Be an organizational philosopher, not a technical expert

One foundation for great leaders is having and understanding their own leadership
philosophy — a set of beliefs, values and personal rules related to the kind of leader they want to be.
This foundation will drive the workplace environment and climate of the team a leader leads, whether
this is a four-person department or a multinational company with hundreds of thousands of
employees.A consistent leadership behavior and actions require a clear personal leadership
philosophy. It also lets team members and others know what you expect, what you value and how
you will act in any given situation. This helps to make your workplace environment less stressful and
more productive, as well as keeping you on track and aligned with your core beliefs and values.If
you lack an ideology, and attempt to decide everything on a case-by-case basis, you will never be
capable of strong leadership.”As you can tell, it is important that leaders gain clarity about their own
leadership philosophy, style and behavior. Some of the core values you may want to include in your
personal leadership mindset philosophy could be: confidence, adaptability, focus on people
development, having a realistic vision. The important thing is that the values must be your own —
things you deeply believe in and care about. They cannot just be a list of positive attributes that you
find in a book or online.
No matter what attributes and values you choose, however, trust overrides them all. Without
trust, none of your other attributes and values matter. Trust is something you earn and maintain
through your behaviors. It is not bestowed upon you by rank or title. Confidence is another key
element of a strong leadership mindset. It comes from knowing yourself, and understanding (and
appreciating) your strengths and weaknesses. It also comes from observing and analyzing how you
make decisions, both good and bad. Not every decision will work out as you expect. That’s okay.
The key is to reflect back on how and why you made a particular decision to learn about your
decision-making capabilities, tendencies, habits, and inclinations. This helps you grow as a leader
and gives you greater confidence when you have to make judgment calls in areas where you may
not be a technical subject matter expert.
This also enables you to de-personalize decisions, i.e. no more “I’ll go with Beth on this one.”
Decisions should be made based on your determination of the facts and reality of the situation, not
based on which person is presenting a proposed option. It also allows you to create your own
solutions from differing opinions that build on the strengths and ideas of each. Leveraging positive
cognitive conflict (i.e. the opposing of two or more ideas) is one of the best ways of coming up with
innovative solutions, and keeps negative personal conflict from getting in the way of good decision
making. By creating your own leadership mindset philosophy, and then identifying the behaviors that
will help you implement these guiding principles, you will avoid the trap of deciding everything on a
case-by-case basis. This results in consistency of leadership behavior; a benefit for both you and
your team members.

Great leaders know and understand their beliefs, values and personal rules of leadership.
This leadership philosophy drives the workplace environment and climates of the teams you lead.
Having a written personal leadership philosophy is one of the important distinctions between great
leaders and average leaders. No single leadership philosophy can be viable for everyone. Each
leader is faced with different circumstances, brings different backgrounds to their leadership position
and leads widely different teams of people. Hence you have to figure out what the right leadership
mindset philosophy is for you.

Recognize strategic planning is not strategic thinking

One distinguishes strategic planning from strategic thinking with their purpose---either to
analyze or synthesize. Strategic planning aims to analyze by breaking down goals into steps
that would be beneficial for the institution’s development, future, and success. It consists of
required measures and actions that the organization intends to achieve in the future and
methods that can measure its success. Basically, strategic planning tries to control, predict,
analyze, and lead the organization from where it is now to where it would be in the future that
the institution desires to be. Mission, vision, values, philosophy, and short and long term goals
are important foundations in the strategic planning process. 

Strategic thinking, however, aims to synthesize and it involves intuition and creativity of the
leader and the entire organization. To think strategically is to be visionary where one is able to
build scenarios and able to forecast. This helps the organization to devise plans that could
handle potential eventualities that strategic planning failed to foresee. Behind a successful
institution is good management and monitoring processes of the organization. The vision that
they create must have been based on legitimate assumptions and their actions and methods
must be coming from expert analysis.

The problem with strategic planning is that it is a calculated type of management not being able
to satisfy and embody the organization’s visions and values; whereas, in strategic planning the
course that they take is committing and also engages the people to a journey to the future that
the organization desires. A strategy is successful only if it focuses on visions rather than plans.
Every business should remember that the strategy-making process should have been to
synthesize learnings and experiences into a vision of the desired course to take embarked by
the organization. 

