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Introduction
Coca-Cola is the most prominent foods and Beverages Company in terms of growth and global market in this industry. The company operates in over 200 countries in the world. Pepsi foods and beverages Company trails behind Coca-Cola in the global market trend currently. The Coca-Cola Company in Pakistan operates as Coca-Cola Pakistan Beverages Limited. Locally, the company has its products in each district, city, or village (Abdullah et al., 6). The companys market analysis enables it to observe external and internal business environments, which helps evaluate the outside and inner aspects of its transactions. The evaluation enables the leadership to identify its weaknesses, strengths, threats, and opportunities hence work towards mitigating issues and utilizing options available. The approach has helped the company retain its number one spot in the worlds beverage industry. The strategy ensures that the companys internal environment has effective communication networks, improved organizational skills, increased investment in innovations and technology, and exceptional marketing strategy to remain competitive (Johnson et al., 2014, 1). The company in Pakistan supplies its products globally; hence its leadership ought to utilize practical skills and traits to ensure effective implementation of the strategic plans through issues such as resistance to changes during and after the implementation process. The companys plans include a global marketing strategic plan, modification, standardization, strategic environment, and positioning. It recommends the increase of the sales team to elaborate on the objectives. The company should evaluate feedback, consumer satisfaction reports, turnaround periods, accuracy rates to improve its goals. The assessment focuses on analyzing leadership and change complexities that must remain under consideration in implementing the proposed strategic plans.
Leadership Issues
The strategic plans would need several leadership styles and approaches to deal with the implementation processes change complexities. In this view, the styles would have varying complexities and issues that require identification and address to ensure the processs success. One of the primary factors that the Coca-Cola Company should consider is using leaders who can use effective leadership styles, skills, and traits to mitigate change issues arising during the implementation process (Lynch, 2015, 1). The utilization of various styles enables the strategic leadership of the company to determine and resolve issues through different ways that promote success in implementing new changes in an organization. A leader must have the ability to formulate a clear and consistent vision throughout the organization. In this perspective, a clear vision allows the followers to see the big picture and its ingredients. Therefore, the vision encourages people towards set objectives that the company aims to achieve by leaders determining the possibilities of today and those in the future. Suppose the leader fails to create a clear vision. It risks the employees becoming unmotivated and uninspired, increasing the number of barriers towards implementing the strategies in international marketing of Coca-Cola products from Pakistan.
Leadership Traits
According to the Great Man Theory of Leadership, to ensure effective implementation of the plans, the leadership must identify successful leaders significant traits (Story, 2011, 1). The approach would allow the company to isolate essential leadership traits from its staff, hence recruit, select, and install them into leadership positions to help implement the strategic plans proposed successfully. The theory asserts that leaders might possess such traits, but it does not mean that one could not be a leader if one lacks them; hence, the company must carefully utilize the trait leadership approach in recruiting leaders to help implement the plans. In this view, those born with required leadership traits quickly become successful leaders, unlike those who learn such traits through training.
The leadership traits required by the leader include but are not limited to adaptability to various situations and alert to any social environment. The leader must have the ability to adapt to any situation that arises during the strategic plan implementation by remaining attentive to all changes taking place in the social environment, hence assisting in identifying pitfalls that might hinder the plans successful implementation (Western, 2008, 1). Additionally, the leaders must have ambitions and remain achievement-oriented, assertive, and corporative during the work process and decisive during decision-making processes to ensure the companys proposed plans in the new market. Other scholars have established that the leader must have dependable traits, influence others, persistent, energetic, self-control, tolerant of stress, and ready to assume responsibility to promote successful implementation of the strategic plans.
Leadership Skills
The trait approach to leadership also asserts that the leader ought to have various skills to enhance effective and successful strategic plan implementation for the Coca-Cola Company in Pakistan. The skills enable the leader to effectively manage and guide teams towards set strategic objectives. In this view, the leader must be intelligent, creative, conceptually skilled, tactful and diplomatic, fluent in communication, knowledgeable regarding a task assigned to groups, be socially competent, have administrative capabilities, and be persuasive (Stacey, 2011, 1). Intelligence enables the leaders to evaluate others opinions and hypothetically put them into that plans promoting efficiency and employee morale. Creative leadership fosters success and drives productivity because it enables leaders to view things in new ways, hence resolving issues by establishing what others might not during the proposed strategic plans implementation process.
