Analysis of Global Leadership and Change Management at Zappos.com

This report provides an in-depth analysis of global leadership and change management, focusing on the case study of Zappos.com. It examines the importance of leadership in driving organizational change, highlighting various leadership theories such as authentic and charismatic leadership, and their practical applications. The report discusses the challenges faced by leaders, including customer service, cost control, and the preservation of organizational culture, and analyzes how Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos.com, addressed these issues. It explores the different levels and styles of change, including the implementation of Holacracy at Zappos.com, and discusses the impact of change on organizational culture. The report also covers leadership theories, leadership styles, and change management strategies, providing a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and their relevance in the context of Zappos.com's success. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and insights gained from the case study.

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Global Leadership and Change Management
Global Leadership and Change
Management

Global Leadership and Change Management
Executive summary
Leaders are the most important modal of an organisation. Leaders are responsible toi drive
any change in the organisation. Effective leaders use effective leadership to create great effect
on the ‘organisation. In this report as with the discussion of Zappos.com case study various
suitable leadership theories and change management policies will be discussed.zappos.com
cultural organisation giving importance to the core values, employees happiness and
customer satisfaction more than earning profits. This report will introduce numerous
leadership styles adopted by leaders and Tony Hsieh’s leadership skills and abilities and the
challenges he faced in making the organisation successful.
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Global Leadership and Change Management
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Leadership challenges................................................................................................................4
Customer service....................................................................................................................5
Cost control............................................................................................................................5
Preservation of organisational culture....................................................................................5
Talent and training to employees...........................................................................................6
Leadership theories and styles...................................................................................................6
Authentic leadership theory....................................................................................................7
Charismatic leadership theory................................................................................................8
Change leadership and management..........................................................................................9
Levels of change and their effects..........................................................................................9
Change styles to adapt change in leadership........................................................................10
 Affiliate change.........................................................................................................10
 Authoritative change.................................................................................................10
 Democratic change....................................................................................................10
 Coercive change........................................................................................................10
 Coaching change.......................................................................................................10
Change adapted by Tony Hsieh in zappos.com (Holacracy)...................................................10
Question 2................................................................................................................................12
Part B Question 3.....................................................................................................................15
Organisational Change.............................................................................................................15
Organisational Culture and Change in culture of an organisation.......................................15
Challenges in cultural changes.................................................................................................16
Maintenance of original culture........................................................................................16
Secure beliefs of the employees........................................................................................16
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Global Leadership and Change Management
Ineffective leadership........................................................................................................16
Communicating change....................................................................................................17
Organisation management................................................................................................17
Involvement and participation..........................................................................................17
Case study about culture and change at zappos.com...............................................................18
Conclusion................................................................................................................................18
References................................................................................................................................20
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Global Leadership and Change Management
Introduction
Leadership is very important phase in any organisation and in its every aspect. Key factor in
every phase of the organisational process is leadership. Leader is the person who has quality
to make people to follow his directions. Change is the law of nature. Today entire world
related to business and corporate live in dynamic world, where they change their strategies
and theories with the requirement of the time. This dynamic concept demands the proper
technique of leadership and selection of adequate change policy to maintain the
organizational success (Van & van Kleef, 2016). Zappos.com is a famous and well known
online shoe and cloth selling company based in Las Vegas founded in the year of 1999 by
Nick Swinmurn and the investment was made by Tony Hsieh and his best friend cum partner
Alfred Lin. Tony Hsieh is a kind of leader that focus on the resources to satisfy the need if the
customers and motivating and leading its employees to work with great enthusiasm and
interest that maximise the mouth publicity and lead surprising boom in profits of the
company indirectly.
Leadership challenges
Leadership is the face of the success of the organisation. Leadership is process that set a path
towards success to organisation. Leadership is facing many new changes and challenges from
past as well as in present time however if there is any up lift or any downfall in the business
profit leader fell need to change its leadership style to change loss into profit or to maintain
the level of success.zappos.com is an online service providing company facing rapid
development and changes if form of competition, globalisation, digitalization and many more
newly emerging threats of new comers (Fernie & Sparks, 2018). All these factors cause risk
to the business and put a challenge to the leaders to lead their team in way to manage these all
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Global Leadership and Change Management
situations (Gilpin, 2018). Challenges to a leader in a developed business and Tony Hsieh’s
leadership style to overcome from these challenges are as follows;
Customer service
Main target in any business is to satisfy and complete the customers’ needs and wants. In a
logistic supply chain a customer is treated as brand, success and marketing (Brewer &
Terence, 2016). Zeppos.com’s CEO Tony Hsieh knows the value of a customer in the
business so he always in his downtime made investments in improving customer’s services
instead of marketing or branding. This strategy to lead the team to improve customer services
resulted in mouth marketing and this give a surprising boom to the business. Tony Hsieh
leadership was customer focusing he believed to make customer feel WOW delight with the
services.
