Leadership In Business: A Case Study Of Mickey’s

Discuss about the Literature Review of Servant Leadership Theory.

Leadership is the quality of the management to influence, motivate and work with the employees of an organization towards accomplishing targeted goals. It is the quality to make the employees enthusiastic and confident about their work and in the workplace. Leadership in business is a process that helps directing and guiding the performance of the others towards the objective and aim of the organization. It is an integral element of business organization. In the professional world, it is essential for a company to have leaders in management who have the potential to lead the organization as a unit (Liden et al., 2014). This capability requires the leader to be able to adapt in new circumstances and change the company strategy according to the situational demand. Innovative and novel tactics of a leader to control situations is another valuable quality that makes a management successful in their work place (Trivellas & Reklitis, 2014). The most crucial quality that the leadership requires is building a strong and healthy bond with and among their subordinates (House et al., 2013). As the role of the leader is to influence the motivation of the employees and to build an effective work environment, it is vital for them to maintain a professional yet personal level of relationship with others in the company. It is also necessary for the management to make collaboration with the external stakeholders in order to maintain a positive reputation in the market (Domingues et al., 2017). Among all the types of leaderships, transformational leadership and servant leadership types are proved to be the most effective style of leaderships in modern organizational structures (Karaaslan, 2015).

Mickey’s is a well known Canada based food chain that is recently developing in the world market. Mickey’s, the 60 years old café, consistently has been providing its Canadian customers the flavors of Canada. The invocation of sentimentality has made it the most loved café chain in Canada. The company had been trying to become a multinational franchise for some years without being able to make any significant difference. However, recent change in the leadership type brought new strategies that enabled the management of the company to expand in international market with a prominent effect. This report is a case study of the existing leadership competences along with new attributes of it that enabled the company to become a multinational franchise. Here, three significant traits of the leaderships – relationship and collaboration, innovation, and adaptability and change - of the company have been discussed. Finding out how these leadership competences are playing a consequential role in making the company as it is today, is the topic of this discussion.

Transformational Leadership

Growth of an organization depends on the effectiveness of its leaderships. Organizational leadership must work in a way that makes the company attain its goals. Transformational leadership style is a strategy that leaderships follow to influence and motivate their subordinates to increase production and to create a better work environment (McCleskey, 2014). Transformational leadership requires certain characteristic attributes such as idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration (Choudhary, Akhtar & Zaheer, 2013). In transformational leadership, the leader can hold himself as role model to inspire the employees. Before advising, the leader has to practice it on him to create morale, and through that morale, they motivate others to behave accordingly. They interact with the employees through motivational speech (Jensen, Moynihan & Salomonsen, 2018) so that the employees take the challenges as an opportunity. They foster their employees through intellectual stimulation. This type of leadership proved to be effective in the situations when a company is planning to make a considerable change in their organization (Sethuraman & Suresh, 2014). Every organization has its own target that the organization aims to achieve. In fulfilling the aspirations of an organization, transformational leadership had proved to play an effective part. Transformational leadership has the ability to motivate the employees to broaden their vision, to have a greater ambition. Inspiration from the leader proved to work as an efficient tool to achieve success. Although the researches on transformational leadership style are relatively new, leaders for years had been demonstrating the characteristics of the style in several organizational fields (Rosenbach, 2018). It is proved that this style of leadership has the prospective to amplify the performance of the workers beyond their expectation (Para-González et al., 2018) and thus is capable of bringing substantial changes in both individual and organizational levels. This kind of leadership maintains the unity of a workforce by indulging the workers in effective team work (Braun et al., 2013). In modern world, transformational leadership is considered to an effective leadership practice for the organizational leaders (Birk, 2016).  In this ultra fast world, where change makes people insecure, transformational leadership style can prove to be an effective strategy to boost confidence and make that change.

Servant leadership style is one of the most effective styles of leadership in modern work cultures. It is a style of leadership where the leaders give importance to the needs of the workers before anything else (Jiang, Chuang & Chiao, 2015). They make an effective communication with the workers to know more about the complications the workers are facing and put emphasis on their satisfaction in the workplace (Graham, Ziegert & Capitano, 2015). Servant leadership style is capable of bringing work that is more productive from the employees as they believe that sharing power with the employees makes the employees more responsible for their work. This type of leaders puts the objective of the company before the employees and asks for their input in the matter. This way they get more perspectives for their target and diverse viewpoints give way to creativity and innovations (Gregory, 2016). Since the success of an organization depends substantially on its workers, servant leadership consider the workers as the key element in an organization. Putting focus on the benefits of the workers (Parris & Peachey, 2013) and giving them power to take important decisions make the workers obligated to their tasks, and they put their trust on the leader (Schmitt, Den Hartog & Belschak, 2016). When a management decides to bring a major change in their company, they must seek for their subordinates’ perspective on how to bring that change effectively to make them relate more to the company goal. When they will be able to relate to the goals directly and see that their ideas and opinions are given significance, they will be more committed to their tasks. Also, when a new strategy or idea is introduced in a company, the leaders must seek feedback from employees to understand how effective their new strategy is being and if the employees are having any difficulties with it. Internal reviews for new implementations give an organization a chance to rectify errors and modify accordingly. Servant leadership style relates the well-being of the employees with the company objective, as it understands that better relation among the employers and the employees will create a better workforce, which will result into company success (Donate & de Pablo, 2015). In all these ways servant leadership style is an effective strategy to improve the service of a company through innovations (Khalili, 2016).