A leadership that utilizes diplomacy and tact promotes improved relationships with other group members, hence encouraging mutual respect that results in less challenging communication issues and successful outcomes (Mintzberg et al., 2008). Fluent communication skills give the leader the capabilities to command respect from the clients and followers, hence success in implementing plans. Moreover, being socially skilled as a leader promotes efficiency and effectiveness when engaging people in implementing the strategic strategies proposed by Pakistans Coca-Cola Company. On the other hand, the leaders administrative abilities help determine systems that usually protect and sustain significant operational functions to achieve the companys set goals, vision, or objectives (Kharkheli & Morchiladze, 2020, 1). The administrative skills enable the leader to clarify the plans critical purpose, inspire others to pursue the companys vision, and ensure the attainment of the intended outcomes and goals. Inspiring others increases job performance and improves morale, hence achieving the set goals in the global market as projected. Persuasive leaders can influence followers inducing particular sets of minds or behaviors on employees, thus convincing them to achieve their vision and objectives regarding the strategic plans. Therefore, by implication, the trait theory of leadership confirms that influential leaders are naturally born to lead. If one does not possess such traits, he or she will not lead effectively like natural-born leaders.
Leadership Styles
The Cocoa-Cola Company must ensure the utilization and application of two leadership styles that include transformational and servant leadership styles during the implementation process. The application of transformational leadership theory asserts that ideological, charismatic, and transformational leadership emphasizes that the leader must move followers to perform exceptional duties hence disregards distributed and shared or reciprocal influence from team members (Power, 2020, 1). Moreover, the style provides that followers also can influence leaders the same way. Therefore, transformational leadership would help change the peoples values and move them towards its new set vision. Transformational style helps transform team members into people who go beyond self-actualization and personal interests for the teams sake. Therefore, the company leaders should utilize this style to nurture their followers moral development to internalize the principles and values. As a consequence, the team transforms into a hard-working and goals-oriented team hence makes achieving set strategic goals easier for the company.
Servant leadership sees leadership as a service and influence; hence objects to the ancient beliefs that servants follow while leaders influence (Ayman & Lauritsen, 2018, 140). The theory asserts that to ensure effective implementation of the strategic plans proposed by Pakistans Coca-Cola Company leaders must have a social responsibility to ensure elimination of social injustice and inequalities through less institutional control and power, change authority to followers, respect, personal growth, and trust (Sousa & Rocha, 2019, 361). According to Greenleafs ideologies, a servant leader listens, has empathy, persuasive, aware, and helps others heal. Therefore, the company leadership must listen to followers, acknowledge the followers opinions, and validate their views. Simultaneously, empathy involves viewing issues from the followers perspective, hence motivating them to achieve the set vision.
Team Leadership
The team leadership theory does not discriminate between the team members and the leader. The model argues that the leaders must consider every individuals contributions to implementing the market plans (Sousa & Rocha, 2019, 364). The approach allows the leaders to take corrective action whenever necessary. Therefore, the leadership should maintain team discipline, motivate, encourage, and build team spirit during the implementation process to ensure adequate global marketing, modification, standardization, strategic positioning, and environment. Team leadership helps define tasks, plan, and allocate resources and work to provide effective strategic plan implementation.
Emotional Intelligence
The Coco-Cola Company leadership must ensure leaders involved in the implementation of the strategies can perceive and express emotions, utilize the emotions to reason and understand, utilize emotions to enhance thinking, and effectively manage self emotions and the relationship with other people (Gandolfi & Stone, 2018, 264). Emotional intelligence entails skills that promote effective performance in a group (Gandolfi & Stone, 2018, 265). Emotional intelligence elements include self-awareness that involves the capability to talk of ones self emotions and its influence on an individuals work and its impact on others. Self-regulation as an attribute of emotional intelligence asserts that emotions drive human beings, but they can manage the emotions channeling them towards productive reasons. Lastly, it involves motivation, empathy, and social skills to manage the relationship that promotes the implementation plans success. Therefore, emotional intelligence would enable the company leadership to strengthen relationships, productivity, and morale towards achieving the set strategic plans.
Change Issues
Due to the international economys complexity, the Coca-Cola Companys strategic leadership should learn how to influence human behavior effectively in uncertain environments towards change. Therefore, strategic leaders influence the followers feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through words, their capability to envision the future, or particular examples (Nightingale, 2017, 14). Hence, effective implementation of strategic plans relies on the strategic leaders effectiveness in leading the team towards perceived changes. Some of the change complexities involved while implementing the proposed strategic plans include but are not limited to power and politics, stakeholder analysis, leader relations, and change management issues.
Stakeholders Analysis
The company leaders must ensure effective stakeholder analysis to identify each stakeholders interests who might be affected or might affect the proposed strategies. Consequently, identify those who need encouragement to participate in various implementation stages and establish the means to decrease possible negative effects and manage stakeholders with negative views about the strategies (Nightingale, 2017, 16). According to Khan et al., 2017, the analysis would help the company deliver its consumers high-quality products. Additionally, it removes and uncovers numerous hindrances in comprehending the proposed strategic plans progress (Khan et al., 2017, 20). Such strategic analysis on stakeholders ensures they become an effective effort to bring more ideologies from various stakeholders, hence promoting successful strategic plan implementation.