Cost control
Providing right services in right time to the right customer in reasonable coast is a big
challenge and issue to maintain. Leadership should lead its team to operate under extreme
pressure (Monczka et al., 2015). Effective leader can lead its team to work with great energy
by managing the high cost of fuel, increasing labour rates, technology and rising commodity
service. Tony Hsieh’s leadership at Zappos.com include leadership style to manage cost with
customer satisfaction and profit maintenance.
Preservation of organisational culture
An organisation is consisting of different kind of persons hired as an employee. Employees
are the face of an organisation they together build the environment and culture of an
organisation (Laforet, 2016). If employees are mutually consent and well communicated to
each other this build a strong organisational culture. For this a leader must create
environment of trust and faith on each other. Tony Hsieh was known to the importance of the
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Global Leadership and Change Management
employees and their culture. He focused in building the organisation not most profitable but
best in customer and employee services. Tony Hsieh assumed that success of an organisation
is closely related to the culture so he focused on building good and healthy culture.
Talent and training to employees
Finding the right talented people and using their talent in proper way is the biggest challenge
in nowadays. Hiring the employee on the basis of their passion and knowledge towards their
job is best strategy to hire an employee (Awan & Hafiz, 2016). Tony Hsieh use to hire the
passionate candidate and train them in order to make properly utilising human resources. This
style of leadership involve various training program an initial stage as well as classes to build
basic business ides of his employees. Tony Hsieh believed in making efforts for training and
development of the employees and also makes it priority for employees as well.
Leadership theories and styles
Leadership is the art of a leader to lead the management and staff towards setting the goals
and making efforts to achieve the goals. It is the capacity of a leader to set challenging tasks
for the followers and making plans and techniques to achieve these planned goals with the
help of leadership theories and styles (Nawaz, 2016). Various leadership styles and theories
are available and used by the management in leading some of them are very important and
useful like Trait theory of leadership, Great man Theory, Transformational and Transactional
leadership theory, Charismatic leadership theory, Situational and Contingent leadership
theory and authentic leadership theory. Leadership styles moves the organisation towards the
success. Tony Hsieh has managed a big organisation from its initial stage in this case
leadership style used by him needs to be more then effective for the organisation. Most
suitable leadership styles for Tony Hsieh are;
 Authentic leadership theory
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Global Leadership and Change Management
 Charismatic leadership theory
Authentic leadership theory
Authentic leadership style is the way to put efforts of leader into building honest relationship
with followers to value their efforts and inputs that depends on ethical foundation and moral
values. Authentic leaders are positive, trust worthy and self-management. This leader tries to
build strong self confidence in the followers to promote them towards goals through their
self-understanding. This leadership give leaders opportunities to utilise knowledge and
understanding of the employs by building the concept of self-management. Self-motivated
employees are worth to the organisation. Leadership believes that leaders are different from
no-leaders. Leaders have certain specialities in their personality that made them sufficient
enough to lead the management. They have difference in their personality, capacity, thinking,
planning and organisational behaviour that make them different from others as a leader.
Tony Hsieh at Zappos.com is behaving as the authentic leader as he understand his purpose is
to make his company customer satisfaction and employee happiness oriented, authentic
leaders have definite values and they are focused on the right path and goal (Busse &
Regenberg, 2018). Tony Hsieh leadership here was to giving best in product and services
with the maintenance of coast and expenses. Tony Hsieh invested his money in managing
inventory instead of drop shipping, this decision make him profitable by increased sales and
product demand. Tony in 2014 led the team with new change as here his leadership quality
was seen as great man leadership because introducing a big change in a huge organisation
demands effective leadership qualities. This without self-motivation and self-management
was impossible. Here authentic style adapted by Tony Hsieh gives opportunity to the
employees to develop self-thinking concept and take the decision by self-management.
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Global Leadership and Change Management
Charismatic leadership theory
Charismatic leaders are skilled in communication at employees very deeply. Charismatic
leaders are recognised by the emergency in an organisation. They are effectively skilled in
making use of their leading quality by communicating at both levels top and bottom in the
management very skilfully and deeply (Conger, 2015). Leadership believes that leaders are
born not made. This theory assumes a person has qualities of leadership from his born not he
is trained to lead the followers. Successful leaders are energetic, visionary and tenacious.
They are creative enough to lead the employees to build their creativity (Spector, 2016).
