Personal Skills to Achieve Strategic Ambitions

Introduction:

Personal development is the vital practice that needs to be adopted to ensure the achievement of strategic ambitions of an organization. The manager of an organization cannot perform well without developing his potential to extreme professional level. The personal development further enables the manager to analyze the progress direction of that organization. This ensures the progress of that organization. The achievement of those strategic ambitions solely depends upon the objectives of that organization. These objectives are further divided into goals. These goals can successively be achieved with the help of evaluation of strategic skills of the leader of that organization. The personal development enhances the vision to distinguish between the existing, required and the skills which are required in future to attain the strategic ambitions of that organization.

The Kentucky fried chicken corporation that is based in Louisville is known to be the worlds’ most renowned chain of chicken restaurant. Every day approximately eight million consumers are served around the world with ‘finger lickin good’ chicken. Around the world, the menu of KFC include the Original Recipe ®, chicken that is cooked with the same great taste as it had been by Colonel Harland Sanders half a century ago. Consumers all around the globe enjoy more than 300 products of Kentucky Fried Chicken and continue to spoil the consumer’s taste buds by providing salmon sandwich from Japan to Chunky Chicken Pot Pie in the US. To this day, the Colonel heritage and Spirit is reflected in the brand identity of KFC. Colonel Harland Sanders logo features is one of the world’s most recognized icon around the globe (Wared, 2010).

entification of Personal Skills to Achieve Strategic Ambitions

Personal skills are the key to achieve the desired strategic ambitions. To manage an organization and to raise it to high levels, vigorous and strong management is required along with extraordinary personal skills by the manager. Every organization has its strategic ambition. This strategic ambition defines the personal, professional short term and long term goals of the organization. This does not only means the maximization of profit but also includes earning a repute that makes the name recognized. A strategic ambition may also include gaining a competitive edge that reduces the threat from common competitors. A strategic manager may also attempt to set its aim to maximize sales and customers, at the same time creating brand loyalty for existing ones. Growth could also be another strategic ambition for any organization. We see KFC has attained many of the common strategic ambitions. Being a giant retailer in numerous countries around the world it has managed to accomplish growth and brand loyal consumers everywhere by providing services conveniently and every place.KFC is responsible for creating need for fast foods and fried chicken, thus capturing a vast consumer market of fast food lovers. They put all their resource to their restaurants as that’s where they serve their consumers. Therefore great emphasis is put on the managers of those outlets and their management. The success of KFC has been possible with the help of those leading managers which contributed to the achievement of the KFC objectives (KFC, 2011 b).

The right combination of personal and professional skills archives the strategic objective of the organization. Tolerance, patience hard work, accepting challenges, working with team, effective time and conflict management and critical understanding of the issues contributes the personal skills which when effectively merged together transforms into an ideal personality that serves as an example. These attributes acts as ladder towards success and such a manager guarantees success for the organization as his personality strives to achieve the strategic goals, ambitions and objectives of the company. Moreover personal skills that lead to success also includes a comfortable body language and facial expressions when communicating along with the finest voice indulged in honesty and integrity with a mind so positive will cross all barriers to become an ideal personality. Professionally speaking a manager needs to a lot more than to be a good manager. He should be able to portray emotional intelligence at all times. He should be capable of team management and know when to delegate and what to delegate. The supervision constitutes as ability for the manager and a strong ability to do so leads the directions of the activities carried out in the organization towards success.

It is important to know, however that the required skills and the existing skills may create a gap. Due to changing business and technological environment, one cannot always rely on the existing skills to achieve success. Keeping oneself up to date and grooming ones personality becomes essential to continue the achievement of goals. KFC owing to increasing trends of diet conscious populace introduced product such Arabian rice that was not fried that were not fried, thus maintain quality of taste (KFC, 2011b). Therefore the relationship between the skills that need to be developed over time builds a strong relationship with the present ones and stronger with the ones required for the future so that the preparation can be done before hand.

In short, a combination of strong leadership qualities with the personal skills makes an exceptional manager that promises the fulfillment of goals and objectives of a company.

Personal Leadership Development That Supports The Achievement Of Objectives

Developing the above identified skills will help me as a strategic manager in my professional life. Possessing such skills will not only polish me personally but will also pave way for the achievement of my personal goals as well as the organizations objectives. If I employ the right skills at the right time and will be able to cope up with the changing trends, the demand of my expertise will rise which will ultimately lead to success. As a strategic manager, I will also need to look insight to explore my leadership capabilities. This will help me to develop my skills further. As the intelligent managers of KFC keep a strict check on quality if their food and stick to ‘every chicken tested’ while providing the best quality to their consumers and achieving their objective of having a reputation of healthy and hygienic food. This way personal development ultimately achieves the strategic ambitions of the organizations (KFC, 2011 b).

