Strategic Management and Leadership Assignment Sample

Introduction of Strategic Management and Leadership Assignment

Unilever Organisation is taken to prepare this report and information has been given about it. Unilever Corporation is a multinational consumer products company in the United Kingdom, England. Unilever is the world's largest manufacturer of body wash. Unilever products are marketed in approximately 190 nations. The report evaluates the organisation's corporate, business and operational strategies and builds strategic options keeping in mind the strategic models and tools for Unilever organisations. The report also describes how success factors can be provided to the company with the help of the recommendations prepared using strategic models and tools. The potential risk during implementation has also been inserted in the report.

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Organisational Structure

Unilever was founded in 1930 as a result of the merger of body wash manufacturer Lever Brothers and margarine manufacturer Unilever. In 1930, the Unilever organisation spread throughout Latin America, and new industries were established. Unilever is a multinational business with a diverse range of brands that roduce goods and services on a vast scale and are involved in massive industrial operations in over a hundred countries around the globe.

Relationship between corporate, business and operational strategies

• Corporate Strategies: A business strategy is about conveying a clear, overriding goal for the company and articulating the institution's desired objectives (Jose et al., 2021). The corporate strategy will be concerned with which 'companies' the company wants to be in - what industry they would like to be engaged in – based on that corporate vision. Unilever is ambitious to be globally recognized sustainable leader which is purpose-driven and follows future-fit business model to achieve superior performance.
• Business Strategies: A business strategy is a collection of competition tactics and actions that a company uses to attract more customers, effectively compete, boost performance, and meet objectives of the organisation. It lays forth how business is operating in order to get the intended results. Business policy is a strategy devised by corporate executives to improve the company's overall performance. This is created by middle level management and deals with particular business areas or divisions. This is a short term strategy. Unilever is accelerating eCommerce and offering products on eB2B platforms, leading through applying customer insight and intelligence. In short, Unilever is developing innovative routes to offer products in the market.
• Operational Strategies: Operational strategy include improving and detailing a firm ’s financial performance, as well as generating strategic priorities and planning processes, with the goal of assisting the consumers in effectively implementing their overarching strategy. The purpose of operations strategy is to give the activities department a vision because it can achieve the most of its capabilities. The policies and ideas for employing the organisation's funding to sustain its long-term marketing advantage are outlined in the organisational structure.

A fundamental requirement of Unilever is to explore its customers and carry out market research. The company is focused on procuring raw material as per its Responsible Sourcing Policy formulated considering human rights and labour laws. The company spends significant funds on R&D to innovate its processes and products to gain competitive advantage. It also collaborates with suppliers, agencies, NGOs, universities, and governments across the world.

Strategic option for Unilever Organisation

• Emerging Markets: Unilever's main intensive growth strategy is market penetration. In this strategic option, the firm expands its sales revenue in order to maximise revenue and, as a result, business expansion. If Unilever efficiently implements this aggressive strategy by employing a generic variation strategy to make its market more attractive and appealing than their competitors (Izawa et al..,2015). Growing the organisation by aggressively promoting Unilever items in the global premium segment is a strategic goal tied to this intense methodology.
• Creation of New Products: Unilever can employ design and development capabilities to expand its business. This aggressive expansion plan is implemented by the corporation by launching innovative items that meet the wants of customers. The strategic goal of this aggressive objective is to expand the organisation through continual product development. Unilever's marketing plan is improved as a result of such advancement.
• Diversity: Diversification should be used by Unilever to support its market development strategy. This comprehensive strategy mainly focuses on launching new operations in order to expand the organisation (Obajdin et al..,2018). A few of the organisational plans of this aggressive approach is to generate expansion by extending the company's m&a deals trend. Unilever's position within the global consumer goods sector is strengthening as a result of this trend.

Success factor by using strategies option

• By upgrading an old product and service, it can attract customers and is showing its trust in the Unilever brand. They will also invest money in the market to buy the product.
• It will also be an answer to the market competitor by creating a new product that will enhance Unilever brand image as compared to other brands.
• Unilever already has a good brand image in the market. Therefore, before buying a new product, people will have confidence in them and their new product will also be bought by their customers. It is natural that when customers trust your product, they put the trust on the brand.
• By launching the new product in the market, the customer will buy the new product of Unilever and the company will generate revenue (Sim et al., 2016).

Recommendation and justify strategic option

1. Make some effort to build an umbrella brand that spans all of Unilever's brands and gradually unifies the company's entrepreneurial ventures underneath one identity.

• Increases the awareness of management, accountability, and commitment.
• Allows Unilever to concentrate on their clients' and clients' demands, rekindling production and enhancing potential sales.
• Allows you to take advantage of your operations' scalability.

