Bradford Banducci

Background History

Discuss about the Leadership Of Bradford Banducci.

Bradford Banducci is the current director and chief executive officer of the Woolworths Group. He was appointed in to the CEO position on February in the year 2016. Before his appointment, Brad had been working with the group as the head of liquor department between the year 2012 and 2015. He later became the managing director in the year 2015 on March before being appointed in the current position. Woolworth Group is one of the major developed organizations in Australia dealing with fast food supplies within and outside the country. The organization has been great doing in the market apart from a few cases where it has reported losses ('Food Retail Industry Profile: Australia' 2008).

Before joining the group, Brad had worked with various corporates in different leading positions. From the year 2007 to 2011, he was working as a CEO of Cellar masters a wine retail production company. He also served as chief financial officer before 2007 at Tyro payments, as a vice president and director after sometime at Boston Consulting Group as one of the major member of their retail exercise for 15years. With all these work experiences and leadership skills and experiences, Woolworth took him as the CEO to help revive their supermarkets. Brad originates from South Africa where he is well known of his sales and marketing skills important in enhancing marketing activities.

Brad has his education undergraduate degree in Commerce that he attained from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a graduate degree from the same university and an MBA from Australian Graduate School of Management. His family originates from South Africa where he is believed to have learned from all his existing skills of hard work and production. He is also a member of Woolworth’s board of directors, former board member of Boston Consulting Group and board member of Gage Roads Brewing Company Limited from July the year 2012 to April the year 2016. All this industrial development skills by Brad have been significant in his career mostly as a leader.

Transformational theory. This is theoretical concept of leadership that is based on the relationship between the leader and the follower or the set target market. It explains a work relationship where the leader is the one giving orders, evaluates the orders given to decide where to punish or reward the follower (Wang, et al, 2011). If the set responsibilities are done as expected, there is little or no collision and the work done is perfect. Transformational theory in leadership is all about enhancing positive change important for organizational development. To both the internal and external environment of the organization, the applied changes should ensure they are in line with the companies set goals and objectives and following the rules to the later. The leaders inspire their followers to follow a certain route important for achieving the set vision (Avolio, et al, 2009).

Leadership Approach

Relevance of transformational theory in leadership is that, it enhances creation of positive opportunities for people to show new ideas as they take responsibility for their implementation. Transformational leaders are in most cases charismatic as they can convince others on changing their existing beliefs and values to adopt new once important for development. They don’t just follow the detail of a certain activity but follow the detailed vision of the set activity. Loyalty is key in transformation as the leaders dream to achieve their set goals and objectives. The leaders have a role to positively improve the lives of their followers as they may become disillusioned. Similarly, Transformational leadership theory is more applicable in situations identified to change very fast and employees have required skills relevance to their job description in the respective organization (Giltinane, 2013).

Bradford Banducci as the Chief Executive Officer of Woolworth Group, has applied transformational theory of leadership and transformational leadership style. Having acquired adequate experience in leadership from his former employer company’s, he is the best suited to change the wellbeing of the group. All from being a board member, he has the role of ensuring proper control in all the company’s activities. Ranging from the suppliers of the various products to the company, the receivers of the services who are also the main service providers and the wellbeing of the target market who are also the customers to Woolworth Group (Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2011). The company’s operations management activities under the control of Bradford Banducci is experiencing a positive change. In his first report on Woolworth group after joining the company on February 2016, he is convinced that the problem affecting the company is poor coordination and management. Though the company does not show a drastic change and the shareholders have fear of making losses on selling their shares, the market is convinced that the company is making the right steps towards restoring its development faith. Bradford Banducci measures of control are about improving the company’s wellbeing step by step as he follow all the set developmental strategies of Woolworth Group (Snowden and Boone, 2007).

Enhancement of positive customer’s culture. After reaching Woolworth, his first and major focus was on customer’s culture. He cautioned the aspect that the customer is the most important party for that business existence. As a result, as much as the company is in need of making profits, the customer’s attention should always be ensured. This is important to enhancing that the customer is always satisfied as it’s a way of enhancing customer’s loyalty to the company’s services.

Challenges faced by the leader

Bradford Banducci has also enhanced positive relationship with the company’s existing suppliers. This is important to help bridge the existing gap between the suppliers and the board of management. He does this by having various communication platforms with them and also implementing an engagement program. He makes efforts to go round the existing Woolworth stores with the major suppliers to help ensuring that they understand the quality of goods and services that the company is in need off. This is important to help initiate a positive change in the supply department as the expected quality is expected from the suppliers after the engagement approach with the CEO (Nahavandi, 2016).

