Leadership Analysis and Strategies for Sustainable Success at Virgin Group

Analysis of the
leadership of the
company Virgin and
suggested strategies to
ensure future success
in a sustainable
manner

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY......................................................................................................................................3
Measures of success...................................................................................................................3
Reasons of success.....................................................................................................................6
Strategic analysis.......................................................................................................................8
Strategy focus..........................................................................................................................12
Strategic recommendations....................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
In order to succeed in the modern business marketplace, companies cannot just rely on their
competitive advantage but must assemble a quality brand portfolio backed by solid customer
service and quality of the highest order (Kane, 2022). One of the major examples of such companies
which have built their brand from humble origins to billion dollar conglomerates is Virgin Group
which is a British multinational venture capitalist company which deals in multiple industries such
as travel, leisure and fitness. This report assesses the reasons behind the success of the group and
gave key recommendations in the form of sustainable aviation operations and more aggressive
international expansion.
MAIN BODY
Measures of success
The term business success is used often to measure just how competent and profitable a
business concern actually is but in recent times, the term has become murkier as new metrics and
complex situations are discovered every day. Using simple metrics by focusing on financial ratios
and comparing yearly profits are effective parameters to define business success but they are no
longer enough due to the shift of global businesses towards sustainable development and customer
orientation. There are many problems that come with defining business success as one also has to
take into account the level of sustainability that companies achieve together with their success and
simply looking at financial metrics as measures of success can be disastrous as it does not reflect
the company's capacity to deal with market demand and estimate the customer journey which their
operations contain. Major research papers and extensive publishing has been done regarding this
dilemma of measuring success and celebrated authors such as Jerry Muller who has stated in his
book, 'The Tyranny of metrics' that simply using financial metrics and profit numbers as
determinants of success has made modern businesses go from measuring success to getting fixated
only with the measuring process itself (Best, 2018). When it comes to the Virgin Group, their
success is multidimensional as apart from being sound strategically and possessing elite business
capabilities, their focus on customer satisfaction is also next to none which is why a diverse set of
measures including financial and non-financial metrics have been recommended for the measuring
of Virgin group's success which are listed below.
Financial metrics

 Annual net profit and loss – This financial metric is one of the best ways to determine the
current robustness of Virgin group's business affairs as profit making is still the bread and
butter of modern multinational businesses like Virgin group but such metrics must be
supplemented by non-financial metrics
 Return on investment – ROI is also known as the ration calculated between income and
investment and by looking at the return on investment that companies like Virgin Atlantic
consistently accrue in their target markets is also a great metric to gain a basic overview
regarding their success.
These revenue and financials based metrics have two key advantages over non-financial
metrics with the most important being that it allows the benchmarking of data which can then be
used to compare the metrics against the direct rivals of the group in multiple market segments
(Krishnamoorthi & Mathew, 2018). An example being the revenue metrics comparison between
Virgin Atlantic, an airline company which the virgin group has majority stake in and British
Airways, the market leader of UK in terms of air travel and aviation.
Another major advantage is that such metrics also allow companies like the Virgin group