Analyzing Bradford Banducci's Leadership at Woolworths: A Case Study

This report provides a detailed analysis of Bradford Banducci's leadership as the CEO of Woolworths Group, focusing on his application of transformational leadership theory. The report begins with a background history of Banducci, highlighting his previous roles and experiences, including his time at Cellar masters, Tyro payments, and Boston Consulting Group. It then delves into his leadership approach, specifically examining his use of transformational leadership to improve Woolworths' performance. The report explores the relevance of transformational theory in enhancing positive change within the organization, inspiring followers, and adapting to fast-paced environments. Several instances are provided where Banducci demonstrated his transformational leadership style, such as focusing on customer culture, building relationships with suppliers, and improving pricing strategies. The report also addresses the challenges faced by Banducci, including competition and operational issues, along with potential solutions. Finally, the report concludes with lessons learned from Banducci's leadership, emphasizing the importance of experience, workforce coordination, and education in achieving organizational goals. References to support the analysis are included.

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LEADERSHIP
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LEADERSHIP
Bradford Banducci
Background History
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.
Leadership Approach
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).

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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).
Among the various instances where Bradford Banducci has demonstrated transformational leadership
approach are;
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.
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

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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.
Challenges faced by the leader
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).
Lesson learnt from Bradford Banducci leadership
 It’s clear to note and learn that leadership is a process that requires one with coherent and relevant
skills in that particular field.

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 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.

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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
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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.
http://www.afr.com/business/retail/woolworths-ceo-brad-banduccis-first-100-days-the-report-card-
20160602-gp9pg0#ixzz4uFILiV76. Reviewed on June 3rd 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
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