Servant Leadership

As the name suggests, transformational servant leadership is an amalgamation of two different types of leaderships, transformational leadership and servant leadership (Madavana, 2018). Combination of transformational and servant leadership has the potential to increase company profit through influentially motivating and effectively communicating with the workers to enhance their performance (DeConinck & DeConinck, 2017). The transformational servant leadership style is considered to be the most effective leadership style in an organization where relation with the stakeholders is extremely crucial (Wong et al., 2018). If viewed differently, transformational and servant leadership have both similarities and dissimilarities, which complement each other’s characteristics (Van Dierendonck et al., 2014). With transformational leadership approach, a leader intellectually stimulates the workers to improve their personal skill for their own betterment along with the betterment of the organization (Newman et al., 2017), and the leaders who follow servant leadership style feel concerned about the well-being of their workers. Both type of leadership styles put great emphasis on communication between the leaders and the followers. Transformational leaders communicate to motivate and inspire the followers, and servant leaders communicate to share power and understand followers’ satisfaction (Keith, 2015). Transformational leadership aims to attain organizational goals through motivating employees and improving their skill, whereas servant leadership aims satisfying the stakeholders such as employees, customers, investors. Many leaders combine both kinds of leadership strategies to create a workforce whom they can motivate and support to achieve higher goals. Transformational and servant leadership, both have the common goal of elevating the workforce and encourage creativity and innovation (Yoshida et al., 2014). Transformational leaders try to do that by stimulating confidence and inspiring while servant leaders shares power to increase commitment and satisfaction level (Berry, 2014). 

Mickey’s has been serving beverages and food to its customers for more than six decades now. It has succeeded in becoming the consistent choice of the people in Canada as a café. The reason behind this is that the company has always maintained a good customer relation in form of customer service and quality of the foods. It has kept notice on customer satisfaction through the provided service (Singh and Pattanayak, 2014). The company has developed an employment structure that is convenient for the employees and agrees with the government laws of employment. What makes the customers coming back in Mickey’s is the unchanging taste of coffee and the innovative menu for the foods in every week. The previous CEO of the company, Jack Brown had always put pressure on new menu cards, availability and resiliency. Yet, his strategy in expansion was not effective enough to create an international mark. Therefore, a change in the management was in order, which happened in 2014 as Lucas Smith joined Mickey’s as the new CEO after the retirement of Brown. His take on change and adaptability changed the position of Mickey’s in global market.

Transformational Servant Leadership

When Jack Brown became the CEO in 2000, Mickey’s had only 1800 outlets in all over Canada. The company then also was facing challenges regarding labor and employment issues. There was an irregularity in EI premiums (Canada, n.d.), for which they had to pay a large amount of money as fine. It was also attracting huge media coverage. Negative publicity was affecting the company’s shares in the market on the other hand investors were putting pressure simultaneously for extending the franchise.

The first priority of Brown was to clear all legal issues with the government and the employees to prevent the falling of shares and revenues. Therefore, he planned to improve the company terms and policies by making them more employee oriented. Newspapers and news channels were creating a fuss about the complications; for them Brown decided to hold a press conference after the issues were dissolved. In addition, for the pressures coming from the investors for extension, the management was aiming for both internal and external expansion. In order to accomplish the company goals, Brown decided to employ transformational servant leadership style.

As the CEO of Mickey’s, the first job Brown took, was to dissolve the legal issues regarding EI premiums and improve the terms and policies of the company to benefit the employees. He conducted a meeting with company’s law team to understand the root of the problem and found out there was irregularity in the employee database due to lack of supervision. In order to overcome this problem he gave a month time to the supervisors to make a new computerized database for both current and previous employees, and provide the ROE or Record of Employment document to everyone so that they can get their EI premiums accordingly. After this, he arranged to submit the necessary documents to government to avoid paying more fines. His next step was to follow servant leadership style and arrange a meeting with the representatives of the employees to have a detailed conversation with them for understanding their problems and objections. He realized that a few changes were necessary to create a better workplace and thus hold a meeting with the management to propose the changes.