Customers focus approach by Bradford Banducci called for increased skilled workforce to help deliver all the required services at the expected time and rate. This is important as the customer’s satisfaction is improved to help maintain the customer’s loyalty a key factor towards organizational business growth. Price improvement was also an initiated change that would ensure marketing mix and customer’s price satisfaction.

Bradford Banducci as Woolworths CEO has been faced by various operational challenges of the company. He has the challenge of ensuring the company gets back to its ground again as its operations and overall productions have been affected by various factors leading to poor marketing. To solve this, he has come up with various strategies of ensuring that the company restores its market confidence. Among them is strategy of improving customer’s culture by ensuring that every customer to the company is served diligently as required, improvement of products and services price value to fit the level quality of that product or service without utilizing the customers.  To be more effective, the CEO would have first analyzed the company’s set objectives and followed strategies together with other board members to help understand if all are okay as they should be. This is important to ensure that all the activities enhanced for the company’s development are in line with the set strategies to achieving the set objectives (Duvall-Dickson, 2016).

Another challenge faced by Bradford Banducci as a CEO is, increased level of competition between Woolworth and Wesfarmers and Kmart. With this available stores, customers have alternatives to acquire same products offered by Woolworth at a relatively cheaper price. To help solve this, the CEO is ensuring that the suppliers are aware of the products that the company needs, improved customers culture and prices are also some of the factors he has put in place to ensure that the organization keeps its customers. To solve this challenge more effectively, Bradford Banducci should have enhanced improved marketing mix measures. This would help reaching their customers at all corners and inform them of their current existing services and quality so that they get firsthand information. This is important to prevent bias information from reaching their customers (KNOX & KNOX, 2015).

• It’s clear to note and learn that leadership is a process that requires one with coherent and relevant skills in that particular field.
• Effective leadership is influenced by various factors like having responsible workforce among others.
• There are various challenges relating to effective leadership and can only be solved by understanding characteristics of the followers and their needs.

Bradford Banducci qualities to influencing positive organization culture

Having adequate experience from his former employers in a related field of business as a leader has enhanced his ability to control and direct the organization to the right direction. Allocating tasks to the workforce as he supervise whatever they do thus effective workforce coordination (Woolworths Ltd Earnings Presentation, 2017).

Educated. Bradford Banducci has a bachelor’s degree in Commerce and an MBA in strategic management. These are important skills to enhancing positive organizational influence to achieving the set objectives of the organization.

References

Avolio, B.J., Walumbwa, F.O. and Weber, T.J., 2009. Leadership: Current theories, research, and future      directions. Annual review of psychology, 60, pp.421-449.

Brauckmann, S. and Pashiardis, P., 2011. A validation study of the leadership styles of a holistic leadership theoretical framework. International Journal of Educational Management, 25(1), pp.11-32.

Duvall-Dickson, S 2016, 'Blending Tribes: Leadership Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions', SAM Advanced Management Journal (07497075), 81, 4, pp. 16-22, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 September 2017.

'Food Retail Industry Profile: Australia' 2008, p. 1, Complementary Index, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 September 2017.

'Full Year 2017 Woolworths Ltd Earnings Presentation - Final' n.d., Fair Disclosure Wire (Quarterly Earnings Reports), Regional Business News, EBSCOhost, viewed 30 September 2017.

Giltinane, C.L., 2013. Leadership styles and theories. Nursing Standard, 27(41), pp.35-39.

https://www.afr.com/business/retail/woolworths-ceo-brad-banduccis-first-100-days-the-report-card-20160602-gp9pg0#ixzz4uFILiV76. Reviewed on June 3^rd 2016
KNOX, M., & KNOX, M. (2015). Supermarket monsters: the price of Coles and Woolworths' dominance. Collingwood, Schwartz Publishing Pty, Limited.

Nahavandi, A., 2016. The Art and Science of Leadership -Global Edition. Pearson.

Snowden, D.J. and Boone, M.E., 2007. A leader's framework for decision making. Harvard business review, 85(11), p.68.

Wang, G., Oh, I.S., Courtright, S.H. and Colbert, A.E., 2011. Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36(2), pp.223-270.