Leadership Matters: Strategies for Success in Military Organizations - Essay Sample

Introduction

CEOs, managers, and other top-level executives play a pivotal role in the success of a company or organization. As most are considered the brains behind the success of a company, it calls for an excellent strategic leadership that steers the organization to the next level. Just as a typical company, military organization require excellent organizational leadership skills to ensure that the interest of the internal and external stakeholders are given priority. Even though the aspect of profits might not be given much importance as it is a military service organization, strategic leadership skills is an impetus in ensuring the growth of the organization. Therefore leadership is vital in creating a sustainable corporate strategy that takes into account the external and internal stakeholders of a military organization.

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Military culture tends to add a different form of dynamism that is not quite comparable to a regular or civilian organization (Sicard, 2017). Frequently, managers in a military organization take importance in enforcing military authority towards a specific project rather than directing subordinates towards a common goal. With this type of leadership, project managers work under the assumption that assistants will do their part to achieve the end goal as the authority has come from above. Contrary to a civilian organization or operation where decisions are made through a consensus or by horizontal communication, military firms fancy more of a top-down communication (Peterlin, Pearse, & Dimovski, 2015). Often, this type of leadership leads to steady and fast completion of projects but rarely do managers and other subordinates acquire the rightful skill in critical avenues like stakeholder analysis.

Sicard (2017) argues that stakeholder analysis in a military organization is essential in creating a sustainable corporate strategy best fit for stakeholders. Being a senior leader, the decision made in an organization should serve the best interest of both the internal and external shareholders. Furthermore, a stakeholder is a person within or outside the organization that is directly affected by the decisions of the organization (Sicard, 2017). Therefore, strategic leadership in the military organization is measured on the correlation between the decision made and stakeholder analysis. As profits, in this case, are out of the question, clearly acting in the best interest of stakeholders exhibits exemplary leadership skills of senior managers (Leitch, Lancefield, & Dawson, 2016). In the case of project managers in military organizations, most require the input of stakeholders before they embark on projects. Only then can you make the right decision while giving a regular update on the project progression to the stakeholders.

Communicating the vision and mission of an organization to critical stakeholders may, at times, be problematic. Leitch (2016) study suggest that CEOs often fail to communicate and impose their visions of the organization to stakeholders such as employees, customers, the board of directors, and stockholders. In ensuring that the majority of stakeholders are entirely on board to support the vision of a company or an organization, communication is essential. Leaders who have the capability of communicating the vision of a company on a more comprehensive and clear perspective end up inspiring others to support it (Peterlin et al. 2015). Furthermore, senior managers whose projection and ambitions seem to become more sustainable in the future are considered more visionary. In such cases, they are expected to commit to the long term achievement of the vision as they integrate the aspect of sustainability in both short term and long term goals. Leaders who exhibit such traits in military organizations tend to gain the full support of stakeholders and most importantly backing from subordinates and employees.

Leadership styles linking to organizational sustainability breeds constant employee engagement. As the belief that most successful leaders aim at achieving sustainability and profitability in the long run, most leaders end up gaining full support of their employees. Major organizations consider employee engagement as a top priority in the success of the company. In the military organization, it is not a different case. Considering this aspect, employees remain to be an integral part of achieving sustainability from most senior supervisors. So how do we ensure that employees fully engage in realizing the visions and strategic goals of a military organization? Hahn and Correa (2015) suggest sustainability reporting is amongst the critical functions of leaderships that yields to long term success of a business entity or organization. The leadership skill entails actively engaging employees to communicate progress in achieving sustainability through reports periodically. Even though in civil organizations, the reports are usually treated separate from financial statements that exhibit disconnect to the overall growth strategy, the military organization embraces sustainability reports. These reports are essential as they take into account social, environmental, and governance issues. However, to other companies, sustainability reporting may only be a factor of conforming to practices set forth by the organization rather an internal leadership skill embedded in the hearts of senior managers (Peterlin et al. 2015). In the military organization, however, getting to know and understand the progress in achieving the mission and vision of the company plus overall sustainability is given equal importance as reports indicating operation expenses.