1. Product and brand enhancements for "Unilever Believer" should really be implemented. In this situation, the linked example is 'Lipton tea.' This should strive to expand on this well-known company by concentrating on caffeinated beverages. The following are justifications:

• The last year, sales of energy drinks increased by 56%.

Force Field Analysis for Unilever

• Competitors' Rivalry: Unilever faces a lot of competition because there are so many companies in the consumer goods business. They have formed an aggregator in strategies to succeed and gain more market share, but they are lowering prices to do so. Unilever has a lot of rivalry experience over the world, and most buyers switch products because of reasonable prices. As a result, it is critical for Unilever to focus intensely on meeting the competition while keeping an optimistic future.
• Clients' Powerful Forces Negotiating Leverage: During the production process, suppliers play a critical role in the availability of raw materials. They are various influences that have a significant effect on the company's current environment. Unilever has a wide number of suppliers from across the world who can produce sufficient raw materials on request and also have long-term commitments.
• Low Forces are threatened by substitution: Substitution might lower income and weaken the company's current environment (Wilton et al..,2019). Rivals may offer a lower rate, but Unilever keeps a close check on the surroundings and is always willing to address any issues that arise.
• Low Forces are threatened by a new entry: In the retailing sector, unlevered constantly competes with established firms as well as newcomers. Availability of substitutes may allow a company to become a threat. However, establishing a new item as a trademark to rival Unilever is extremely tough.

Monitoring and control the implementing the strategic plan

Monitoring 

• Monitoring necessitates the establishment of explicit objectives: It is impossible to evaluate the executioner's success without specific targets and checkpoints. Each goal must have a specific goal that must be met (Morillas et al..,2020). An operational attempt can underperform without someone realising if it is not monitored.
• Monitor the performance via status reports: The strategy and its implementation must be reviewed through supporting documentation even after they've been translated into clearly defined goals. Progress documents are published on a regular basis by people in the organisation who are accountable for the strategy's application.
• Create dashboards to keep track of your progress: Dashboards also can be utilised to keep track of the method's progress. Leaders and managers can use dashboards to gain a rapid summary of the strategy's performance and significant concerns.

Controlling 

• Meetings for the implementation review process are held regularly: Hold regular execution assessment time to discuss the plan's deployment progress and take action if modifications are required (Zong et al..,2016). Meeting regularly in well-structured and moment performance study sessions is a great practise for project planning management and surveillance.
• Address the issue of poor execution: Employees of an organisation that do not execute well in terms of the project delivery team must be handled as part of strategy management. Poor performers' ability is unlikely to improve if they are not corrected. Although they don't want to offend individuals, many leaders are hesitant to make changes during the implementation.

Key Success Indicators

• Revenue Increase: The term "revenue growth" relates to an increase in revenues over a period. Profit growth is defined as the rate of increase in actual sales divided by the amount of sales from the preceding year's comparable term. Revenue growth is expressed as a percentage increase over a baseline (Gilmour et al..,2019).
• Per-client revenue: Average revenue per user, also known as annual earnings per unit, is a metric used in order to meet customer requirements, interactive technology, and connectivity organisations that is calculated by dividing total income by the number of visitors.
• Profit margin: Profit margin is calculated by splitting income by expenditures to determine how profitable a firm or business activity is. Gross margin, calculated as a percentage, represents how several cents of income have been made for every dollar of sales.

Risk during implementation of strategic plan

• The economic terrain in which a small firm operates is ever-changing. The market is being flooded with new rivals. Existing players introduce innovative goods / processes, as well as significant price cuts.
• A strategy's deployment may necessitate the execution of a sequence of actions by various divisions within your firm. If one suffers from the lack to finish its allotted projects on time, the strategy's execution will be affected.
• Delays in operation can also be characterised by a sudden exit of key employees who are now in charge of putting the strategies into action. Finding a substitute with about the same skills and attributes as the original — someone who can effectively develop the approach — takes patience (Ratcliffe et al..,2019).
• For essential aspects of their products, several small enterprises rely on just a few — or just one — suppliers. If a supplier goes out of business, operations may be slowed, and your organisation may not even be willing to meet the revenue increase predicted in the business plan. You could also have to rely on a couple of wholesalers.

Effectiveness of the strategic plan

A successful strategy combines vision and implementation. Unlike an organisation ’s mission, goal, and goals, tactics are far more precise. Long-term goals should be mapped to goals and concrete activities, and approaches should encourage innovative thoughts as well as foresee and minimise potential hazards. An effective strategic plan gives the management staff the information and recommendations they really have to run the firm more efficiently and help it attain its highest potential. Managers can use organisational strategies to make choices based on account of the uncertainty and a better understanding of the environment (Fernández et al..,2019). Critical success elements should be defined in order to relate and connect with a company's vision and mission. They're used to figure out how a business entity, division, or feature can achieve its clear targets while also advancing the organisational objectives.

