Strategic Leadership: Challenges and Agility in the Case of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook

Running head: STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Strategic Leadership
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Identification of leadership case study and discussion of its strategic challenges for remaining
‘fit for future purpose’
This essay is a reflective document on the leadership, the strategic challenges it faces in
modern times, the evaluation of its agility, development plan for increasing the leadership agility
and the processes that should be implemented to track the improvements in the leadership. The
case study of leadership of Mark Zuckerberg in his organization Facebook will be discussed and
evaluated in this essay to have a better understanding of the concept of leadership and its aspects
like agility for remaining ‘fit for future purpose’.
Facebook is one of the most successful companies in the new millennium. The vision of a
university student has become a social media company with net worth of more than $15 billion
and almost 2.23 billion active users worldwide. As stated by Lunenburg (2012), Mark
Zuckerberg is an exceptional entrepreneur as well as extraordinary leader, who displayed
transformational leadership skills with attributes like encouraging as well as aggressive for
continuous innovation and business growth. The other styles of leadership, such as, democratic,
autocratic and laissez-faire are also reflected in Zuckerberg’s leadership. Within a few years of
the inception of the company, Facebook under the skilled leadership of Facebook has achieved
exceptional success by overcoming all types of challenges that usually affect the strategy of fit
for future purpose.
The strategic leadership challenges include various types of internal and external issues,
such as, technology, market competition, human resources and many more. As highlighted by
Fred Garcia (2012), the most crucial challenges for leadership in the modern world are the
development of managerial effectiveness, motivating the employees, developing the skills of the

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employees, guiding the employees in case of change management operations, and managing the
internal stakeholders. To elaborate these, it is seen that the leaders in any organization must
develop managerial effectiveness or skills, such as, strategic thinking, time management,
decision making, prioritization and delivery on time etc. to produce the job most efficiently.
Motivating the employees is one of the most crucial responsibilities of the leaders. By applying
various motivational techniques and their charismatic personality the leaders need to inspire the
employees to bring out their maximum potential. The skill development of the employees is
another important challenge for the leaders. They must analyze the training needs of the
employees and arrange the developmental programs accordingly (Howell 2012). This is a
difficult task in a large organization like Facebook with a large number of employees. Team
building is another important challenge as that includes the task of understanding the capabilities
of the employees and assign them to different teams, in which their potential can be fully utilized
for the benefit of the organization. Apart from these, the implementation of the change
management initiatives by convincing the employees, and guiding them through the change
management process are also a challenging task for the leaders (Humphrey 2013).
Holt, Marques and Way (2012) pointed out the following challenges for the organizations
in the future. Creation of a shared purpose, measurement of ROI of the soft skills, identification
and communication of success as well as failures with the fellow employees, trust building and
perspective management are some of the crucial challenges to strategic leadership in the modern
world organization. According to the author, currently all the organizations have millennial
workforce, who have strong opinions or views regarding responsibilities. Thus, the motivational
aspects are also different from them. For example, the top talents of the industry can be
motivated to achieve the organizational goals by creating long term values through a common

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passion, purpose, and shared ideas and thus, the challenge for the leaders lies in communicating
with the millennials in a manner that would also suit theirs (Meola 2016). Secondly, the return of
investment on the leadership developmental programs is calculated through the business
performance and employee retention rate. However, soft skills of the leaders are also important
and which cannot be measured through numbers. According to Rao (2013), the soft skills of the
leaders are beneficial for creating an agile organization, nurture and develop an innovative
company, with positive and supportive work culture. Thus, measuring the soft skills of the
leaders is significant and also a challenge for the organizations in an ever-changing and
unpredictable work scenario. Thirdly, lack of internal or organizational communication is a big
challenge for the leaders, especially in the large organization. To establish a successful and
efficient operation process, every employee should have an idea about what is going on within or
outside the organization. However, in majority of the cases, the communication does not happen,
resulting in grudging employees, who lack job satisfaction and motivation. Communication helps
in creating a bond among the employees and organization, and establishing effective
communication system is a challenge for the leaders (Hackman and Johnson 2013). Moreover,
leaders face the challenge of building trust among the employees about any new venture and
thereby performing perspective management efficiently (Van Wart 2013).
It can be said from the above discussion, that Mark Zuckerberg also faced similar
challenges in the initial days of the organization, when he needed to convince the other
employees about his vision, innovative ideas, ventures and perspectives. To remain fit for the
future, it is highly important for any organization to adapt to the changes and new trends in the
market. Facebook also adapted to the market demands under the foresightedness of Mark