Influence the values of the organization, not just the objectives

Leaders have an outstanding impact on organizational culture. Employees tend to follow

leaders in professional and cultural ways leading to a broad impact on the organization as a whole,
Leadership is commonly defined as establishing a clear vision, communication it and resolving the
immediate conflicts among the employees or facing the organization as a whole. Leaders are tasked
with efficiently guiding organizational goal achievement while considering team member skills
essential to produce the desired productivity. Since leadership is an aspect of management, it is
necessary to establish that the management is well-equipped with leadership skills. Effective
leadership can influence the organizational values such as honesty, respect, ethics and tolerance
etc by demonstrating an ideal attitude in the workplace, establishing a vision among the employees,
reinforcing accountability, motivating the employees, making a vision plan for the culture and values
and by coaching the co-workers.

Organizational values can be instructed by effective leadership. These values may be

accountability, focusing on details, making a difference, delivering quality, healthy workplace
environment, honesty, reliability and positivity, helping others, meeting deadlines, respecting
company policy and rules and showing tolerance and respect among each other.
Leadership can therefore immensely influence the values of an organization provided the leaders
are well-equipped with professional and leadership qualities.

Unleash information, rather than control it

The process of helping individuals find their voice communicates that both the organization
and the leader care about people and value what they can offer. It communicates the benefits of
harnessing others capacity for the good of all. It clarifies and communicates the role of a leader to
recognize, unleash, and orchestrate human capacity rather than to simply manage and control people.
It also magnifies the leader in the process.

On the organizational level, at the nexus of need, passion, talent, and conscience, a top
performing organization has, in effect, found its organizational voice. It happens when people on all
levels in the organization are good at what they do and love what they do and how they do it. That’s
when an organization sparks that inner synergy and fire that marks a world class team

ACTIVITY 4 # 3

Product differentiation is a marketing strategy that businesses use to distinguish a product

from similar offerings on the market. The difference could be something concrete, like speed,
power, performance and better service. Or, it could be a more ephemeral quality, such as just
being cooler or more stylish than your competitors. For small businesses, a product
differentiation strategy may provide a competitive advantage in a market dominated by larger
companies.

When a company uses a differentiation strategy that focuses on the cost value of the product
versus other similar products on the market, it creates a perceived value among consumers
and potential customers. A strategy that focuses on value highlights the cost savings or
durability of a product in comparison to other products. The cost savings can revolve around
the initial selling price of the product, or focus on longer-term, life cycle costs. An energy-
saving product, for example, might save consumers money in the long run, even if they pay a
bit more at the front end.

Cost leadership is the first competitive advantage businesses often attempt to gain. Cost
leadership as an advantage occurs when a business is able to offer the same quality product
as its competitors, but at a lower price. To use this strategy, a company must find ways to
produce goods at a lower cost through the perfection of production methods or by the
utilization of resources in a more efficient manner than competitors.

Differentiation is a second strategy that businesses often use to set themselves apart from
competitors. In a differentiation strategy, low cost is only one of many possible factors that
may set aside a business from others. Business that differentiate themselves typically look for
one or more marketable attributes that they have that can set them apart from their
competitors. They then find the segment of the market that finds those attributes important
and market to them.

Another way for a business to gain a competitive advantage is to utilize a defensive strategy.
The advantage gained by this type of strategy is that it allows the business to further distance
itself from its competition by, in some sense, maintaining a competitive advantage it has
gained. Therefore, this strategy is closely related to differentiation and cost leadership
because it is a method used by businesses to keep those advantages in place once they have
been attained.
Competitive advantages can also be gained by businesses that seek strategic alliances with
other businesses in related industries or within the same industry. Businesses have to be
careful not to cross the line between alliances and collusion, though. Collusion occurs when
businesses within the same industry work together to artificially control prices. Strategic
alliances, on the other hand, are more along the lines of joint ventures that businesses use to
pool resources and gain themselves exposure at the expense of other competitors not in the
alliance.

CASE #1

1. JetBlue was unable to sustain over time because JetBlue failed in reconciling the strategic
trade-offs inherent in combing differentiation and cost leadership, it was unable to continue
its blue ocean strategy, despite initial success. JetBlue experienced a sustained competitive
disadvantage.
2. 2.1 JetBlue achieves cost leadership by attaining efficient operations.  New planes minimize
maintenance and fuel costs, larger planes ensure more revenue per flight, longer hauls on
an average as compared to other point-to-point services keep planes longer in air. No-meals
served helps quicker turnarounds and reduce costs. Reservation agents working from home
reduce need for physical infrastructure, and thereby reduce overhead costs.
Firms pursuing low-cost strategy generally get trapped in focusing on too few of value chain
activities, or lack parity on differentiation with competitors.  The low-cost advantage also gets
eroded when the competitive pricing information becomes available more easily.  The
strategy can be imitated too easily.