2 Discussion Board Response-

INSTRUCTION

The below are 2 discussion posts by members in my class. Please read them carefully and write about 200 words response to EACH post. You are to write with the fact in mind that this is a LEADERSHIP and TEAM MANAGEMENT course. So, your response should not only say you agree with their submissions, but also look into their statements and see from which angle you can contribute and state how their leader were truly LEADERS WITH VISION or with a COMPELLING DIRECTION.

please read the articles in the links below to know where we are coming from and how to season your response with points from the artciles

 http://hbr.org/1996/09/building-your-companys-vision/

http://hbr.org/2009/01/to-lead-create-a-shared-vision

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/aexupery.html

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_92.htm

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work#t-4103

Doeden

When I think of a leader that I had a vision, and to date has successfully driven toward that vision I think of the owner and CEO of my company.  As I have noted in previous posts I work for an engineering firm, the firm started about 13 years ago when the CEO was working for another engineering firm and got the opportunity to get some inside information that a potentially large engineering project was going to be coming up for bid.  He made the choice to leave his current employment and began to attempt to recruit other “A” players to start up a new company.  The plan worked and with only him and 2 other people they successfully won the bid for the project and set the wheels in motion to build the company into what it is today. 

The overall vision for this new company was to become an industry recognized player in industrial engineering.  By being 100% committed to this vision, the CEO was able to convince other very talented people to take a chance on the new venture by setting “SMART” goals for the company.  For those of you that may never heard of what setting SMART goals is about, SMART is an acronym for S – Specific, M – Measurable, A – Attainable, R – Relevant, and T – Time Based.  The CEO laid out short term and long term goals for the company, by this I mean 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 year, and 10 year goal of where he thought his team could get the company to.

Through very selective hiring processes and more selective project selection, the CEO was able to go after projects that fit the vision of his company and allowed for growth.  Today, the company employee’s over 85 people, has offices in 3 states and works on projects both in the United States and Canada. 

The CEO of the company is very straight forward when it comes to sharing his vision of the company and where he wants it to go.  He uses a lot of the tactics that we have been reading about.  From this week’s reading for example, he defines the ends but does not go into the too much detail about the means; I would say his leadership style fits in the upper right corner of figure 3-1 on page 73 of our books.  He has developed a culture of teams that are mostly self-managed performing goal-directed work. (Hackman)  He has determined that by hiring the right people who are committed to the goals of the company, he does not need to detail exactly how we are to arrive at the goals, he has the right people in place to ensure that we will get to the goals because of the challenge involved and the overall satisfaction the employees receive in knowing and seeing the results of building a great company.  

 

Hackman, J. Richard. Leading Teams. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2002.

 

 

JASON

My example of a leader with a compelling vision is a smaller-scale example. The union at my work has been in contract negotiations with the employer for the past year. The new contract should have been implemented last year but the two sides were just not able to agree on a deal. The entire union voted the employers final offer contract down (116-0), and the employees were all willing to let the contract go to the legal side and try their luck with the courts. Our union president thought this was a bad idea. He began doing comparisons with other agencies of their pay, benefits, etc. He then held meetings for all of the union members to express his concern of our contract going to the courts. The union president has worked in this capacity for a very long time is very knowledgeable on the subjects. He shared with the group his vision of where this was going and how it could be damaging to the employees. He held meetings to discuss the contract with the employees and answered numerous questions from angry employees.

 

After all of his work the contract ended up being approved. I do not have the official number, but it was enough to change the original 116-0 vote. I believe if it wasn’t for his leadership on this matter, our contract would have went to the legal side and we would have ended up with less pay and benefits that we were currently being offered. His research had shown that we were already ahead of others through his comparisons.