Chinas Paper Queen free essay sample

Cheung Yan: China’s Paper Queen Case Discussion Questions: 1. What is strategic leadership? Strategic leadership is the use of strategy in the management of employees or workers. The main goal is to find methods to motivate workers to take interest and initiative in improving and increasing their productive contributions to the company in question. Strategic leadership is a model of management that trains workers to best prepare the company for what’s ahead. Awareness plays a major role in strategic leadership, and so strategic leaders are constantly looking towards the future and analyzing all possibilities in terms of preparation. Other features that these leaders must have are adaptability and growth-orientation; after all these are the individuals who must take responsibility for the actions of the workers with the final goals being to strive towards achieving the best possible results for the respective company. Productivity may be the main goal of strategic leadership, but it doesn’t mean that workers should be taken advantage of to achieve maximum productivity. Workers should be motivated instead, and an environment in which workers can anticipate the company’s needs in relation to their own jobs should be created. Quality is valued over quantity. Strategic management realizes that workers must be respected and motivated in ways that do not compromise their dignity, but at the same time try to increase productivity as much as possible. 2. What would constitute key strategic leadership actions? What are the key elements of a â€Å"Balanced Scorecard†? Strategic leadership involves managing through other, managing all the functions of a company, and also continuously coping and adapting to the demands and changes of an ever transforming market. Strategic leaders must know how to effectively influence human behavior, even in uncertain environments. Managing human capital is one of the most important factors of strategic leadership action; leaders must be able to establish the context in which not only workers but also all others associated with the company (customers, suppliers, etc) can perform at peak efficiency. Without competent leadership, a company can suffer the loss of morale, confidence and of course, productivity. A competent leader ensures effective and smooth running of a company’s operations and sustains the high performance of stakeholders over time; a competent leader must be able to achieve strategic ompetitiveness and earn above-average returns by responding appropriately and swiftly in uncertain conditions to the changes in a consistently transforming global market. A Balanced Scorecard gives managers and executives a more â€Å"balanced† view of organizational performance. Today, the balanced scorecard has evolved into a full strategic planning and management system from the earlier primitive pe rformance measurement system. This novel system is able to change a company’s strategic plan from a passive document into direct orders for the company on a daily basis. It is not only able to provide a measurement for performance and productivity, but also helps to identify what affairs should be executed and measured. A good balanced scorecard is clear-cut and doesn’t have ambiguous underpinnings like its forerunners; it enables companies to clarify their vision and strategy and transform them into action. It also offers opinion and feedback around both internal and external activities so as to consistently improve strategic performance and results. When a balanced scorecard is fully adopted by a company, it becomes the main controlling body of the company instead of just an advisory branch. . How has Cheung Yan seen such success as a strategic leader? What are the qualities she possesses? Cheung Yan has been described as being â€Å"driven and tough,† and having the ability to â€Å"get the best performance out of those who work for her†. When she left for the US in 1990, she could barely speak any English but her vision and d etermination overcame this challenge. She went to the US because she had begun to realize that the Hong Kong market was too limited for her plans. This demonstrated her risk taking skills within an entrepreneurial mindset; Nine Dragons after all is evidence of Cheung Yan’s innovative determinism. Cheung Yan dared to challenge existing market trends and under her leadership, Nine Dragons has become a huge, efficient and environmentally friendly paper company; exactly the opposite of most other paper industries in China. It has also only continued to specialize in paper products and the paper market unlike many other family-based Asian businesses. One important aspect of her leadership strategy is that she has been dedicated to her company taking the necessary steps to ensure staff satisfaction and loyalty. For example some measures include the provision of comfortable staff residences, prospects of ransfers and promotions in order to improve general staff development, a system of opinion feedback to improve communication between staff and managers in the company, and so on. Another aspect is that Cheung Yan has never had any clashes with the Chinese government. This is attributed to the fact that Nine Dragons was promoted and supported by the government because it was one of t he premier paper industries to develop in the country. Furthermore, Cheung Yan publicly supported government policy in 2007 which was targeted against monopolistic practices within the paper industry.