Essay on Leadership: Balancing Needs of Individuals & Teams, Strategic Management & Financial Planning

Introduction

Leadership in modern organizations must exhibit a balance between meeting the needs of individuals and those of teams (Denning, 2017). Besides meeting the needs of the workforce, supplier and customer relationships are other essential aspects that an organization must consider (Denning, 2017). A return on agility may be realized by an organization that addresses several strategic management issues (Clauss et al., 2019). Strategic management must involve proper financial planning to define its functional performance (Goleman, 2004). It must also entail forecast-based planning to mitigate risks and safeguard sustainability. The internal leadership frameworks for a forward-looking organization must lead to an externally-oriented planning approach.

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In this essay, the case study of Honda Motors' organizational leadership is discussed, and the organization's strategic challenges for its "fit for future purpose" explored. The agility of the present administration at the organization is examined. The organization's development plan for improved leadership agility is also addressed. The last part of the essay discusses how leadership agility can be improved at a personal level to advance the next phase of one's career.

Strategic Challenges for Remaining 'Fit for Future Purpose'

Honda Motors Corporation is a leading Japanese motor vehicle manufacturer with a rich past (Andersen & Zaelke, 2017). Despite its success in the past years and its present strong position in the industry, it faces multiple strategic leadership challenges that affect its growth and sustainability. Within the current globalized competitive motor vehicle industry, the leadership of top organizations such as Honda Motors has the delicate task of helping the organizations to maneuver complexities while maintaining the competitive edge (Karp & Helgo, 2009).

Competition in the motor vehicle manufacturing industry is presently high. Therefore, Honda Motors needs a robust strategic leadership approach to help define the organization's future needs, establish a suitable organizational culture and set up the right business strategies. To realize a "fit for the future purpose," the company's leadership must consider strategic leadership agility.

One of the strategic challenges that organizations in competitive industries like Honda Motors grapple with is the significantly high levels of complexities. As Sheddy (2016) noted, when organizations are faced with increased complexities that affect their operational frameworks, their leaderships are required to take fast-paced initiatives to mitigate risks. Nonetheless, the dynamics of business operations sometimes expose the lack of preparedness by an organization to address cultural and behavioral shifts. For instance, Honda's decision to relocate some of the leadership responsibilities from Japan to North America proved costly to the organization (Andersen & Zaelke, 2017). Honda had traditionally centered its strategic business decisions in Japan. The new environment offered newer challenges that were new to the organization, affecting its sustainability focus.

The company's leadership approach has been increasingly aligned externally. Hence, with a majority of motor vehicle companies seeking the North American market, Honda had focused its leadership strategy on this market. However, the company did not realize its intended goals because the differences in the environment did not allow it to show strong leadership (Balogun & Johnson, 2005). The result of this failure in strategic management was a drop in its market share rates. Honda's senior management realized the need to overhaul its leadership practices and modify its organizational culture, both domestically and internationally, to ensure that it established a strategic leadership agility approach.

How Agile Honda's Current Leadership Is

Organizations can realize operational excellence and sustainability when the leadership exhibit a lean-agile foundation in their management of the operations. One of the critical elements that an organization must address is the empowerment of its employees so that they attain the highest possible level. However, for a company like Honda, another strategic leadership challenge that hinders its realization of externally-facing leadership is the inability to establish an equilibrium between unknown and known dynamics. As such, the case of its performance in the North American market indicated the lack of understanding of complex situations and proper risk assessment.

Honda's approach to the AgilityShip practices has been through its adoption of broad scope of leadership strategies. Honda commits to and agile and effective leadership as a means of realizing its competitive edge. Nonetheless, its agility leadership approach has been effective in the Japanese market. The rest of Honda's market remains deficient in agile leadership elements, and so the management of operations in the external markets has been a challenge.

Honda can apply its robust organizational culture and values to address the challenges posed by these markets (Aitken, 2004). Takeo Fujisawa and Soichiro Honda's leadership philosophies identify three aspects of leadership that may help realize strategic leadership agility, which is the respect for the individual, the joy of purchasing, selling, and creating, and the joy of work. Honda's AgilityShip practices include resilience, sensitivity to personal value, creating learning, cultural competence, and performance challenges.

