Operations Management

Ease of use and having intuitive appeal is any product and even some technology-based services, such as ticket booking site or any mobile phone. For example, a personal computer only became popular after Apple and Microsoft came out with simple easy to use interface. Even if you buy a new car, the manufacturers have made keys so simple, that you do not need the key to start the car, it is a button now in new cars. Ikea is the largest furniture store because they sell easy to assemble furniture. They operate in 41 countries, they sell easy to assemble furniture (Loeb, 2012). I work in IT, and when our applications are designed, we try to build an intuitive user interface, we try to minimize mouse clicks to navigate around an application, a lot of thought and effort goes into making applications simple and user-friendly. Let me give another example, where the technology is groundbreaking but it did not take off because it is not simple – Bitcoin. It mostly became popular because it

In the year 2013, John Chen became CEO of Blackberry. Who was CEO of Sybase before Blackberry? After becoming CEO while he tried launching a new phone, all of those handsets failed. Blackberry could never evolve from being a business phone to being a smartphone for everyone like Apple and Samsung did. While Blackberry had some brand awareness, they could not cash in. Due to product quality, they lost an opportunity. So, John Chen pulled the trigger and Blackberry stopped producing hardware (Crow, 2016). We can consider this step as first change. A second change is Blackberry turning into a software services company. Blackberry was popular among business and government users because of it’s secured software that allowed the user to send emails securely. John Chen had to stop producing Blackberry’s signature hardware devices but he turned the company into a cybersecurity company too (Morgan, 2016). So a phone maker stopped making phones, because it could not essentially compete in the

The burning platform was addressed to Nokia employees by then CEO Stephen Elop.  As James has said that operation management helps manage the transformation of an organizations input into finished goods and services. Usually, these happen following certain processes. We can definitely recognize one transforming resource – that is the employees, who used to work for Nokia and who received this memo from their CEO. When the CEO was referring Nokia to be a burning platform, he was basically telling the employees that it is time to change and take a leap, basically, the message was transformed or die. Here in this context, the message meant if Nokia does not change it is dying a painful death. That means the employees will lose their jobs. And another element we could recognize was the final product. The CEO was giving a message and how the competition has does so well by creating an ecosystem. So the transformed product, which is the cellphone hardware in this context, was also bein

Leadership has to do with creating a vision for the future, rallying people and resources towards the attainment of said vision (Quinn, 2010; p.52). Management involves the activities of planning, setting strategy, organizing resources and coordinating events and said resources towards the achievement of set goals and objectives (Quinn, 2010; p.12). Obviously, goal and objective execution is the means for realizing a vision and this summarily is the set-up for the differences between leadership and management. The discussion below will explore the differences between these two concepts in relation to the questions asked. DISCUSSION Consider the metaphor used in the article differentiating managerial and leadership roles (average managers play checkers, great managers play chess and great leaders rally people toward a better future). Does it adequately describe and differentiate these roles? Why or why not? From the essay Buckingham (2005), I deduce that a good manager manages

            Leadership is an important aspect of managing. The ability to lead effectively is one of the keys to being an effective manager. In an organization, the role performed by a leader goes a long way in showing the position occupied by him/her. It is believed that, when the leader is good, the group will also be good. This is true with quite a number of organizations. Good plans, good programs, adequate resources, etc. do not make an organization to be good unless there is a leader who could harness all these to achieve the goals of the organization. According to Hellen and John cited by Akintayo (2003); the essence of leadership is followership. In other words, it is the willingness of people to follow that makes a person a leader. Ajayi (1983) opined that a leader is an individual or a member of an organization, who attempts to wisely utilize both the human and material resources at his/her disposal in the most prudent way to achieve the group or organizational goals.  

Buckingham (2005) argued that mediocre managers play checkers, great managers play chess, and great leaders lead people toward a better future. Average managers consider their subordinates as similar pieces, black or white, and they will try to mold them toward ideal employees, as the managers think. On the other hand, great managers recognize different strength and weakness of their employees, similar to different pieces in the chess game which have different movement capability. In addition to that, great leaders are the one who is selfless, empowering personnel and team, developing leaders, make people as a priority, develop visions, and able to bring their subordinates to better future (BlueSteps, 2010, June 3). Leader and manager need different skills set. Buckingham’s metaphor above adequately describes and differentiate the above managers and leadership role. Treating employees as a similar individual is an inheritance from the industrial revolution period, when the labor’s t

In the publication, the author makes it sound effortless to implement an individualized approach to each (and every) employees’ strengths as well as capitalize on those strengths. I personally do not think that the majority of managers have the time and resources to do that, and perhaps what differentiates great managers from average ones is the time and access they have to the resources they need to get that deep. The metaphor is all about the degree of complexity and importance played at different roles within the organizations. With the statement that average managers play checkers, the author suggests that all employees are somehow similar; therefore they should move (or be moved) similarly, according to the needs of the company, regardless of their individualities (Buckingham, 2005). Great managers, on the other hand, consider each employee unique; therefore, they look for the individual strengths and weaknesses of each of them. Considering that not all employees can be moved