Do successful leaders control strategic development or facilitate self organisation?

Successful leaders need to control and shape the organisation. Top management can and should y take charge of the organization

Organizational inertia and a growing misfit between the organization and its environment are not an inevitable state of affairs, but result from a failure of leadership o Bureaucracy, organizational fiefdoms , hostile relationships, inflexible corporate cultures, rigid competences and resistance to change all organisational diseases exist, but are not unavoidable o healthy organisations avoid this; leader must address if symptoms arise o if organisation goes out of control , it is due to weak leadership failing to deal with ailment; poor/sickness is not natural condition if people in organisation are left to sort things out by themselves, it will inevitable cause strategic drift (chap 4). o Someone must set clear strategic direction, force tough decisions, supervise implementation; otherwise it will get bogged with infighting. o Without good leader, organisation will not get heavy mass in motion and overcome risk averseness and conservatism. Leaders are needed to counteract inherent inertia characteristic of human organisation. Leading must be visible hand ; leading means getting organizational members to follow hard work o Need personal power for steering organizational developments o Need trust, admiration and respect for success o Need forcefulness of personality and persuasive vision to capture attention and commitment o Need to build coalitions where necessary to get their way Not all managers are effective leaders by nature or nurture o Managers require specific personality traits to be successful leaders - nature o Most effective leadership can be learned if enough effort is exerted nurture o New leaders high priority for existing top management Being a leader does not mean simple top-down, command and control o Strategies can be designed in isolation, then imposed reorganization, acquisitions o Proposals can be allowed to emerge bottom up, as long as top management retains power to approve or terminate projects when serious plans o Top management might even delegate decision making powers to lower level managers but control outcomes by setting clear goalss, developing incentive system and fostering culture

Leaders must control direction of organisation o They don t need to be their ideas, they don t need to do anything; enforce direction to achieve results o Leadership is needed to ensure best strategy is followed y Upper echelons of management can, and should, control the strategy process and as a result, the strategy content. o Ceo or top management should have grip on organisations process of strategy formation and be able to impose their will on the organisation. o Leaders should overcome organizational inertia and adapt the organisation to the strategic direction they intend. o Organizational structure should be adapted to the strategy intended by the decision maker. o All aspects of the company should be matched to the strategists intentions. Leaders of nations touch on. y Apple. NAB Mining company Microsoft? IBM? Intel Donald Trump Rupert Murdoch Richard Branson Kerry Packer Mark zuckerberg

There must be a good enough leader. Define leader maybe, organizational hierarchy. Direction can be maintained with single leader, otherwise they are more likely to lose perspective. If someone left in dynamics, nothing would change. History proves it