Conclusion

Unilever, a leading manufacturer and distributor, handles its differentiation in an organisational structure that includes a vertical line that claims to represent the level of global combined effect, and thus of core, a horizontal plane that claims to represent the level of sense of harmony combined effect or operate effectively of governmental difference, and the consequent effects of operational and strategic rapprochement. Unilever is an example of how to quality parameters so that people may take advantage of the resources that are commonly accessible to them. This organisational structure can be classified as a mixture since it has three long term implications areas, specific product categories, and five operational parts. Unilever capitalised on its strengths and established this organisation culture for its business.

Reflective Essay

Introduction 

The purpose of this reflective essay is to critically evaluate the importance of change management models that are being applied by various business organizations to support the strategic options. In this essay a specific change management model will be recommended for supporting the identified strategic option within the business organization of Unilever. In addition to this some leadership and change agent skills will be reflected that are necessary to be developed for making the successful implementation of identified changes.

Usefulness of change management models

Change management models forecast the process of change implementation and prepare people for aligning their goals with the change to be executed within the business organisation. I have personally experienced that the adoption of specific change management models help the individuals to measure their progress in managing the change within the allocated time period and budget. Dimple mentation of change management model can simplify the process of executing and managing change that could be easily understandable by all the business individuals. I personally feel that the implementation of any specific model of change management gives me the greater level of confidence to talk with my senior managers about the particular change and its respective consequences (Hornstein, 2015). 

Within the context of business organisation I have researched that the change management models could help in identifying the potential areas of resistance and suitable strategies could be implemented by the business managers for reducing or eliminating the resistance before initiating the process of change. Apart from all this all the business individuals can be located with respective tasks to be performed as the change management model engages the business individuals in performing various professional roles and responsibilities to ensure greater success during the execution of change management process. Overall such models give clarification about significant roles and activities to be formed for executing the change and aligning all those activities with the limited resources that are available with the business organisation (Al-Haddad and Kotnour, 2015).

I have evaluated that the change management models play a very crucial and essential role for the business organisation as they provide immense learning and teaching about the best suitable practises that could be applied by the organisations for managing the change project. I have experienced that many people are generally reluctant to change because of the uncertainty and insecurity the change creates in their professional lives. The change management model in this context can provide the knowledge and proper education along with the confidence to the business individuals in understanding the importance of that particular change and some key strategies that could be adopted by them to influence their behaviour in a positive manner (Hornstein, 2015). Therefore the adoption of change management models can significantly avoid various negative consequences for both the employees as well as the business organisation. Employees’ frustration, stress and emotional instability can get managed and the insecurity of business in terms of lower productivity and failure in meeting of the standard objectives can get eliminated. Hence, in order to reduce the negative impacts of the change on the employees, their productivity, organisational productivity and organisational environment; the business organisations must adopt and implement some specific change management models for ensuring the better management of change as well as the employees (Al-Haddad and Kotnour, 2015).

Recommendation of specific model

The strategic option of differentiating the products and services has been determined and in order to support this particular strategic option; one specific change management model of McKinsey 7S model could be applied. The reason for choosing this particular model is that it can help in determining and identifying a wide range of situations through which different aspects of this strategic option could be examined. For example, in order to differentiate the products and services, some unique approaches can be evaluated for managing the new changes (Kuipers et al., 2014). 

This model has categorized the seven elements as hard and soft. The hard elements include the strategy, structure and systems. The soft elements include the shared values, skills, style and staff. The element of strategy could help in developing an effective business plan that could be used and applied for ensuring the successful product differentiation and gaining a competitive edge over the competitors of Unilever. The element of structure could help in the effective organization of the company such as developing different groups, assigning roles and responsibilities and seeking accountabilities. The systems element would involve the company in performing daily activities and formulate reliable procedures to be followed by the staff members in order to get this new change executed properly (Fernandez and Rainey, 2017). The element of shared values would require the organization of Unilever to adopt some core values and basic ethical principles for ensuring confidentiality and transparency during the process of change management. The style element reflects that the company would need to adopt any particular leadership style that might be best suit the strategic options; such as the participative leadership style as the employees could share their innovative ideas for the product differentiation and increase their participation in group discussions. The staff element involves the allocation of roles and responsibilities to the employees in association with the skills and capabilities possessed by them. The skills element demonstrates the actual skills and competencies being possessed by the organizational employees; based on which the relevant strategies for managing the strategic option of product differentiation could be adopted (Kuipers et al., 2014).

