A633.4.3.RB_MedinaM.

Reflecting on the opening exercise of Chapter 4 of the book Complex Adaptive Leadership (Obolensky, 2010) and this week’s other readings, I think the shift in leadership is occurring because of the need for organizations to quickly adapt to the changing environment. Organizational leaders realize that front-line employees are the most informed about the organization, details, projects, situations, problems, and so on. Front-line employees are the employees that deal with the changes and they are the first employees to become informed about the changing demand. So in my opinion, I think the need for organizations to be more adaptive to the changing environment has caused the shift in leadership. As organizations continue realize how valuable front-line employees are and how valuable their information (input) is for strategy development purposes, leaders see how much organizational charade is present within the organization. By using Obolensky’s three changes of attitude approaches leaders of organizations can effectively break organizational charade. These are: ‘I do not know’ approach, the challenge and support approach, and lastly, the dynamic approach to question and answer sessions (Obolensky, 2010).

            After being with the organization for over 5 years, I believe this shift in leadership is exactly what is happening with my organization. From personal experience, I can say with certainty that in the past organizational charade has been present. Leaders have realized how important it is for a food industry organization to receive customer feedback and for employees to pass on that information to leaders. The three reasons that support this information are:

1.     Customer taste buds change over time so demand changes

2.     As the generation changes, so does the quality of the product (meaning the new generation is now more health and calories conscious than the past generation)

3.     New, young employees do not know the importance of understanding the change in strategy so information tends to get lost along the process.

As my organization has noticed how much the strategy of the organization can change depending on the above reasons, the organization has made some changes to its approach to information. Leaders now encourage employees to pass on information about demand change, taste preferences, feedback from customers and so on. Almost every day employees get asked for his or hers opinion on how the business is going, which food is selling more, what customers are asking for, what are their suggestions and so on. This has helped tremendously the organization to include front-line employees to decision-making and for strategy development, to increase communication between top management and front-line employees, and overall the change in culture of the organization. Now the culture of the organization is not an “us (employees) vs. them (managers)” but rather an overall team effort. Since, the culture of the organization has changed over the past 2 – 3 years to a more adaptive, communicate culture, in my opinion, I believe no leadership dynamic needs to changed or altered at the moment. I think that as the organization continues to properly train new employees to be conscious of customer feedback and the difference in taste buds, the organization will continue to improve its strategy and overall organizational performance.

Reference:

Obolensky, N. (2010). Finita La Comedia - Stop Playing Charades. Complex Adaptive Leadership: embracing paradox and uncertainty (pp. 34-42). Farnham, Surrey: Gower