To ensure the achievement of strategic ambitions, the opportunities that support strong leadership developments are needed to be discovered. In UK, people from different communities and religions enjoy fast foods. If not handled properly, opportunities to encourage leadership development may be lost. KFC outlets in UK are intending to change its slogan as it is effecting is production growth and suppressing opportunities to support leadership development. This is wise decision made by the managers of KFC (Wared, 2010).

As a strategic manager I believe that it is the responsibility of providing opportunities for its employees to indulge in personal development rests upon the managers. As it is wisely said “The system variable relates to whether there is a mentoring system in place to promote the development of exemplary leaderships, and what barriers exist for the individual within this system” (Moniz, 2008). These opportunities within the organization may include delegation and empowerment to subordinates and encouraging multitasking. Also letting them indulge in research, coming up with innovative ideas to support organizational goals will create minds that think critically and beyond. Such an approach to management directs the leadership aim to straight path and what needs to be achieved is achieved in a most successful manner. Leadership capabilities are interconnected with personal development. It should be ensured that the importance is being given to strategic plans, annual plan, and budget plans but more importance and attention should be given to personal development plan to direct leadership (Rozeboom, 2008). The personal development consists decision making power, strong psychic, and friendly attitude with crew and consumers. Moreover, coping with the unwanted circumstances to acquire leadership capabilities that include the accurate team guidance, devising strong strategies and tackling the environmental and cultural change achieve desired outcomes.

The most important part becomes the implementation of development plan. There is no specification to implement this plan except that to bear in mind and making the personal attributes that I wish to enhance a habit. For example being soft spoken does not have an implementation process except that I shall be careful at all times when engaged in communication with my employees and customers. Similarly to ensure effective communication is implemented it becomes necessary for me to ensure that all the elements involved in the communication process are reliable. These include the clarity of message, the medium used and the feedback ensured to complete an effective communication process. KFC waiters have developed a very comfortable and informal relationship with their regular customers and it eases their dining.

The strategic manager should discover opportunities to support leadership development and devise the personal development plan in accordance with leadership capabilities. The implementation of development plan should be initialized by providing the precise and accurate instructions to subordinates by manager to acquire the organizational objectives. I as a manager would emphasize personal leadership management skills that include good communication with subordinates, understanding consumer’s needs and provision of quality services etc. to achieve the strategic ambitions.

Evaluation Of The Effectiveness of The Leadership Development Plan

The major factor is the measure of effectiveness of leadership development plan. The evaluation of such plan determines the right path for an organization. If an organization is on right path, it would ensure the successful leadership development plan. Leadership development plan reveals those factors that are considered to be essential for team management. The effectiveness of leadership development plan can be sorted out from team’s performance. The evaluation of such effectiveness further guides about those factors that should be adopted in future to ensure the organization progress. The evaluation process gives the clear picture about the measures taken to make a development plan successful. The positive outcomes ensure the success rate. If I am giving clear instructions to crew, the quality services of staff will assure the achievement of strategic ambitions of organization.

An organization, when developed, determines its objectives. It is very simple to assess the achievements and objectives of an organization against original and this can be done by simply circulating a short objectives statement to staff and management about the organization performance. It should clearly ask about the organization objects. I may write couple of questions about the performance and the services of that organization. Such type of questions differentiates between the achieved and original objectives in sophisticated manner. Objectives are considered more precise as compared to purpose and consist of time dimension. They are related to purpose in such a manner that their achievement will lead to the achievement of the purpose or purposes (Agarwal, 1983). To calculate the achievements, a comparison is needed. The assessment of achievements of outcomes reaped from the personal development plans is considered as successful if the results are up to the mark as compared to original objectives of an organization. In KFC, UK, the original objectives are considered to attract the consumers of every culture along with the provision of up to the mark services (KFC, 2011a). I, as a manager, would surely highlight those factors that prove lucrative in enhancing the productivity of restaurant.