This specific model of McKinsey 7S can help the business organisation of Unilever to analyse the current situation of providing the innovative products to the customers and anticipate the future situation of product differentiation. After determining the gap between the present and future scenario the reliable strategies should be formulated to eliminate those gaps. Based on my personal experiences, I believe that the application of the McKinsey 7S framework can help the business organisation of Unilever to analyse and determine its own strengths and weaknesses in association with the proposed strategic option of products and services differentiation. The application of this model can further health organisation in identifying some particular areas that need improvement. McKinsey 7S framework can help in reducing a lot of difficulties in strategic management by providing a favourable structure to the organisation within the context of identified strategic management problems and thereby implementing the favourable strategies accordingly (Fernandez and Rainey, 2017).

Change agent and identification of leadership and change agent skills 

I have conducted an immense research about a change management and based on my research I have identified that a change management is a person who helps the business organization from inside and outside and is considered as an important part of the organization. In order to become a change agent I would need to work as a catalyst for change and should learn to focus on making the changes happen by influencing and inspiring the business individuals in a positive manner. Other than this, I would further learn to promote enable and support the change implementation process within the business organization. I have researched that being a change management I would be required to perform various roles and responsibilities (Rafferty et al., 2013). Some of those responsibilities include ensuring the effective communication between the organization and employees, understanding the reactions of employees towards change, focusing on eliminating or reducing the resistance to change, highly supporting and encouraging all the employees to become the change champions, listening to all the team members and employees before the final implementation of the change management process, receiving the reliable feedbacks from different stakeholders, ensuring the active engagement and participation of all the employees during the change management meetings, providing the feedback and strategies on managing challenges that might be faced while leading towards the change implementation process and identifying other leaders and change consultants to ensure greater success (Heiskanen et al., 2016). 

I would practice becoming both the internal and external change agent so that I could gain the experience of both types of change agents. While playing the role of internal change agent I will focus on understanding the organizational development, human intervention and behavioral sciences. On the contrary while playing the responsibility of external change agent I would play the role of outside consultant or third-party change practitioner that could help the organization in driving the change initiatives. Being the external change agent, I would be suggesting suitable and relevant models of change management and strategies to the company in order to prevent change failures (Tann, 2021). While playing the role of internal change agent I must be aware of the organizational history its policies cultural aspects towards the change and its relationships with other business organizations. On the other hand, I would need to provide a fresh perspective about the change management while working as the external change agent. To become a people focused change agent I would learn to help business individuals in coping up with the new change by increasing their level of morale and confidence. In addition to this, I would tend to learn into the matters of high employee turnover, absenteeism, lack of positive behavior, improper alignment between goals, lack of job enrichment and hampered quality of work performance being done by the employees (Rafferty et al., 2013).

It is very critical to perform the role of change agent as a lot of difficulties are being faced. I have determined some of the key skills and qualities that must be developed by me for becoming a successful and professional change agent. Some of those favorable qualities include the better understanding of vision, patient and persistent behavior, leading through examples, enthusiastic approach, becoming a strong and effective communicator, empathetic, well organized, good negotiator, well respected human, pragmatic ability of developing and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships and broad or acute knowledge (Heiskanen et al., 2016). 

I must learn to react to the new changes in a flexible manner by possessing an entrepreneurial attitude. To attract and encourage all the business employees towards the execution of the new change, I must develop creative and innovative strategies to make them understand about the favorable opportunities that could be brought by the new change. I should also possess diversified knowledge about different sectors by gaining valuable insights and new opportunities for sustainable growth and development. For this purpose, I have decided to get enrolled myself in the online master and professional courses and get myself certified as a change agent (Tann, 2021). The prioritization aspect is a must and I should have the knowledge of setting specific priorities during the change execution and change management process so that a standard balance could be created among the expectations of both the business organization and the employees.

I should further learn to properly listen to the issues and difficulties that might be faced by the business employees while executing the new change. Until and unless, I would not listen to those problems; I would not be able to respond or communicate with them properly, due to which various conflicts could arise that would eventually affect the execution and implementation of the new change. In addition to this I must ensure greater accountability and responsibility because the courage and accountability are highly respected by the people. I should learn to encourage the business individuals to work in groups rather than leading individually because the process of change implementation requires a lot of decisions to be made in terms of the strategies, changes, feedbacks, evaluation and many more (Raghavi and Gopinathan, 2013).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the change management models are very important to be applied for the business organizations to not only manage the execution of change; but also make the organizations aware about the threats that could affect the overall business productivity. This reflective essay has demonstrated greater understanding about the change management model, McKinsey 7S model, importance of change agent and the skills that must be possessed by the change agent.

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