Another of Honda's challenges is its slowness to adopt a leadership strategy that allows it to accelerate cultural change. In realization of the dynamism of the external business environment, the leadership practices at the organization must be designed so that a creative organizational style is established as an alternative to the traditional reactive one. Some of the leadership strategies employed by Honda towards building agility include defining leadership roles, allowing creativity to thrive within the organization and to determine the organizational culture, and to ensure that the internal operational frameworks help to meet customer expectations. Improvements in these areas are bound to help the organization to improve its present leadership strategy by providing that resources are appropriately utilized (Jabnoun, 2001).

While Honda has been excellent in personal value sensitivity, creating learning, cultural competence, performance challenges, and agility resilience, it is deficient when it comes to emotional intelligence and total leadership (Cartwright & Pappas, 2007). Consequently, the organization needs to establish total leadership practices. Part of Honda's success over the year can be attributed to its systematic approach to determining and developing leaders. Every employee at the organization adheres to the core values.

Adopting agility leadership will help to clarify its leadership path within a globalized environment. Lean agile leadership development that is desirable for Honda would consist of four key aspects. The organization's leadership will begin by commuting to self-development. Next, they will look externally to develop others. A continuous improvement strategy will then be required. Lastly, it will be important that a vision exists to align the leadership with the company objectives.

Development Plan to Increase Agility

Honda traditionally focuses on a philosophy that encourages the safety of its employees at the workplace as a strategy to motivate them to be more productive. Within the present competitive business environment, Honda also commits to a personal value sensitivity philosophy. This approach is seen in the organization's design and quality optimization initiatives. The organization invests in projects that aim to improve customer satisfaction. Further, Honda's broader objective is to develop better future people, societies, and the planet. However, despite this, Honda requires a proper development plan to improve its leadership agility.

The first element of the development plan towards improved leadership agility would be for the organization to establish programs that allow creativity so that leaders are capable of analyzing organizational risks and creating solutions. The scholarships on agile leadership stress the need for leaders to have the capacity to identify complex situations and to be able to work collaboratively to find answers. The advantage of this approach is that it helps to utilize organizational values more effectively (Aitken, 2004).

The approach also helps to streamline agile leadership practices in a manner that helps to sustain the desired change and to ensure that there is long-term performance that leads to sustainability. Creativity and innovation allow for the growth of transformational leadership. When the top leadership of the organization employ transformational leadership principles, the organization benefits by way of motivated stakeholders, continuous improvement, and operational excellence (Jabnoun, 2001). Most importantly, the agile leadership practices at the organization should be characterized by a commitment to quality and the application of technology.

The second phase of the development plan is to establish an environment that encourages reflective leadership by way of eliminating barriers to communication and improving the space for feedback (Weick, 2011). The greatest challenge for Honda has been in how best to apply the efficiency strategies in its traditional Japanese operational center to a new environment in North America. Since its inception, Honda Motors has operated from Japan, which made communication easier as the top leadership resided in the same cultural setting as the other managers and the rest of the workforce. However, the company's decision to grow outwards and venture into the North American market exposed it to the challenge of communication and feedback. The organization did not realize positive benefits and recorded a decline in the market share rates. The organization recognizes the need to establish a healthy organizational culture that succeeds both domestically and internationally.

The third phase of the development plan would be to define the roles of the catalyst leaders so that they can lead the purpose of inspiring, innovating, and leading the workforce towards the organizational goal of sustainable development (Avery, 2005). Honda will need to organize its development activities so that it improves its agile leadership. Some of the approaches that will work for the organization are promoting self-leadership that will be gained through self-reflection (Kulas, 2013). The organization can invest in training and continuous growth strategies. It also needs to establish a leadership that coaches the workforce and empowers them to be agile leaders (Virgili, 2013).

How I Intend to Increase My Leadership Agility

The fundamental purpose of adopting agility leadership is to help one to improve their self-leadership capacity. One should, therefore, aim to develop self-leadership skills. One way to achieve this capacity is through self-reflection (Kempster et al., 2011). A retrospective approach helps an individual to identify their areas of strengths and weaknesses and to adopt the right set of personal development objectives. Developing a set of activities and ensuring that they are undertaken regularly helps to train the mind to be more resilient and agile. Developing agile leadership is a process that requires time. Hence, while initiating strategies, it will be important that a progressive approach is considered, which helps to develop agile le...