Subject name Strategic Leadership

Student name DOAN DUNG

Date of submission 27th, August 2022

Number of pages including this one: 17 pages

Word count: 3480

 "I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and
agree to the content and expectations of the Academic Code of Conduct"

1|Page
 TABLE OF CONTENT

TASK 1.............................................................................................................................. 3
Question 1:......................................................................................................................... 3
Question 2:......................................................................................................................... 4
Question 3..........................................................................................................................4
Question 4..........................................................................................................................5
Question 5..........................................................................................................................6
TASK 2.............................................................................................................................. 9
THE IMPACT OF THE BUSINESS LEADER ON THE ORGANIZATION’S
PERFORMANCE..............................................................................................................9
1. THE ROLE OF THE BUSINESS LEADER IN DRIVING ORGANIZATIONAL
PERFORMANCE..............................................................................................................9
1.1 Leadership Definition...........................................................................................9
1.2 Organization Performance......................................................................................10
2. THE EXERCISE OF LEADERSHIP POWER AND INFLUENCE.........................11
2.1 Power and influence................................................................................................11
2.2 Types of power.......................................................................................................12
3. THE MAIN FEATURE AND REQUIREMENTS OF LEADERSHIP
DEVELOPMENT FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE...............................................12
3.1 Competitive advantage............................................................................................12
3.2 Leadership development and competitive advantage..............................................13
4. THE CRITERIA FOR MEASURING FOR ASSESSING AN ORGANIZATIONS
STRATEGIC EFFECTIVENESS....................................................................................14
Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 15
REFERENCES................................................................................................................16

2|Page
 TASK 1
Question 1:

After reading carefully, in my point of view, what made Boeing CEO to be successful
are:

Firstly, Alan Mullaly is already a great leader himself. In one-on-one interview with
Alan’s direct reports and peers, in the case study, they all show that Alan is a fantastic
leader and becoming Boeing CEO helps him have a chance to reach-out across company.

Secondly, the coaching process conducted the right thing at the beginning. It begun with
confidential one-on-one interview then collected the great data for Alan. This helps Alan
focus on the right one that he needs to fix and improve to become a greater leader. When
the coaching process started, Marshall collected the valuable data and it showed the
things that Alan should be improved: Involving team members.

Thirdly, Alan is a teachable, listening person. Throughout the coaching process with
Marshall, he always listened Marshall’s advises and follow the direction. He committed
following-up to the coaching process with Marshall and even came up with the greater
idea: instead of involving stakeholders, he involved entire his team. This not only helped
Alan involve every person in whole company, get as many as possible ideas/ inputs also
helped entire his company benefit from coaching as him.

Fourthly, there is always a gap between “Planner” & “Doer” but Alan has a “Doer”
attitude. In the case study, Marshall mentioned that one of the biggest myths in leadership
development is that people will act if they understand. If this were the case, then
everyone who appreciated the value of maintaining a nutritious diet and exercising
regularly would be in good shape. Every executive I encounter is intelligent. They all
understand the proper behavior to exhibit. Alan succeeded. This makes Alan become a
perfect role model for his direct reports and his peers.

3|Page
Lastly, Alan followed up tightly the coaching process. He knew that the coaching process
worked and impacted his team positively. Therefore, Alan developed the amazing
discipline and turn it into his customs. He always asked: "Are the anymore ideas that we
need to include?" and "Are there any more people that we need to include?"

Question 2:
To contribute to a success, I believe that there are many factors and even more with a big
case study like Alan’s. If it is necessary to pick-up the key factor in Alan’s success, in my
thinking, I would like to say the key one is: Changing Process.

In the case study, Marshall showed us that in collecting process Alan’s direct reports and
peers admit that Alan is a fantastic leader but “Alan was so focused on achieving his
mission that he could (unintentionally) leave out people or ideas that were not on his
"radar screen"”. As we know in the case study, he took it positively and came up with a
plan to have the change process with Marshall. In this coaching about changing
behaviors, he established the plan and disciplined with changing plan. He consistently
asked for their inputs, expressed gratitude for their involvement and positive comments,
openly discussed what he wanted to change and asked them for their ideas on how he
could do an even better job.

This helped Alan change from achieve his mission to achieve team’s mission. He could
make use of the power of the whole company not just only him. This also makes his
entire company become an open environment which all people could freely generate
ideas to contribute to company’s success.

Question 3.
I think that the coaching role in this case study is very important and as I mentioned in
question number 1, it is also one of the success factors of Alan at Boeing Aircraft
Company.

