Introduction
Since its establishment in 1996, Gene One is a biotechnology company experiencing great success in every move it makes in the market and the larger society (Gene One, n.d). Success at the company has been achieved through combination of many factors such as presence of sophisticated technology, good management and teamwork and an adequate and able market team.
Further, there is increasing external factors resulting to healthy growth of the company such as the change of leadership at Food and Drug Administration and a growing interest at the Wall Street in biotechnology (Gene One, n.d). As a result there is an overall investor confidence in the industry thus future prospects for Gene One are bright. However, this is not to say external market conditions are friendly.
There is high competition in the market place from the related biotechnology companies and therefore, just like any other company, Gene One has to stay abreast in the market place by adopting effective strategic management strategies. For instance, the company hopes to realize an increase in its annual growth targets by about 40% and IPO has been identified as the best source of capital to drive this target (Gene One, n.d).
Moreover, the company needs more money for new developments, advertisement, and marketing in order to remain successful in the market place. Key strength of the company can be seen to lie in leadership and organizational capabilities that majority of company’s senior managers exercise.
Strategic Leadership Management
Gene One selling aspects is its possession of new, sophisticated, and efficient technology that is manifested through excellent innovations and market-leading products (Gene One, n.d). Investment in technology thus constitutes the positive decision the company can take given that competition from other companies is increasing.
Given that Gene One has a sound and effective leadership and organizational capabilities, adoption of sophisticated technology is likely to be realized with ease. However, how can enhancement of technology and innovation in the company be realized? First, by looking at the market environment, it is clear that more companies in the biotechnology industry are investing heavily in research and design.
Through investment in research and designs the companies hopes to realize innovation of appropriate and excellent technologies that are market-winners (Gene One, n.d). For Gene One to have the best research innovations which in turn can be transformed and developed into market winning products, there is need for the company to invest in talent development especially of young talented scientists.
Investing in R&D and developing a pool of talents scientists require effective leadership and management. From the conversation and discussion, Gene One top management has indicated that there still exists disagreements and lack of proper communication connection among top managers (Gene One, n.d).
In other words, established leadership culture cannot ride the entire organization in a uniform agreement in major decisions without disagreements (Yukl, 2010). IPO issue has revealed this lack of leadership aspect in the company, which needs to be developed if the company hopes to realize its goals of growth and expansion.
In order to be competitive organizations need to attract, retain, and develop top leadership talent in line with the needs and prospects of IPO and growth of the company (Gene One, n.d). In one conversation, John tells Don that, some of the current members in the senior leadership team lack ability to lead an IPO transformation process due to their lack of experience (Gene One, n.d).
Development is regarded to be important because leaders who are perceived to be effective need continued learning opportunities (Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn, & Ghoshal, 2003). In the case of Gene One, leadership development is important as the company aims to stay ahead of the competition and ensure business challenges are transformed into opportunities (Gene One, n.d).
Therefore, how can Gene One create an effective leadership strategy that has potential to help the company realize its goals? First, an effective leadership strategy requires a systematic lens of understanding leadership requirements and merge together elements of learning about the whole system of the company.
Given that IPO and the need to grow the company beyond its current position (Gene One, n.d) requires cooperation among leaders, an effective leadership strategy needs to build on collective work where the understanding is that collective work requires setting direction, creating alignment, facing adaptive challenges to unexpected situations and more importantly maintaining employee commitment and energy (London, 2002).
Leadership management at Gene One is necessary especially after numerous disagreements arose over the IPO issue and some resignation were witnessed (Gene One, n.d). If for instance there was an effective leadership strategy in place, then it is likely that the experienced setbacks could have been avoided.
Effective leaders have to be sensitive to the needs and input of others (Robbins, & Judge, 2011). In the case of Gene One, leadership development strategy should build on the need for sustainable leadership capacities that are evident in the company. In this way, the leaders in the company will be in a position to serve themselves as well as the needs of the company.
In this way, minor conflicts being realized at the company will be minimized. It should be noted further that effective leadership strategies have to reflect the needs for interpersonal and cognitive competencies of the leaders and managers to manage people and their relationships.
At the present, these aspects seems to be absent at Gene One as reflected in the acceleration of conflict over IPO and direct accusation and confrontation of managers (Gene One, n.d).
Through this, it can be deduced that there will be much more organization harmony since organization’s implicit and explicit aspects and mutual influence will be possible as the process of finding common ground among diverse views will be possible (Fulmer and Goldsmith, 2001). Moreover, an effective leadership development strategy needs to build on principles of education and continuous training.
Conclusion
In summary, it can be said that for effective leadership strategy at Gene One, there should be interdependency of leadership strategy with other systematic factors in the organization such as rewards, performance feedback, reviews and production systems (Ryan, 2007).
More importantly, leadership development strategies should be based on thorough understanding of the specific needs of situation and this may involve degree of interdependence among individuals and work groups in the organization.
References
Fulmer, R. M and Goldsmith, M. (2001). The leadership investment: how the world’s best organizations gain strategic advantage through leadership development. NY: AMACOM Division American Management Association.
Gene One. (N.d). Company overview. (Attached notes).
London, M. (2002). Leadership development: paths to self-insight and professional growth. NY: Routledge..
Mintzberg, H., Lampel, J., Quinn, J. B., & Ghoshal, S. (2003). The strategy process: Concepts, contexts, cases. Fourth edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational behavior. 14th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Ryan, R. (2007). Leadership Development: A Guide for HR and Training Professionals. NY: Routledge.
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations. Seventh edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.