Leaders works with management to recognize the change, plan the steps to accomplish the
desired goals (Choi et al., 2017).It focuses on the leadership quality of a leader and the skill
of communication to the employees to lead them towards the goal. A leader is adaptive and
risk taking in nature. Leaders must understand the need to take change and to solve the
conflicts arose due to the change in the organisation (Thompson, 2015). This theory believes
that there is no proper way to lead the employees, organise them or to make decisions. It
allows leaders to select and apply the leadership style according to the situation. This theory
belongs to the organisational analysis. This theory believes that organisational actions are
depending on the external and internal environment of the organisation (Carter, 2018).
Effective and proper means of communication with the employees making them a family is
the way a charismatic leader use to innovate any change as Tony Hsieh used to do.
Core values in the organisation introduced by Tony Hsieh after Holacracy to make employees
purpose oriented instead of work oriented and joint like a family. Tony Hsieh is the kind of
leader who gives enough time at the time when asking either quit their job or to move with
him for future.
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Global Leadership and Change Management
Change leadership and management
Change is the creation of new system according to the organisational need and demand. A
change always demands effective leadership. Change is the process of dealing with the
implement and transformation of an organisation’s targets, management and technologies.
Change is required when an organisation face challenges (Renz & Herman, 2016). Change is
the way to implement new techniques required in the organisation. Change leadership is the
ability lead and guide the followers to adapt the new challenges and handle risk. This change
deals with the development of ability to adapt changes and to handle dynamic environment
effectively. Tony Hsieh adapted many changes in the organisation but he makes sure about
that a change will not cause harm to the original values of the organisation. Before
introducing any change Tony Hsieh always paid enough attention to deliver flawless
customer satisfaction, build feeling of equality among the employees and to protect the
original culture values of the Zappos.com every time.
Levels of change and their effects
1. Individual level change- This is related with the personal understanding of a person.
Employees individually do efforts and accomplish task to fulfil their targets.
2. Group level change- Organised to perform a particular task to achieve a desired target
with in the limited time. Changes made in the group to make any effective utilisation of
the group employees.
3. Organisational level change- making a change at broad level like in management, duties,
culture, values and goals of the organisation. This involves various types of organisational
change in it (Hornstein, 2015).
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Global Leadership and Change Management
Change styles to adapt change in leadership
 Affiliate change– In this style of change leaders gives priority to the staff firstly. In
this style leaders pressurize to create emotional bonding among the employees. This
change is adapted when any rifts arise in a team and to remove stressful environment
of the organisation (van der Voet, 2016).
 Authoritative change- This change is related with taking all employees together
towards the change. It use human resources to achieve the target and leader set the
team towards a clear direction.
 Democratic change- This theory of change is collection and participation of all the
employees towards a change. When a leader felt the need of the change at any stage
of the organisation he takes opinions from the staff and members to take right
decisions.
 Coercive change- This change theory required the immediate action on the changed
decision. Followers have to do as they are asked to do by the leader. This is adapted in
the critical situation where immediate action is required to overcome the crisis.
 Coaching change- This is the way to train the employees to adapt the change. It deals
to make employees ready to adopt changes. It is helpful in long term relation bonding
with the employees.
Change adapted by Tony Hsieh in zappos.com (Holacracy)
Holacracy is newly introduced way to organise functions of an organisation by replacement
of traditional hierarchical top-down management with power distribution among the members
equally. It involves a fresh and evolving organisational structure including self- motivated
and managed employees that are free from any outer control but managed by individual self.
Holacracy in zappos.com was introduced in January 2014 to make the employees free from
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restrictions, job title and pressure that will result in the self-managed and self-motivated
employees. Satisfied employees always eager to do the best in the organisation and it will
lead the customer satisfaction and increased sales of the products. Zappos.com always
focuses to deliver satisfaction to its customer in form of its WOW delight service. To achieve
customer satisfaction target an organisation need to manage its inner management and
employees effectively. In a developed organisation it become lengthy process to satisfy
customer demands so zappos.com adapted Holacracy making every staff potential enough to
solve customer issues and lead satisfaction to customers as well as himself. Holcracy is a
concept focusing on getting work done in minimum time but zappos.com is focusing its
people at every level. But Tony Hsieh adapted it as a change by applying its core values that
help in successful implementation of the Holacracy in Zappos.com effectively. These core
values are;
1. Delivering WOW delight service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5. Accept growth and learning
6. Use communication to build strong relationship
7. Create family sprit and build positive team
8. Deliver more by using less
9. Build passion and determination
10. Humble enough
In the year 2015 after 18 months of introducing Holacracy employees at Zappos.com was
offered three months’ severance pay if they felt self-management concept was not for their
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