Pre-coaching process: As a coacher, Marshall implemented the one-on-one interview

with Alan’s direct reports and peers. Thanks to those, Marshall gathered valuable

4|Page
information then with his observation, Marshall gave Alan the right thing that Alan could
not recognize himself: “Involve team members”.

On-going coaching process: Marshall had many interviews or discussions with Alan’s
direct reports and peers to keep track the coaching process. This drove the coaching
process continue constantly & right way.

Post-coaching process: Marshall conducted again the interview and established the report
for Alan about his area improvement in his direct report and peers. This report came up
the greater result because it not only pointed out result but also measured the factors in
numbers.

With the coacher role, Marshall gave Alan the right thing to do by his observing.
Although Boeing’s business was dramatically impacted by September 11 and its
aftermath but with great leadership and do the right thing at the beginning, Alan involved,
inspired and motivated people when times were so tough. Some of the written comments
were more than positive, they were moving.

Question 4.
In my view, change is an obligation.

In the case study, change process benefited Alan a lot to help Boeing move during the
hard time September 11. With the “wheel of change” model of Marshall, we could easily
realize that what Alan did during coaching process with Marshall.

Quadrant One: Creating. This is a quadrant with positive changes and answer for the
question “Who is that new you want to create in the future?”

It could be applied to business also people the same way. You choose who do you want
to be/ your business to be by choice. In this quadrant, you choose yourself what to add or
invent to you, your people or your business.

Quadrant Two: Preserving. Positive keep. The question is what is it about the old you
want to preserve? This means that not all your old things are not good. Before implement

5|Page
the change, we should look back and keep the old good things. Alan, in the case study,
did not change all of himself. He chose what to change and preserve the rest.

Quadrant Three: Eliminating. This is the negative change that you need to get rid of.
Eliminating is unavoidable when we make a change, and they are also the things we are
not willing to do. However, what if we just add/invent or keep in quadrant 1 and 2
without eliminating in quadrant 3? We could be “over-committed”. For examples: you
are cleaning the house for a new year celebration, but you cannot decide what to throw-
away. Maybe you think you will need in the future or they are too familiar to you or you
like them too much. The questions you should ask are: “What is it about the new you,
you want to get rid of? What do you need to unload?” Perhaps those areas of over-
commitment.

Quadrant Four: Accepting. This represents the negative things you keep. You may have
the question: “Why should I keep the negative things in my life?” With others 3
quadrants: you add/invent, you preserve and delete, and they are like more appealing you
to do. In this wheel of change, this quadrant is an odd player while it is like you accept
the defeat. However, when we are unable to change anything, acceptance is immensely
helpful.

Related to business and life, I think that change still should be applied all the time.
Because if you are in a bad situation, change could help you out. If you are in a normal
situation, change could help you become good. If you are in a good situation, change
could help you become better and even become the market leader. Especially, recently
after COVID pandemic, we know that the world is always changing therefore change
could help you adapt to our changing world.

Question 5.
In life or in organization, through feedback, you can learn about or alter your behavior.
However, feedback focuses on the past events not on greater possibilities that could

6|Page
happen in the future. Therefore, if we just learn, improve by feedbacks, we could
unconditionally ignore the infinites possibilities of the futures. Feedback is limited.

With the approach of feed forward, this help fix the feedback’s disadvantages.

Over the past several years, Marshall has observed more than thirty thousand leaders as
they participated feed forward activities and when the exercise finished, all participants
were asked about the activities. Their answers were supposedly that feed forward can
often be more useful than feedback as a developmental tool.

There are 8 steps for feed forward model:

Pick one behavior. Choose a leadership behavior/thing that you want to change.

 Ask. Describe the behavior you want to change.

 Listen. Listen attentively to the suggestions and take notes without comments or
criticizes.
 Thank. Thank those who have offered you suggestions.
 Think. Take the time to think about the suggestions you received.
 Respond. Determine how you are going to respond to the suggestions received.
 Change. If you want to improve – you must change your behavior.
 Follow-up. Engage those around you on a regular, disciplined basis to learn.
Follow-up is the best way to show you are serious about change

Marshall stated that there are 11 reasons to try feed forward.

In my point of view, feed forward is a powerful model we should implement today to

become a better leader. There are two trusted reason as below:

The first one, feed forward model was fully developed structure with 8 steps. When we
apply this into life or organization, we have the detail instruction to conduct accurately
the process.