The impact of objective achievements can be evaluated and measured by the consumer satisfaction over strategic ambitions of an organization. If the rate of achievement of goals is less than the expected, the strategy applied needs modification to attain the desired strategic ambitions. In KFC UK, a wrong perception was developed amongst the Muslim consumers that KFC is not providing fast foods according to their culture. This was severely disturbing the achievement of objectives of restaurant. In order to eradicate this negative effect over strategic ambitions of KFC, many deals were introduced that contain diet, low fat, healthy, nutritious and pork meat free fast foods (KFC, 2010). It is for sure that if I accomplish the objective achievements, I would be on right path to successful strategic ambitions. The achieved objectives of an organization should exceed the original objectives of that organization to meet the strategic ambitions.

Review and constant update of development is essential too meet the growing needs of the business and its environment. Many at times the skills will be replaced by new technological advancements and there will raise need to learn new techniques. At that moment, I will keep a close check on the existing skills of my workforce and explore new ways to polish or retrain them. It is important to keep them updated so that no management issues are created resulting in production and quality hurdles are created. Process of continuous innovation and learning will promote a quality workforce. The learning phase gives the vivid picture of those key factors that are required to be flourished in a leadership development plan with the passage of time. Leadership development plan offers chance to managers of all levels to increase the professional growth along with team management (London, 2002). As a strategic manager I would surely understand the consumer behavior, review the cultural and environmental factors and update my plan accordingly. The leader of KFC in UK did the same when he saw the cultural differences and introduced Halal Deals and updated the strategic plan (KFC, 2010)

The effectiveness of leadership development plan can be understood from team’s perspective. I will need strong leadership qualities to ensure the understanding of his crew. The manager further needs to assess the successful outcomes by comparing with original objectives of organization. I shall have to consider the factors that help in achievement of objectives with their influence on strategic ambitions. If leadership development plan lack something, I would be reviewing and updating it according to environmental, cultural and economic changes.

Promotion of A Healthy And Safe Environment To Support A Culture Of Quality

“Organizations need to be aware that their responsibilities for health and safety extend beyond their employees to the extent that no activity should pose risks to visitors or persons outside the premises”. (Atkin and Brooks, 2009). To enjoy the healthy environment, the basic sources are safe environment, healthy nutrition and prudent behavior (Jekel, 2007). The manager is indeed responsible for the provision of healthy and safe environment to consumers of his organization. I, as a manger would emphasize the importance and implement the utmost tactic to promote the culture of quality. In UK, KFC was providing fast foods that were rich in fats. Fatty acids seriously affect the body functioning and prove harmful. So, fast foods having only low fats were introduced and many consumers are now enjoying fat free fast foods at lowest price. (KFC, 2011a) Promotion of healthy and safe environment is vital to maintain the culture of quality. It would fall upon me as a responsibility that to ensure health and safety not for the consumers only but at my workplace for my employees. A safe environment is where consumers and employees are attracted to. To succeed in the long-term, I clearly understand that it is important for organization to have a good reputation regarding corporate social responsibility. Being socially responsible does not only upgrades your brand image but also creates ample of brand loyal consumers. These loyal consumers and employees then in turn create success for organization ultimately making it reaches its strategic ambition.

In UK, KFC manager adopted the health and safety measures, to keep progress graph at peak levels. Consumers are being provided with the hygienic and healthy food that contains the calculated and essential amount of healthy nutrition along with the meager amount of fats at low price according to pre-specified plan by the manger (KFC, 2011b). As a strategic manager I will try to analyze situations from a consumer perspective to understand the demand trends. It will be very important for me to keep and maintain controls on the health and safety standards and eliminate hurdles coming to the way of the culture of health and safety. For this I will employ health and safety check control systems that will ensure continuous maintenance of set standards. It will be my first priority to achieve the quality assurance certificate to publicly announce the attempts of health and safety.

Organizations are known by their culture, values, goals and mission. The effective management preserves a culture of quality and store value for the organization. To prove myself a proficient strategic manager, it falls upon my shoulders to translate the mission statements, goals and aims of the organization to reality. If I am able to promote a healthy working environment, my personal skills have played a role. The personal skills identified above fully contribute to building healthy culture and environment in the organization. With this, merging of the professional skills will make me able to achieve the ambition of the business. The professional skills already identified above need to be carefully adopted to enhance performance. I would not only try to develop skills in me but as a manager and responsible for my subordinates I will try to let them perform to their maximum. I will provide them with opportunities that will enable them to explore the hidden talents within them. Training courses, on the job and off the job will be provided to groom my workforce to their full capacity. This way I will be able to take the full advantage of my labor and strive them to achieve the goals and objectives of not only the company but also their own personal objectives shall also be achieved.