Leadership
I work in an industry where change is inevitable. The division of the company in which I work deals mostly with the automotive industry which is currently in a state of change itself. Much of our sales have historically relied on car and truck sales in the United States, both of which have declined significantly over the past few years. As a result, I think our company has changed from managing to leading when it realized that change was to be expected and we would only continue to exist and succeed if we were able to recognize this change and model our business practices around it.
Kotter states in his article that “most U.S corporations today are overmanaged and underled” (p. 85). I would agree that this was true for my company in the past but has recently changed. When hired by the company a little more than a year ago I was given the position of “Product Line Manager” for a specific product line within our Industrial Solutions division. Approximately three months after I took the position my boss, who was the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for my division and one other, took a new position working solely for the other division. At that point it was expected that another VP or director would be chosen, however, that was not the case. Instead, the President of my division met with each Product Manager specifically and discussed his vision of our group going forward. Additionally, we were given the opportunity to express the roles that we wanted to take in his approach. The strategy shifted from managing products to marketing products; therefore our positions changed from Product Line Managers to Marketing Managers. As Marketing Manager for a product line I am given sole responsibility for my product line and now report directly to the President of the division. He did not see the need to fill the VP or Director role but instead gave us all the leadership and motivation to manage our...