Stakeholder analysis would enable the company leadership to detect and address conflicts or challenges early on in the implementation team, if any. The process allows the leader to identify early on the stakeholders required for the proposed plans to succeed (Gregori
et al., 2017, 268). Consequently, it will enable the leaders to create channels of winning the stakeholders approval and support; hence the processs a possible success. The analysis helps understand that they could hinder the companys progress because they always worry about changes, yet changes are and continue to occur at a very high speed; hence such worries prevent progress during the implementation of the proposed strategic plans. Advances in technology and communication have affected relationships between companies, individuals, and countries radically. Therefore, to promote standardization, modification, global marketing, and strategic positioning, the analysis would help Coco-Cola Pakistan Limited Company leadership detect hindrances that might originate from stakeholders, create solutions hence promote the success of set strategic plans.
Power and Politics
The company is a social system that also contains components such as politics and power that usually influence peoples behavior. Leadership should balance power and politics to acquire favorable outcomes during strategic plan implementation (Nightingale, 2017, 15). Leaders must establish the power source and effectively steer the company towards proposed strategic objectives. Strategic leaders other challenge during implementation of complex and long-term significant decisions requires that they acquire sophistication on leadership issues, power, and influence. The changes that shape the nature of work in new companies need strategic leaders to learn the political will and personal skills to become innovative, flexible, and adaptive. Therefore, if the Company leadership lacks skill and political awareness, the company faces the unavoidable outlook of becoming immersed in parochial politics, bureaucratic infighting, and unconstructive power struggles that would hinder the innovation, initiative, performance, and morale of the team towards the implementation of the strategies.
Resistance to Change
During the implementation of the proposed strategies, regardless of the strategic leadership applied, Coca-Cola Pakistan Limiteds most serious issue is resistance to change. Therefore, the leadership should establish the cause of the opposition to prevent slowing of change programs or derail them, entirely wasting the company resources, hence failing to implement the strategies (Gregori
et al., 2017, 267). The company should mitigate such issues by applying Theory E for hard change and Theory O for soft change approaches. Both approaches influence all company levels that include structures, processes, reward systems, culture, leadership, and training to enhance change.
Theory E involves changes associated with economic value like financial incentives, company systems, and structures. Theory O involves the changes in the development of the companys abilities, emphasizing culture, participation, and learning in change experimentations and programs (Gregori
et al., 2017, 269). Therefore, Coca-Cola Pakistan Limiteds strategic leadership should manage the changes by combining the two approaches for enormous productivity and profitability. The combination could maximize the stakeholders value and formulate company capabilities, hence embracing the contradiction between the companys capabilities and economic value.
Theory E provides that leaders should manage changes from the top-down procedure while Theory O promotes participation from down-up; hence the combination would manage change by creating direction from the top and ensure sustainable engagement of the individuals below (Gregori
et al., 2017, 280). Other studies indicate that Theory E focuses on systems and structures. In contrast, O focuses on creating a corporate culture based on the workforces attitudes and behaviors, enabling the leadership to simultaneously concentrate on the hard change of systems and structures and the soft change in corporate culture. Such occurrences would help the company encounter resistance to change in the implementation process.
Change Management Issues
Formulating change is not an easy process because of various issues. Such issues include but are not limited to lack of support from the executive and inadequate resource allocation for change (Sousa & Rocha, 2019, 361). In this perspective, if the executive fails to support the implementation of the strategies proposed, it would inhibit and entirely delay the progress. The team involved with the implementation interprets lack of support from the executives as unimportant, hence demoralizing the group resulting in the failed implementation of the strategies. Secondly, if the company fails to allocate the change process enough resources, the implementation would fail; thus, the company should ensure resource allocation that could promote effective and successful implementation of the set strategic plans.
Conclusion
Coca-Cola Pakistan Limiteds strategies that include standardization, international market, modification, and strategic positioning present numerous change and leadership issues that require consideration concerning implementing the stated strategic objectives. The leadership issues that Coca-Cola Ltd could encounter during the implementation process include creating a clear vision and ensuring effective communication of the teams planned changes. Lack of a clear vision formulates unmotivated teams, hence inadequate performance resulting in delayed or failure to implement the strategies.
The companys leadership must utilize individuals with abilities to use leadership skills, traits, and styles to ensure the strategic goals set. Leadership traits required include persuasiveness, intelligence, and cleverness. Skills include administrative skills and technical skills. Leadership styles include transformational Leadership and servant Leadership. Team leadership and emotional intelligence models help the leaders obtain set objectives by pushing them together towards the goals. For a successful implementation of the strategies, the Coca-Cola Company in Pakistan must establish sources of resistance to change, perform a stakeholder analysis, and comprehend the relationship between power and politics. Theories E and O would help the company effectively implement set strategies by mitigating the issues of the changes arising from both soft and hard changes during implementation. Complex changes focus on the systems and structures of the company, while smooth changes involve corporate culture. Therefore, the combination helps eliminate the contradiction of the changes of the approaches to effective implementation of strategic leadership to ensure implementation of the strategies.
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