Leadership In The Virgin Group

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,,,,Binta

Introduction
By

Virgin Group

Founded: 1970
Founder: Richard Branson Headquarters: London United Kingdom

Industry: Conglomerate Company

Area Served: Global

Virgins Products

What Makes Virgin Outstanding

Follow the British economist E.F. Schumachers Small is beautiful
philosophy

Virgin resembles a mixture of a branded venture capital organization and a

Japanese keiretsu for society of business.

What ties all the businesses together are the values of the brand and the
philosophy of management.

Virgin stands for value, quality, innovation, fun, and a sense of competitive
challenge.

Unique Competitive Advantage

Corporate Culture

Putting the world right The notion of family; People are our greatest asset. Cultural glue based on sense of community, bonds of group, not codified Friendly, egalitarian, nonhierarchical atmosphere Anybody with a crazy idea gets a hearing Empowerment: Were in the business of making millionaires. Motivating people is key to organizations success: If your staff is enjoying their work, they will perform well. Consequently, customers will enjoy their experience with your company.

Staff should have happy memories of their time in the organization.

Unique Competitive Advantage

Leadership Style

Reassuring contact with followers Social worker, both with followers and in vision for new products Pragmatic idealist Extremely competitive Counterbalanced by strong executive role constellation Top person should enjoy himself so hat others will feel free to have fun Renaissance entrepreneur:100 percent involvement in startup of new ventures, then delegate

Unique Competitive Advantage

Organizational Design

Truly entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial organization; organic growth rather than acquisition Small is beautiful; small, autonomous units, small head office Work as an exciting adventure, challenging the status quo

If you do something for fun and create the best possible product, then the profit will come.
No formal board meetings; employees encouraged to contact Branson directly with ideas,
problems

Communication from bottom to top; lateral communication Speed: employees get a quick response directly from Branson, or just go ahead and do it

Unique Competitive Advantage

Continuous Transformation and Change

Share the wealth with people who have new ideas; create a sense of ownership Attract and develop mavericks Environment offers high degree of freedom and encourages original ideas; go
ahead and do it

Building a Global Organization

Keiretsu-like system: more than 500 small companies around the world operating
quasi-independently

Question 1
By

Question 1
Given the freewheeling style of Branson and his managers, do you think that the Virgin enterprises can be classified as a TQ organization? Why or why not?

 For the total quality management consists of organizationwide efforts to install and make permanent a climate in which an organization continuously improves its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to customers.

 There organization is a loose conglomeration of separate,

stand-alone companies that grew like Topsy with only the vision of its charismatic founder and guru, Sir Richard Branson, to guide it.

Question 2
By Binta

Question 2.
How well do you think that Branson and his managers perform the strategic planning? What are some indicators that they do or do not do, strategic planning?

Virgin Group
One of the strategic planning that Branson and his managers performed is
diversification between its activities.

Instead of managing Virgin as one big conglomerate, they set up virgin

Atlantic Airways, in which they tied all the businesses together with values of their brands and the philosophy of management.

 The reason for setting the Virgin Atlantic was to compete and offer goodquality service since their competitors were charging at a higher cost .

Keeping the image of their brand, customers have seen value, quality,
innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge in Virgin.

Branson and his managers believes passionately in the virgin values and in
what they are doing.

 They were convinced that together can create the first British global
brand name of the twenty-first century.

Virgins management style has provide more autonomy to its

subordinates to make decisions. The second way is the brand name of Virgin. Virgin as a brand name is widely known by many people all over the world. The Virgin Group has built a strong reputation toward people and it is viewed as innovative, daring and successful.

 Some indications they do were the idea creating customer

satisfaction.

No formal board meetings. The idea of organic growth rather than acquisition. And also the idea of if you do something fun and create the best
possible product, then profit will come.