Collaborating with the investors to expand the business was another aim of Jack Brown. At first, he fixed business meetings with the investors to discuss strategy and plan to expand the business in both national and international level. Before opening outlets on foreign soil, Brown wanted to create more outlets of Mickey’s in the country. His first target was to make Mickey’s the first choice of customers based on availability. Mickey’s had always kept the price range within the reach of the middle class customers. Now, Brown wanted the customers to find a Mickey’s cafe within their reach. He clearly stated his object to his workers and motivated them to work hard to achieve that target (Zameer et al., 2014). He proposed for an internal expansion of two thousands more outlets in the major cities and towns in Canada within two years. Brown decided to create an opportunity of publicity in all the attention the company was getting from the media. He held press conference after clearing out the issues with the employees and in that occasion, he announced the news of expansion too. Here he created an example for his employees of turning a problem into an opportunity, and with this example, he inspired the employees to face the coming challenges and raised their confidence. After two years, he proposed the idea of opening three outlets in three major cities of UK and five outlets in five major cities of US.

Case Study: Mickey’s

With the transformational servant leadership approach, Brown expected to produce a better workforce for his company and an improved work environment for his employees. He expected that directly communicating with the employees would motivate them to do more. He also expected collaborating with the investors would lead to a successful expansion of their business. He collaborated with the media hoping to change the media’s recent perspective of Mickey’s and to use it as platform to announce and promote their expansion.

Looking at the outlets and advertisements, Brown realized there was an element missing, the element of creativity. The foods they offered had always been fresh as they baked their own breads. In addition, their coffee was different from that served in other countries because they made it the way Canadians would prefer it. Yet, these facts never got proper highlight in the advertisements. They were failing to attract young customers due to lack of new ideas in the menu.

The first thing Brown wanted was to make an improvement in the marketing section to advertise their product properly. He wanted people to know that Mickey’s product is unique and authentic in taste. He did not want an entire change in the menu, as it had been successful in keeping their customers loyal. What he wanted was to present their product in a stimulating way to attract the young generation. Brown decided to adapt servant style leadership regarding the issue of innovation, which is one of the key elements to grow a business (Anderson, Poto?nik & Zhou, 2014).

Applying servant style of leadership, Brown informed the workers the objective of the company, which is to modify the menu with innovative items and to figure out a few creative tactics to attract the new generation; and asked for their ideas. He also announced that the name of the person whose idea will be selected for the innovative food would get his name included in the name of that new food item, and the person who will give the most novel advertisement idea can select any family member or friend of his own to feature in that advertisement campaign. His aim was to build a better relationship with the customers and the employees by making the products individualistic.

Brown employed his employees directly in the company goal to motivate them. He thought the idea of individual recognition would motivate them in committing more to the target. His expectation was that involving the workers in this task would effectively develop many novel ideas, and from those he would select the most effective ones. Having developed creative strategies and innovative products, his expected outcome was to grow the current market and to enhance the relationship with the customers.

Conclusion

With the globalization, the world is moving in conspicuous speed, changing each day. Keeping on with the pace of it demands change and innovation in every business (Stock, Totzauer & Zacharias, 2014). Many companies are reluctant to adapt the necessary change as they see it as a risk to their current market and Jack Brown made the same mistake. He overlooked the fact that there was a clear indication of different taste for coffee in US and Canada. Yet he never considered the idea of changing the taste of their coffee, as it was their signature product in the menu. He feared that changing that taste could mean losing their authenticity that they claimed they had in their coffee. In addition, he did not include more options for tea in the UK outlets, which was the preferred hot beverage of UK. Brown’s failure to recognize customer demand was evident in the exclusion of preferred foods in the menus Of the UK and the US outlets. These reasons resulted in the closure of all the UK outlets and two of US outlets within two years after opening, and the company faced massive loss.

In 2014, Lucas Smith came to Mickey’s as their new CEO. After critically analyzing the US and the UK reports, he rectified the mistakes that Brown made. Smith’s vision was to extend the business in other countries and for that, he, unlike Brown, was ready to make the necessary changes. He did a thorough study of the previous mistakes and the current market demands and trends. As the coffee consumption rate is high in America, Smith decided to make the first expansion in New York only. This also helped him to get a better perspective of the market on foreign soil. He understood the significance of Mickey’s authentic taste in coffee, yet he accepted the fact that the same taste cannot make a market demand in US. In addition, he recommended some changes in the menu too. He wanted to make sure that, along with Canadian flavor; people in America get their flavor in Mickey’s food too.

Transformational leadership style has proved to be the leadership style that has the most effective outcome where organizational change is concerned. The previous failure in foreign land made the investors of Mickey’s cautious about their investments; they did not want to face another huge loss. Through intellectual stimulation, Smith encouraged the investors in investing in their foreign mission. Following transformational leadership style, he motivated the employees to understand the reason behind the changes and adaption. Moreover, he influenced them to turn this challenge into an opportunity to work in conditions that are more diverse and improve their personal skills.