It is fundamental to embed leadership skill in achieving corporate sustainability. As part of the qualification of a senior manager, excellent managerial and communication skills are apparent. Therefore, in integrating leadership qualities in senior managers, the ability to create and communicate a vision properly is a must. Corporate sustainability can only be achieved when each stakeholder knows the concept and understands the part he or she should play in achieving the vision (Hahn & Correa, 2015). Furthermore, as creativity and innovation are pivotal in ensuring the growth of an organization, senior managers should design new and better practices that streamline the process and achieves sustainability. It is a leadership skill to question traditional organizational methods and embark on discussing what is truly important to stakeholders of the organization. For instance, the military organization emphasizes more on acquiring the rightful personnel and the training process rather than having excess recruits in the boot camp.

Senior leaders are entitled to create a platform and culture of raising and testing new ideas. As earlier noted in the essay, corporate sustainability is best achieved through creativity and innovation. Therefore, testing and developing new ideas is a critical skill in senior leaders. It is even better when managers integrate new ideas to create more value in the organization. Through providing a platform whereby employees and other subordinates bring innovative thinking to the table, senior managers nurture creativity and innovation (Leitch et al. 2016). A strategic leader would always be able to understand how to bring the best out of an employee. Contrary to this form of leadership style, traditional approaches are only limited new ideas to an individual manager. Managers had the opportunity to stifle the enthusiasm of the idea and even block it from implementation. In such cases, an organization may lose a lifetime opportunity by investing in a plan that would bring about fundamental changes and enhance more corporate sustainability.

Senior leaders are further entitled to numerous creative channels that enhance creative thinking. It may be through cross-functional forums whereby employees from different departments are brought together to brainstorm on new ideas. Secondly, senior leaders would implement mentorship programs whereby promising thinkers would enroll in an apprenticeship under more experienced and well-equipped leaders to build their skills (Leitch et al. 2016). Other options would include offer university attendance programs or set up in house training to sharpen up mental skills in generating ideas. Additionally, it is the role of senior managers to create a platform for reverse mentoring. Reverse mentoring is a process whereby young people share their knowledge of new technology with other older staff members as part of a collaboration. Such type of leadership skills would bring fresh ideas on the table to spearhead an organization to the next level.

Senior managers and top-level executives are entitled to be open and honest about the information they share. This form of governance and leadership traditionally evolved from the military, and the concepts are still used to date. Such a model of leadership equates information to power. Thus, strategic intelligence is only limited to top-level executives and managers. Leaders get to make decisions on the dark without the consent and approval of others as the topic under discussion is top secret. However, such form of leadership is detrimental to the overall strategy and growth of an organization as senior managers make hasty decisions without looking at the bigger picture. Additionally, the form of leadership does not give the chance to question the information received by an organization hence providing room to make the wrong decisions.

Furthermore, when employees and other subordinates lack the information, most are undermined the opportunity to challenge their leaders and give opinions that may even differ with those of leaders (Leitch et al. 2016). Senior managers in military organization imply that some competitive secrets should remain a secret. However, if fellow employees and subordinates are to be the strategic leaders in the future, they require a broader scope of information. Most leaders have resorted to adopting the principle of open-book management that is anchored on the systematic sharing of data on the nature of a business or enterprise.

Leadership skills in management are acquired through practice; therefore, a fair amount of autonomy is essential (Leitch et al.2016). It is a leadership skill to ensure that power is categorically distributed down each level of organization management empowering employees to participate in decision making actively. Distributing responsibilities or delegating duties enables senior managers to assess what will occur on instances they take risks on subordinates. Distributing responsibilities also gathers intelligence, enhancing adaptabilities, and boosting the resilience of an organization (Hahn & Correa, 2015). Furthermore, succession planning becomes more comfortable, and replacing top-level talent in an organization becomes more tranquil. Contrary to the traditional decision-making system, employees can harness wisdom from senior managers making them more skillful and productive. However, the style of leadership is not widely practiced by military organizations as critical information cannot be left in the hands of subordinates. Senior managers only exercise distribution and delegation of power on a minimal scope as it is an offense for assistants to make decisions that are against direct orders (Sicard, 2017). Military organizations, therefore, exercise a high level of authoritative style of leadership.

Managers ought to emphasize more on experienced-based learning as opposed to theory for continued organizational sustainability. Most leadership development practices are info...