Leadership Styles And Lean Management In SINTEF

Question

Task: This assessment item requires you to work in a group

You have been engaged as a consultant to assist the senior management team identify a project team that comprises a project manager and several key project team members who will spear head the implementation of lean principles in SINTEF. The senior management team has asked you to provide a REPORT that covers the following

1. Compare and distinguish various leadership styles that could potentially be adopted by the selected project manager.
2. Select one (1) leadership style and explain in detail why you think it will be the best option given SINTEF’s organisational structure and context.
3. Determine characteristics that will be required to become a valuable team member of “THE A TEAM”.
4. Propose tools / techniques that could be implemented in various departments of SINTEF that will improve their efficiency. Provide specific examples on how the tools will be implemented. (You should include assumptions to facilitate your choice of tools and techniques)

Answer

Introduction
The primary focus of the report is to implement the lean principles at SINTEF, an independent research-based organisation. Established in the year 1950, SINTEF's core functionality is based on developing various projects and conducting contractual research projects for their clients. With an employee base of over 2000, coming from over 75 nations across the world makes SINTEF one of the leading research organisation in Europe.

SINTEF serves an average of 3700 customers around the globe and generates a revenue of about 3.2 billion Norwegian Krones annually. The international annual sales account to be over 450 million Norwegian Krones.

This report will distinguish amongst various leadership styles, best suited for the project manager, given the organisational structure of SINTEF. A list of essentials qualities shall be enlisted to be required, for being on the project team. An evaluation of all the holistic tools and techniques of lean management shall be made. The best-suited tools for the organisation shall be implemented by the project manager and team members.

Leadership Styles
Every individual is different from one another, and so will be his leadership style. Depending on the personal attributes and entrepreneurial outlook, the concept of multiple leadership models came into existence. Listed below are a few of the leadership styles that could be adopted by the project leader.

Command and Control Leadership: It is a military based style but also practised in the industry. The leader is extremely disciplined and strict, the members will have to follow the orders given by the leader without raising any objections. They have very little or no autonomy. There is a seldom scope for growth and development, as the members just follow the orders. This has been a default style of leadership for a very long time (Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016).

Servant Leadership The main role of the leader is to serve his people. Constant approval is taken by the leader from his people in his management. The people take active participation in formulating the goals of the business. He believes in uprooting the obstacles on the path of his team members and helping them achieve growth.

Charismatic Leadership: They are born leaders, people follow these leaders by default. The personality, credibility and the intelligence of the people add to their charisma.

Participative Leadership: The leader takes the input of his followers while formulating the vision for the organisation or project and also while taking important decisions. A decent scope of autonomy is granted to the followers and everybody's consent is taken at the time of decision making (Anderson & Sun, 2017).

Transactional Leadership: These leaders focus on the day to day activities in the organisation. Ideally, when the organisation is moving at a slow pace and the plan of action is short-sighted, this kind of leadership comes into the picture.

Situational Leadership: There is a certain belief, that the leaders must not be constant with a single style of leadership. They must adopt and follow a wide array of leadership patterns over a period of time and depending on the situation presented to them. The leaders act differently in different types of situations.

The Quiet Leadership: These leaders play a silent role, the personality is not larger than life like the charismatic leader. They often stay in the background, guiding and motivating the people.

Visionary Leadership: As the name suggests, the visionary leaders, have a set vision for their people and organisation. They can either make or break the organisation. They have the ability to drive the people through their vision.

The above are few of the theoretical leadership style. However, in reality, leaders behave differently in different situations. Often they possess more than two leadership skills. The styles depend on the dominant personality traits of the leader.

Leadership Style Attributes
To have an optimum comparison between the various leadership styles, in order to come to the best possible outcome for an ideal leadership style best suited to the project manager of the SINTEF, identification of their distinctive personalities is a must. The below mentioned ten attributes of every leadership will be taken into consideration, in order to derive the best leadership style according to the system of the lean framework (Tortorella et al. 2018).

• Adaptability-the degree to which the leader is adept with the suppositions
• Charisma – if the charisma will have others follow the lead
• Decision rights – to what extent will the power of decision making be allowed
• Domain experience – expected knowledge out of the leader
• Evidence-driven – how important is evidence from the assumptions
• Individual growth – how much is the leader willing to contribute to the personal growth of individuals
• Integrity – how sound is the leader morally and ethically
• Knowledge rights – how the knowledge is transmitted to the followers
• Normative appeal – what is the appeal of the leader in fulfilling the objectives and goals of the organisation
• Organisational change – if the organisation is being transformed to fulfil the goals (Laureani & Antony, 2017)

Command and Control Leadership

Servant Leadership

Charismatic Leadership

Participative Leadership

Transactional Leadership

Transformational Leadership

Quiet Leadership

Visionary Leadership

Lean Leadership SINTEF, as an organisation is focused on learning systematically resulting in value creation. Hence, it can be classified as a learning organisation. Such organisations do not believe in accidental learning but are driven by goal-oriented approaches like Lean Learning. SINTEF will benefit from a special leadership style that will have a core focus on mobilising of its employees for the means of solving a problem (Tortorella & Fogliatto, 2017).

