Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters
Leaders use seven leadership skills in conceiving and managing change projects, whether innovations in established organizations, culture and process changes, or entrepreneurial ventures for industry or social change. The skills leaders need are different at various phases of change projects. Offers details and also discusses the rhythm of change and resistance to change. Supported by examples drawn from empirical research.
Swot Analysis of "Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters" written by Rosabeth Moss Kanter includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Change Skills facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Innovation, Leadership, Project management and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Change Skills, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Change Skills operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Change Skills
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Change Skills
Strengths Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Change Skills in Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Change Skills to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Change Skills to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Change Skills has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Change Skills has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Change Skills has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Change Skills is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Change Skills in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Change Skills are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management
– Change Skills is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Change Skills has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Change Skills in the sector have low bargaining power. Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Change Skills to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Change Skills is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Change Skills in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Change Skills has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Change Skills to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Change Skills
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Change Skills does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Change Skills products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Change Skills needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Change Skills has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Change Skills has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters, it seems that the employees of Change Skills don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Need for greater diversity
– Change Skills has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Change Skills has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Change Skills has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Change Skills has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Change Skills even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Change Skills needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters, is just above the industry average. Change Skills needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Opportunities Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Change Skills in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Change Skills can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Change Skills can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Leadership & Managing People segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Change Skills has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Change Skills to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters case study. Change Skills can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Change Skills to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Change Skills to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Manufacturing automation
– Change Skills can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Change Skills can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Change Skills has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Change Skills can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Change Skills operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Change Skills to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Change Skills can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Change Skills has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Change Skills to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Change Skills can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters are -
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Change Skills in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Change Skills
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Change Skills.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Change Skills can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Change Skills is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Change Skills needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Change Skills can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Change Skills needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Change Skills can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Change Skills.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Change Skills business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Change Skills high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Change Skills demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Change Skills needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