7|Page
The second one, feed forward focuses on the future and solutions. Feed forward is able to
cover most the same “material” as feedback but with the positive manner. It helps your
team be easier to hear and your life & workplace be more enjoyable.

In conclusion, feed forward model of Marshall is not only the trusted model was proved
by time but also a model can fit to the changing world today. Because the world recently
is always changing, feed forward focuses on future could help leaders forecast infinites
possibilities of the future. Especially, the workforce now is mainly Generation Z that
prefers the positive ideas more than negative comments, an enjoyable workplace.
Therefore, this model of Marshall would be useful a lot to organization now a day.

8|Page
 TASK 2
THE IMPACT OF THE BUSINESS LEADER ON THE ORGANIZATION’S
PERFORMANCE
September 11th attacks shocked America and the world. This changed not only the
politics also economics globally, especially Aviation. Boeing (American Aerospace
company) was significant impacted by this event. By the end, Boeing, as we know, still
was moving. What made Boeing create the miracle things and overcome the extremely
hard year for its whole company?

In this essay, we will analyze the Boeing case study in more depths and focus on aspects:
(1) The role of the business leader in driving organizational performance (2) The exercise
of leadership power and influence (3) The main feature and requirements of leadership
development for competitive advantage (4) The criteria for measuring for assessing an
organizations strategic effectiveness.

1. THE ROLE OF THE BUSINESS LEADER IN DRIVING

ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE
1.1 Leadership Definition
Leadership is a complex vocabulary and has a broad meaning. Through years, many
authors and scholars have tried to make clear of leadership. Pratt stated that the capacity
of a person or group of people to motivate and influence subordinates or other members
of an organization is known as leadership. (Pratt, 2017) or Yukl studied that leadership
means directing, structuring, and facilitating actions in groups or organizations,
intentionally influencing other people. This is what leadership is all about. (2013, p.1-3).

Therefore, leadership has many meanings depend on people. In this essay, we will go to
the question whether it is important to effectiveness of organization.

1.2 Organization Performance

Performance is a situational definition. In general, performance could be defined that it
is the work results of individual or group of individuals. There are various levels of
9|Page
performance such as: individual performance, team performance and organization
performance. Here, we discuss about organization level.

About the business firms, criteria can be used to measure organization performance:
profit, sales, and market growth. We can also approach organization performance
through organization activities: finance (profit, ROI…), product market share (sales,
sales growth, market share…) and shareholder return.

1.3 Relating between leadership and organization performance

There are two schools of thought that are popular among scholars: On the one hand,
some scholar believe that leaders can only have a very limited impact on performance
either internal or external of an organization. This school of thought is best illustrated by
the study of Lieberson and O'Connor (1972), which demonstrates that company and
industry factors influence performance more than leadership factors.

On the other hand, some others argue that top managers have sufficient discretion to
influence performance (Ireland and Hitt, 1999) through sharing insights, knowledge and
responsibilities.

In my point of view, I have the same ideas with the second thoughts. This means that I
believe that leaders have a great role in driving organizational performance. This could
be proved by many empirical studies and case studies over years. One of the most
typical case studies is Alan Mullaly with Boeing Aviation during hard time September
11th event. This time, with the stricter security measures, the discontinuation of
numerous air routes and destinations, and the bankruptcy and disappearance of
numerous air carriers all led to dramatical impact for this business (Davis, 2019). The
case study shows us that Marshall conducted the coaching process with Alan and this
helped Alan become the great leader at Boeing. By involving, inspiring and motivating
people in entire his company, Alan successfully drove Boeing move out of the
extremely hard period. When Allan was called to leave Boeing and become CEO of
Ford, he even led the greater turnaround in September 2016. Ford's stock price rose

10 | P a g e
more than 1800% during his leadership, from an intraday low of $1.01 in 2006 to
$18.37 in 2014 (Ph.D, n.d.). Alan transformed Ford into one of automaker leaders in the
world. He led the Ford team as they collaborated on a compelling vision, thorough
strategy, and relentless execution of the “One Ford” plan to spur profitable growth for
all parties involved in the business (media.ford.com, n.d.).

2. THE EXERCISE OF LEADERSHIP POWER AND INFLUENCE

2.1 Power and influence
Concepts of power, authority, influence have been used with different ways by different
scholars and user. This paper will address some of these concepts, and the connecting
leadership, power and influence.
In the book “Cases for leadership”, authors believe that leadership is about influence (W
Glenn Rowe and Guerrero, 2019) – essential skill required by leaders to influence other
people at work, in organization context. Leaders is not leaders without influence.
If influence is essential for leaders to have, power is described how leaders influence
people to achieve goal or get things done (Kotter, 1985) while authority is the formal
rights that are granted to a person who holds that position include privileges,
obligations, and responsibilities that go with positions in an organization or social
context.
In fact, we can find many powerful people, but they do not hold positions of authority,
and we also often see people who are in authority, but they are powerless to influence
others. In my opinion, in order to be a great leader, one must have ability to distinguish
from types of power and select the most suitable one.