It is a well celebrated philosophy that change is the only constant thing in the world. Success of any kind would require adapting necessary changes. Smith believed that with the changes in the taste and adaptations of new food items, this time their business on foreign land would become a success and make the ground for more extension. Moreover, he wanted the modifications to improve the quality of employees in Mickey’s too. With his actions, Smith expected both the company and its employees would have benefit.

Mickey’s already was popular for his authentic taste in coffee when Jack Browned joined the team. With his innovative strategies, its demand as a café grew among both current and previous generations. Yet, in the hands of Brown, Mickey’s goal to extend their business outside Canada was a failure as he failed to recognize the difference of market demand in UK and US. His reluctance to bring change to adapt new circumstances proved as ineffective strategy for foreign expansion (Deresky, 2017). Lucas Smith, the current CEO of Mickey’s, partially solved this problem. He perceived the necessity of change and therefore made the much needed changes for expanding the business. Yet, the result was not satisfactory. The business profit did not meet company’s expectation. Mickey’s established their brand in Canada, but in US their name did not make much difference. Branding their name had become a challenge for them; hence, it is affecting the expansion plan.

• Identifying potential market: Identifying who can be a potential customer is a significant step in market expansion. In order to distinguish probable customers, the company should do a thorough market research. The report of that research will develop a productive market segmentation based on what product they are trying to sale.
• Effective advertisement campaigning: Establishing from the target market new advertisement campaigns must be designed. While designing these campaigns, one should remember to advertise the company product in a fashion that they draw attention and grow curiosity. Using a popular face in the campaigns can prove to be a powerful way to connect to the target market.
• Identifying a potential idea: The process of campaign designing can include the employees to give ideas. The more ideas the more possibilities to create innovative campaigns. In this process, identifying the ideas that has the most potential to attract the target customers plays a crucial part.
• Brand recognition: One of major issue for Mickey’s is that it has a poor brand recognition in outside Canada. Increasing that brand recognition will help them to grow a larger market in foreign countries. Collaborating with brands, which have an existed brand recognition, will offer the company to strengthen their brand name.
• Brand loyalty: In relation to the previous suggestion, increasing brand loyalty could be another way to bring inflation in the new market. There are two ways to increase the market. The management of Mickey’s can offer products or services that are highly preferred among the customers and through that establish a strong relationship with them. Another way the management can create a loyal market is by merging with a brand that has an established market trust and loyalty. A merger with such a company will bring them loyal customers.

Conclusion

Leadership qualities have significant role behind the prosperity of a company. The success of operational functions of a business organization depends on the competency level of the organization’s leaderships. Relationship and collaboration, innovation, and adaptability and change are the competencies that must in an effective leader. Leaders who follows transformational leadership or servant leadership style, have the most effectiveness. Transformational leaders motivates their employees through inspirational speech and intellectual stimulation. They look after company goals as well as employees’ personal achievements. On the other side, leaders who follow servant leadership style, focuses on employee benefit. They try to motivate employees though their strong communication skills. Both the type of leaders encourage innovative and creative ideas to come forward. In the above discussed case study of Mickey’s, the competencies of two managerial leaders of the company have been discussed. Mickey’s is a food chain in Canada that was facing challenges in resolving their complications in expansion and employee satisfaction when Brown joined the company. CEO Brown, adopting transformational leadership and servant leadership styles, had handled the issues regarding employees by talking to them about their problems and making possible solutions. In that situation, his relationship and collaboration competence mitigated the problems. In the context of attracting new customers, particularly the young generation had given him the opportunity to demonstrate his innovative skills. He motivated his employees through innovative strategies to increase the company’s market as well as their personal skills. The company also had plans for foreign extension, in which Brown’s incompetency regarding change and adaptability was evident. He was unable to comprehend the substantial changes that the company needed to achieve their goal in foreign market. His incompetency resulted in the collapse of foreign outlets of the company. After the new CEO, Smith, joined Mickey’s, he again initiated the planning to extend their market in foreign lands. He followed transformational leadership style to convince the investors for their support in the expansion. He executed the necessary changes in products, which Brown was unwilling to do. Through stimulating the intellects of the employees, he motivated them to adapt the changes. His strategy proved to be a success at initial level. Eventually, it was evident, when Mickey’s New York outlets failed to meet the profit company had targeted, that there were flaws in his plan too. The discourse put emphasis on the role that the competences of a leader plays in an organization. In conclusion, it is justified to say that the qualities in the organizational leaders determine factors such as the satisfaction of both the employees and the customers, workplace environment, the unity of the employees, relation with the stakeholders, which altogether build the path to accomplish organizational goal.

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