Nokia recently hired a new CEO, Stephen Elop, to help revive Nokia's presence in the cell phone industry. Nokia feels it is falling behind primarily in its smartphone department. Elop is in a highly directive state. He has very little supportive behavior for his employees. In the situational approach model developed by Blanchard, he is in the S1-D1 category. Elop is task-oriented by focusing on the objective to reestablish Nokia as a "challenger" in the smartphone industry. The communication from Elop to employees is always about the goal of developing the company to revive itself as being the number one in the smartphone industry. Elop is not being supportive because he is wanting to not try and give encourage the current employees to do better. He is looking to have immediate redeveloping of the company with new employees. Eventually, Elop may move into the S2-D2 category of coaching, but for right now, he is looking to redevelop the company to reach its full potential.
Questions: Do you think it is wise for Stephen Elop to be in such a directive mode at this point? Do you think he should be in a different mode (either S2-D2, S3-D3, or S4-D4)?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704858404576128531221475772.html?mod=WSJ_mgmt_LeftTopNews
Posted by: Aaron Barton
Dr. Sheep's feedback for your team:
ReplyDeleteIn general, you are off to a reasonably good start on your blog. However, there are some important improvements that are needed.
First, a more careful and accurate/precise application of course concepts and models is needed. For example, one of your posts makes a reasonably accurate explanation of Situational Theory applied to Stephen Elop, but more explicit connection and support from the story itself is needed to make it clearer. Another post about executive cars makes an interesting point, but then makes the statement, “This gives light to the fact that skills, traits, and values used in younger years of CEO's can transfer to the later years as they progress up the ladder and need more leadership skills.” While this may be true, it is unsupported by making specific linkages to exactly which skills and traits might be referenced here. In other words, nothing specific from any of these theories is actually applied.
Thus, when you meet, you should strategize how you might go about writing more detailed and insightful posts about your articles that clearly rise to the level of good analysis much more consistently across all of your posts. It may also help to keep in mind what I have tried to emphasize several times in class—that simply mentioning a word that comes from somewhere in the textbook is not the same as applying that concept (in the context of its theory). It should be applied in an accurately-defined way to explain the insights it provides in understanding leadership issues that may be raised by the article. Otherwise, you have made a good start, and you certainly have some interesting material to analyze.