2.2 Types of power

Efforts to classify power will be useful for leaders to use. The most successful leaders
are capable to use separate or combination. The early theory published by French and
Raven propose that there are five types of power (1959) and six types of power (1965):
Legitimate, Expert, Coercive, Reward, Referent, and Information power. Lately, based
on French and Raven’s theory, scholars developed some other types become seven types

11 | P a g e
 of power. Marcus proposes seven types of Power: Legitimate, Expert, Coercive,
Reward, Referent, Information, and Charisma power (ResearchGate, n.d.). Yukl stated
in his study: Legitimate Power, Referent Power, Reward Power, Expert Power,
Coercive Power, Information Power, and Ecological Power (Yukl, 2013, p.193).

3. THE MAIN FEATURE AND REQUIREMENTS OF LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
3.1 Competitive advantage
For the long time, competitive advantage is the magic concepts that is able to describe the
secret weapons to make the most successful companies successful. Kyle Peterdy wrote
that Competitive advantage refers to the ways in which a business might outperform its
rivals at producing goods or providing services and “cannot be easily replicated and is
exclusive to a company or business” (CFI, 2015). For instance, in 1913, the assembly line
was introduced by Henry Ford that was considered a key of success. Today, we can
easily to catch the concept “outsourcing” from high-tech companies like Hewlett-
Packard, Cissco Systems, Dell Computer… meanwhile generation ago, IBM’s vertical
integrated was the competitive advantages (Christensen, C.M., 2001, p.1).

3.2 Leadership development and competitive advantage

Researchers have started to focus more on strategic leadership, which is now widely
regarded as a main factor of organization performance. In this paper, we mentioned that
leaders play the positive roles in driving performance in organization context. Similarly,
whether it can impact to competitive advantage in organization. My own view on this
matter is leadership maybe a source of competitive advantage.

First of all, we cannot get things done alone. With leadership development, leaders can
motivate, influence people to achieve goal in order to make use of power of whole
company that is called people advantage. Refer to case study, Alan developed a greater
plan compare to the coaching process’ plan with Marshall. He involved the whole
company instead of stakeholders to ask for inputs. This helped Alan use all people
resource from his entire company. At the end, we know that he saved Boeing from the

12 | P a g e
most extremely hard period of American Aviation history meanwhile many aircraft
companies not just in America also around the world filed for bankruptcy.

Finally, an effective organizational culture is set and maintained by leaders. By

leadership development, leaders can inspire, motivate, communicate with employees to
share the same values in ways that allow the firm to be more competitive. As Crawford
shared, Google established the rule 80/20 and inspires all employees at Google to work
with (Crawford, 2020). This rule 80/20 is staff “dedicate 80% of their time to core
projects while being empowered to dedicate 20% of their time to innovation”. Google
also conducted changing their office to maximize the ability of employees to innovate,
such as working space, environment, facilities… Rule becoming culture, at Google,
innovation is not the goal. It is passion. This culture helps Google maintain their position,
one of the world’s leading high-tech company.

4. THE CRITERIA FOR MEASURING FOR ASSESSING AN

ORGANIZATIONS STRATEGIC EFFECTIVENESS

4.1 Organization Effectiveness versus Organization Performance

In part 1 of this paper, we went through definition of organization performance.
Therefore, the question is whether there is the difference between organization
effectiveness and organization performance. Some authors stated that those concepts are
commonly used interchangeably (Change! Change Management News & Tips, 2020).
And this makes sense because in business context by nature is goal-oriented activities.

In my belief, the concept of organization effectiveness is organization performance, but it

has broader meaning. Organization effectiveness refers to organization performance but
also depends on environment and organization’s goal & purpose.

4.2 Criteria for measuring for assessing an organizations strategic effectiveness

Since organization effectiveness also depends on environment and organization’s goal &
purpose, criteria for measuring for assessing an organizations strategic effectiveness add
some more situational indicators.

