Crafting Leadership Development at Apple: A Strategic Alignment Essay

The theme is “Leadership Development: Putting theory into practice”.

You must choose an organization that you would like to work for.

Your assignment is to create a leadership development programme for the company where there is alignment between the organization’s mission, values, goals, strategies and leadership development programmes.

Detailed requirements:

1. Describe the company

a. Name of organization

· Apple company

· Describe the company briefly (e.g., nature of business, founders etc) to set the context.

b. Organisation’s mission, vision, values, goals

· Mission: Declaration of the core purpose and focus for the company.

· Vision: Picture of the company in the future.

· Values: The operating philosophies or principles that guide an organization's internal conduct as well as its relationship with its customers, partners, and shareholders. E.g., teamwork.

· Describe how the values allow the company to deliver their mission and vision.

· Goals: 'small wins' that must be achieved in order to fulfil the bigger goal of the entire organization, which is the mission.

c. Organisation’s corporate culture  An excellent answer will cover relevant and important details} of the company.

· Culture: Includes assumptions, values, beliefs, norms shared by individuals (e.g., routine ways of communicating, implicit and explicit rules for getting along in the organization) E.g., team-based culture.

· Describe how values shape culture and how values and culture are acted out daily in the organization (look for companies with detailed information or have been extensively analysed by third parties) e.g., “We’re very informal here because we believe in teamwork and open communication.”

2. Analyse what leadership means to the company (20 marks):

a. Explore what the leadership philosophy of the company is.

· Explain the link between leadership philosophy and company’s values} (philosophy is often anchored on values).

· Describe how the leadership philosophy is practiced in the chosen} company, e.g., how does the organisation’s leadership philosophy affect the way employees are led, developed and influenced?

· Explain how the leadership philosophy enables the company to deliver} their mission and vision.

b. Identify relevant theories and concepts that applies to the company’s leadership philosophy.

· Describe how the theories apply to the chosen company (e.g., how closely} aligned this theory is with your organisation’s goals, values etc).

3. Select 2 separate groups of leaders in the company:

· Leadership competencies needed for the leaders to be successful may be different for different groups of leaders depending on which level / department we are looking at.

· Include an organisation chart to highlight the selected leaders. To label all charts/tables, and describe the charts/tables in the main content.

· Create a leadership competencies framework for EACH of the group of leaders. You will have to create 2 leadership competencies, one for each group of leaders.

4. Create a leadership competencies framework for EACH of the group of leaders. You will have to create 2 leadership competencies, one for each group of leaders. (30 marks):

a. Describe the roles of the leaders (job description).

· e.g., Management and development of marketing personnel.

· Link the consequence of this job description to the company’s ability in achieving its vision and mission.

· Use the appointment/position as the basis of the discussion as the intent is to examine the leadership roles associated with the position and not the person.

b. List at least 5 leadership competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills, behaviours, abilities, and other characteristics) this leader should have to fulfil the leadership roles.

· Align leadership competencies to the  job description of the leaders (i.e., Justify how /why the competencies} are important for the particular role).  

· selected leadership theories identified in question 2.

c. List the behavioural indicators (at least 3 for each competency) that the leader should exhibit for each competency.

· A behavioural indicator is an observable behaviour that indicates the presence of the particular competency.  

· E.g., for the competency “embracing change”, an example of a} behavioural indicator could be “changes work plans or routines without complaint”.

· Use a table / chart for the leadership competency and behavioural indicators.  

· Differentiate and justify the competencies and / or competency level expected of the 2 different groups of leaders you selected in question 3.

 5. Develop strategies to develop the leadership in each of the group of leaders. You will need to come up with 2 sets of strategies, one set of strategy for each group of leaders. (30 marks)

· Your assignment is to create a leadership development programme for the company where there is alignment between the organization’s mission, values, goals, strategies and leadership development programmes.

· Business strategy (how the company will achieve its goals).

· Tailor leadership development strategies that will address question 1 (i.e., align with mission, values, goals, strategies)  

· Elaborate how the leadership development strategies will be implemented.

·  Leadership development strategies should be aligned to the leadership competency framework in question 4 (e.g., xx leadership development strategy will develop xx leadership competencies) e.g., Comparing a competitor’s product/service will develop 2 competencies.