Harvard Business Review Article Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Harvard Business Review Article - Essay Example Following seven key lessons will emphasize on the significant aspects of effective strategic leadership as learnt and comprehended by a student. Key Lesson 1: Maintaining Effective Communication Communication of the organization's purpose is one of the most vital aspects to be considered. A corporate organization's purpose of being is what it stands for and gives an overview of the main aims it wants to achieve. So, it is essential for effective strategic leadership of a corporate organization to state clearly its mission and vision. This can be explained lucidly by the mission statement of Google, which is to organize all the information in the world in a systematic manner so that it can be accessed and utilized universally. Moreover, the brand name of a company should be a direct reflection of its core values, so that the customers would be aware of the services being provided and being attracted to avail them at the same time. Richard Reed, Co-founder of Innocent, did an exceptional job at coming up with the brand name. Innocent; which is one of the most recognized and acclaimed brand in the UK, produces healthy fruit juices and food items only. The company's name, Innoce nt goes hand in hand with the word natural, which depicts the very nature of innocent products. Key Lesson 2: Sustaining Competitive Market Advantage Another important lesson is to sustain competitive advantage in the market over the passage of time. Skimming, price war, and predatory pricing etc. are some of the marketing techniques which could be utilized by the company to sustain the advantage or to drive their competitors out of the market completely. If this upper-hand advantage is not achieved and sustained, a company could face serious consequences, which reflect adversely on its strategic leadership policies. The downfall of PepsiCo is one of the examples of this scenario as Indra Nooyi, the current chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, is facing a loss of market shares and decreasing stock values due to failure at sustaining competitive advantage with rival beverage company Coca Cola. In an announcement made in February, 2012, it was revealed that due to its financial concerns, PepsiCo is cutting down 8,700 employees. The company is starting new lines of diet soda and sugar free products to increase the customer interest but this strategy has not been very successful due to the launch of similar product lines from rival companies. PepsiCo is trying to devise new product lines in order to obtain competitive market advantage so that it can be successful in the market again. Indra Noooyi is also feared to be terminated from her current position of the CEO of the company if the financial position of the company does not stabilize. Key Lesson 3: Effective Change Management Faslane Naval Base was run entirely by the Ministry of Defence of UK and the Royal Navy up until 2002. Afterwards, a contract was signed with Babcock Marine to reduce the cost and to improve operational efficiency. The staff had to work under a different managing authority with new aims and futuristic goals. John Howie, director of Babcock Marine, set forth the emphasis on delivering services to the Navy, eradicating the previous goals of focusing on building infrastructures. Effective strategic leadership could never be achieved without effic ient and timely change management in the organization. Faslane is an organization where the only assets are the people, so to implement change, the shackles which bound the workers, had to be eliminated. Starting with low level managerial changes, the company moved towards gaining efficiency by re-engineering fundamental processes to