *Types and Styles of Ballet*. There are two styles in ballet and they are story and plotless. Story Ballets, obviously, tell a story. Between the music and the dance a story is portrayed. Popular stories told were love stories. Another type of ballet is plotless. In a plotless ballet, no story is portrayed. Instead an image is created and aims to cause emotion. The three styles of ballet include classical, neo- classical, and contemporary. Classical reached its height in the 19th century, when you think of ballet this is the first thing people normally think about. Many graceful and and flowing movements are depicted in this style. Neo-Classical Ballet was introduced in the 20th century. Speed and energy in these dances were increased. In this style classical form was manipulated a lot and the rules for classical were broken. Contemporary Ballet was influenced by the movement of modern dance. Many new moves and techniques were established. Floor work and the turning in of the legs was a major change. There was a greater movement and body line in this style. With the changing of ballet through the centuries and the difference in types and styles, five positions and moves were always constant *ABC’s Of Ballet*. As a dancer, when I think of ballet I immediately think of the five positions. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. I know, I know not hard to remember. These positions have been around since the start of ballet in the 15th century. This is the grammar of ballet and the classical building blocks. No matter what century, type, or style of ballet these positions are there. Ballet is a whole new world when you think about it. Theres so much information that many people do not know. There is information I don’t even know. Here are some random and fun facts I discovered. Mindless trivia or surprisingly interesting? *Mindless trivia or surprisingly interesting? * A professional male dancer lifts over 1 ? tons worth of ballerinas during performances Most ballerinas go through two to three pairs of pointe shoes a week Tutus cost up to $2,000 to make and take 60 to 90 hours of labor with 100 yards of ruffle First ballet dancers didn’t dance in tutus or satin shoes-more focused on footwork and positioning 3 hour performance is equivalent to 2 90 minute soccer games or running 18 miles (and they say dance isn’t a sport). Pointe shoes add a minimum of 7 inches to a dancer A Prima ballerina can complete 32 fouette turns while staying in the same place. After pointe shoe is HOT to the touch Those are only a pinch of information there is from the world a ballet. CONCLUSION: In conclusion ballet is definitely the backbone to dance. Without its evolution from the 15th Century Italian Renaissance dance would not be where it is now. When you think of ballet don’t think of it as a little thing, ballet is full of history, it even teaches you many things such as gracefulness, poise, stamina, discipline, and lots of technique. Dancers all around the world are connected to one thing and that is ballet. â€Å"I dance because there is no greater feeling in the world than moving to a piece of music and letting the rest of the world disappear† Unknown You lose yourself and find yourself THANK YOU.

The Lord Of The King - 1632 Words

The Israelites were simply unable to follow the word of the Lord, were constantly disobeyed him, thus offending and angering the Lord. In order to control them, the Lord set, what would become, a long line of judges, or â€Å"chieftains.† The duties of these men were to follow the word of the Lord, and to entrust the word of G-d into their followers. Their first judge was Othniel the Kenizzite, and in the case of Othniel, â€Å"the spirit of the Lord descended upon him and he became Israel’s chieftain.† (Judges. 3:9-10). By the rule of this man, the Israelites went to war, won, and â€Å"the land had peace for forty years.† (Judges. 3:11). This man was loyal, strong, and proactive in his duties to protect and maintain peace in his land. The next judge was Ehud, who was sent by the Lord to kill King Eglon of Moab, who the Lord had let rule over the Israelites as their punishment for offending Him. This man was not only cynical in the casual murder of Eglon, but also proved extremely loyal to the Lord. He then went on to slay over 10,000 Moabites, which made his land â€Å"tranquil for eighty years.† (Judges. 3:30). After the death of Ehud, the Israelites again angered the Lord, and he made them suffer for twenty years at the hands of King Jabin of Canaan. Following their cries, the Lord appointed Deborah. She fearlessly led 10,000 men up Mount Tabor, in pursue of defeating Jabin’s army commander, and, much like Ehud, cynically murdered the man while he slept trusting next to her. While the listShow MoreRelatedThe King Of Israel And The Lord875 Words   |  4 PagesSaul was king, you were the one who led Israel on their military campaigns. And the Lord your God said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler† (1 Chronicles 11:2, New International Version). 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