13 | P a g e
First, let us talk about environment. For this element, it is about decision making of
leaders to respond to threads and opportunities in a timely, effective and purposeful
manner (Organizational Effectiveness and Performance, n.d.). Therefore, the measuring
indicators of organizational effectiveness are: (1) timeliness of decision-making, (2) all
division levels' awareness, (3) allocating responsibility and the necessary resources for
making decisions, (4) techniques to carry out decision making, (5) follow-up and intra-
organizational updating, (6) reactions to the data produced by the decision.

About organization’s goal & purpose, Vulpen proposed that according to organization’s
goal & purpose, there are five criteria to measure the organization effectiveness (1)
activity domain, (2) Perspective, (3) level of analysis, (4) time frame, (5) frame of
reference (Vulpen, 2020).

14 | P a g e
CONCLUSION
The world is changing, especially after the COVID pandemic. This acquired leaders more
flexibility and development every day to get the firm adapt or even move forward.
Leaders is the one who have the decision-making to affect the whole organization and its
performance. Therefore, leaders must develop their leadership to drive organization’s
performance.
Unquestionably, businesses must change if they want to thrive in the twenty-first century.
This era, successful leaders must have ability to catch the trend and even become a trend
setter. Therefore, in my belief, in the business world full of change and trend is set every
day, it will be not “do or die”, it is “catch or die”.
Leadership is not math. It is an art. If you are a leader, learn and develop leadership every
day.

15 | P a g e
REFERENCES
1. CFI (2015). Competitive Advantage - Learn How a Competitive Advantage
Works. [online] Corporate Finance Institute. Available at:
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/strategy/competitive-
advantage/.
2. Christensen, C.M., (2001). Competitive advantage. mit sloan management review,
42(2), pp.105-109.
3. Crawford, S. (2020). The New 80/20 Rule — Why Passion is a Stronger Motivator
than Innovation. [online] MAMMOTH XR. Available at:
https://medium.com/mammoth-xr/the-new-80-20-rule-why-passion-is-a-stronger-
motivator-than-innovation-2b812319445c#:~:text=Google%20has%20long
%20been%20known [Accessed 25 Aug. 2022].
4. Davis, M. (2019). The Impact Of 9/11 On Business. [online] Investopedia.
Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0911/the-impact-of-
september-11-on-business.aspx.
5. Ireland, R.D. and Hitt, M.A. (1999). Achieving and maintaining strategic
competitiveness in the 21st century: The role of strategic leadership. Academy of
Management Perspectives, 13(1), pp.43–57. doi:10.5465/ame.1999.1567311.
6. Kotter, J.P. (1985). Power and influence. New York: The Free Press.
7. media.ford.com. (n.d.). Alan Mulally | Ford Media Center. [online] Available at:
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/people/alan-
mulally.html#:~:text=Mulally%20joined%20Ford%20in%20September [Accessed
24 Aug. 2022].
8. Nanjundeswaraswamy, T.S. and Swamy, D.R., 2014. Leadership styles. Advances
in management, 7(2), p.57.
9. Ph.D, C.D. (n.d.). Author Post: Three Questions Every Leader Must Answer:
Insights From American Icon Alan Mulally. [online] Forbes. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesspeakers/2022/02/17/three-questions-every-

16 | P a g e
 leader-must-answer-insights-from-american-icon-alan-mulally/?sh=47c161d08929
[Accessed 24 Aug. 2022].
10. Pratt, M. (2017). What is leadership? - Definition from WhatIs.com. [online]
SearchCIO. Available at:
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/leadership.
11. ResearchGate. (n.d.). (PDF) Leadership Styles: The Power to Influence Others.
[online] Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292748803_Leadership_Styles_The_Po
wer_to_Influence_Others.
12. Thomas, A.B., 1988. Does leadership make a difference to organizational
performance?. Administrative Science Quarterly, pp.388-400.
13. W Glenn Rowe and Guerrero, L. (2019). Cases in leadership. Los Angeles ;
London: Sage.
14. Yukl, G.A. (2013). Leadership in organizations. 8th ed. Boston: Pearson
Education, Inc
15. Change! Change Management News & Tips. (2020). The Concept of
Organizational Performance vs. Effectiveness. [online] Available at:
https://change.walkme.com/concept-of-organizational-performance/.
16. Organizational Effectiveness and Performance. (n.d.). Quality Decision
Management - The Heart of Effective Futures-Oriented Management, 43–47.
doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8996-1_5
17. Vulpen, E.V. (2020). A Practitioner’s Guide to Organizational Effectiveness.
[online] AIHR. Available at: https://www.aihr.com/blog/organizational-
effectiveness/.

17 | P a g e