Managing Change

1.0 Introduction

The title of our article is Managing Organizational Change: Leadership, Tesco, and Leahy's Resignation by Uzoechi Nwagbara, Greenwich School of Management, United Kingdom. This article were about the leadership style of Sir Terry Leahy, the CEO of Tesco in order to ensuring their business will be succeed and always be better than before. It also discuss about how they maintain their performance in the business when they change to the new CEO. They want to make sure their standard of performance and business will good as the old CEO. So they take some action in maintaining it.

First of all, we will discuss about the main issue in this article. It was about the leadership styles that are practice by the person in Tesco. From the course of Managing Change (ADS 607), the topic of Leadership in Practice was in chapter four. According to Hersey and Blanchard (1988), leadership always occurs when one attempts to influence the behaviour of an individual or group. The person who are influencing by the other people will have the intention to do something. She or he will feel like motivated to doing something and they will be more confident to do it. As we all know, the good leader always motivated the peoples under him and always taking care of their employee's welfare. When the leaders have these kinds of characteristics, he or she will be able to handle many situations that happen in their organisation. We also believe that, when someone has these attribute they will able to be a good leader who can be accepted by all. Leadership also define by Kotter that 'leadership is about coping with change'. That's mean the good leadership will change the person to be better than before. As I mention earlier, the leader will monitor what their employees doing and he will rectify their mistake. So it will improve the employee's performance.

There are some competency of the leader according to Hersey and Blanchard (1988). The first competency is diagnosing. It is about the skills that are required by the leader in order to understand the current and future situation in the organisation. The leader also has to understand their employees. It is because, the employees are the people who will practising what are the order by the leader. So the employees are the important source of the organisation. The leader need to know the current and future situation is because of they need to control the situation. So the problem that happens in the organisation will resolve in the right way. The diagnose competency also important when the leader have to make the fast decision. It will ensure the leader makes the right choice and it is because he was able to predict what will happen in the future. The second competency is adapting. It's about a behavioural skill that requires the leader to adapt with the others behaviours and others resources. This skill is important in the organisation to close the gap of the performance between the leaders and the others. So when the gap was closed, they will be more comfortable to cooperate and work together in order to achieve the organization goals and objectives.

The next point is resistance to change. It was about the 'tridimensional' that are involves affective, behavioural and cognitive components. The affective component was about the feeling of someone about change, the cognitive component was about the thinking of a person towards something and the behavioural component was about the action by someone when facing the change. There are some reasons of people resist to change. The first is dislike of change. It happens due to the habit of the person towards something. So they were refusing to make change on something. The second is discomfort with uncertainty. It is because they feel discomfort to the new thing that they need to adapt. The last is perceived negative effect on interest. This situation happens because they think that there will be negative effects when they make any change. So for avoid the negative effect, the will resist to the changing.

The position was taking over from Philip Clarke which starts to transform the Tesco to the better condition. His idea to change the traditional management to a new management system has been accepted by the upper level management and lower level management. However, there are many resistances to achieve the target since they used to implement the traditional system in their way of working life. The systematic management of Leahy's have been used by them for a decade. That's the reason, it is hard to change their way of thinking and working style.

In a nutshell, the leadership style is very important in the organization. It will make sure we can manage the organization well and have the clear about what to do and not to do. It also will help the organization to ensure the follow their plan to fulfil their objectives.

2.0 Summary

Tesco was founded in the UK in 1924 as a grocery shop by John Edward Cohen in the East End of London. The name Tesco are from the initials of Cohen's tea supplier, T.E Stockwell, combined with the first two names of Cohen. Cohen was a British businessman and entrepreneur. Tesco has been created in 1938 and the first store has been opened in 1931 in Becontree, East London. In 1940, Tesco has hundreds branch around London and 1948, has started the American style self-services. After that, Tesco has expanded their market to the Asia which includes Malaysia, China, Taiwan and others. It is also open widely in the European market by venturing into Turkey and Crenzh Republic. In 1997, Leary leads the Tesco after work with it around 17 years old as a marketing executive. He always tries to ensure that customer satisfaction as its primary focus and it derived to his success. Sir Terry Leary was born on 28th of February 1956 in Liverpool. He has graduated with a bachelor in management sciences. Leary has become a marketing executive in 1979 and become a CEO in 1997. Leary is the one who responsible for the transformational nature. From the leadership of Leary, Tesco is successful to achieve the third largest superstore in the world.

On 8th June 2010, TESCO has announced that their CEO, Sir Terry Leahy will be resigning from that company on March 2011. Sir Terry Leahy is the one who has transformed the organization into the world's biggest third retailer and he also the most respected businessmen. He is the person largely responsible for the transformational leadership that has greeted Tesco from 1997. All the responsibilities that he takes before this will be passed up to Philip Clarke, who becomes the CEO in March 2011. Philip Clarke is responsible for bringing back the confidences of the

...