Therefore, the leadership style considered apt for the organisation is a combination of Participating Leadership and Transformational Leadership. The project manager will act as the lean leader and will have a core focus of transforming the people into innovators and problem-solvers. This is to ensure that the people in return will transform the organisation, keeping in terms with its vision (Laureani & Antony, 2019).

The above illustration shows the difference between the existing Command and Control Leadership prevalent at the SINTEF with the Lean Leadership.

Despite the fact that the lean leadership is driven to help the followers, it cannot be considered as a servant relationship. The leader is yet responsible for helping the subordinates so that they can watch and learn and help their own selves in the future without the help of the leader. The charisma plays a vital role in leadership, however, the main impetus of the leadership will always be problem-solving (van Assen, 2018).

Characteristics required to be a part of the Lean Team
The project manager will require a competitive team to implement the Lean in the SINTEF organisational structure. The team must be in possession of certain and specific qualities to ensure the success of the lean. Enumerated below are few of the qualities that the team members must possess to become a high performing lean team (Tortorella et al. 2016).

• Learning attitude: It has been observed over a period of time that the team does not possess complete knowledge of the lean, they learn it while the project progresses. Almost 88% of the lean teams identified themselves as beginners and as the project moved ahead they attained a 100% maturity rate (Alefari et al. 2017). The credit was given to organisational learning. Therefore, the team does not require professionals but people with a learning attitude.
• Effective Leadership: Every team needs an effective and competent leader, under which they can perform. The leader can direct the team in the right direction, beneficial for both the organisational growth and the growth of the team members.
• Unhindered Commitment: Every team is different, to be a part of the lean team, unhindered commitment towards the organisation and the leader is a must.
• Focus on the Flow: Successful teams put more focus on improving the flow of the processes rather than focusing on the end result. Such teams will be able to generate productivity and bring about a change in management.
• Metrics Obsessed: High performing teams measure their progress with the help of multiple metrics. These metrics will help them to measure their past as well as present performances, thereby helping them make necessary improvements.
• Goals Alignment The goals of the team members must be aligned with the goals of the project manager and eventually the organisation. This will help the individual grow along with the organisation.
• Communication and Collaboration: The team's members must be flexible and open to any kind of communication and collaboration with the leader, cross-functional teams and other departments. Knowledge and experiences must be openly shared across the teams without any gaps (Sohi et al. 2016) .
• Proactive: The team members must be proactive to prevent and solve issues, with or without the help of the leader. This will ensure no time and resources are wasted because of delay.
• Resilient: The members must possess the ability to identify the problem areas and fix them. They must solve the problems by innovating solutions. Most of the teams have the autonomy, so they can respond to the problems accordingly (Harris & Sherblom, 2018).

The traits have specifically been designed keeping in mind the new and improved leadership at the SINTEF. The team will require members possessing the traits elaborately mentioned.

Tools and techniques to facilitate lean business operations
SINTEF has multiple departments, the project manager will apply the lean tools and techniques to get the optimum results from the organisation in a specific period of time.

• Value Stream Mapping: MARINTEK department of the organisation has been facing delays in the execution of its processes leading to a lot of wastage to time and resources. With the successful implementation of the Value Stream Mapping, the project manager will be able to create a virtual map of the processes, keeping in mind the room for last minute changes. The team will understand the entire process and then step by step create a map, and eliminate the time consuming and waste steps and enhance it. This will help the department to deliver on the desired time and reduce the cost and resources (Lyubovnikova et al. 2017).
• Kaizen SINTEFF ICT has been suffering due to a tedious documentation procedure. The employees have to waste a lot of time and move from one place to another in order to fill and file the documents (Ansah et al. 2016).
• The project manager has come up with an old technique of Kaizen, to save the time and excess movement of people and replace it with production processes. The team will shift the documentation procedure to a single building so that the employees do not have to move continuously. Also, the number of documents to be filed will be decreased.
• The manager has also come up with an idea of filing the documents on an online portal and can be done at any point within a time frame of 30 days. This will allow the employees to focus on work and file when they are free or not under the work pressure (Zokaei et al. 2016).
• 5s: SINTEF Building and Infrastructure has a workshop near a construction site, the necessary inventory of raw materials for the site are being supplied from the workshop. The workmen are having difficulty in finding the correct inventory which is often lost or misplaced as the workshop is not tidy (Hinsz, 2015).
• The project manager has vouched for the 5s technique to keep the workshop tidy and hold a proper account for inventory. The five Japanese principles of the sort, set in order, shine, standardise and sustain will help the employees to put the workshop in a systematic order. The raw materials will be sorted and listed. They will then be put into proper order and numbered (Urban, 2015).
• A manual and a computerised data will be uploaded, the workman can use it to find, store, use and reorder the inventory. This will help the construction without any difficulties.
• Machine Monitoring: To have an ease in the administration of the entire organisation, the project manager has requested the senior management to introduce the machine monitoring system. This will require a software installation in every employee's system. The automated software will map the progress of the employee and the work processes and will notify the top management (Sanders et al. 2017).
• Unnecessary meetings and filing will be avoided and more time can be devoted to the core work.
• For the production department, a cloud-based monitoring system is advised which will check the products and scan the defects. This will enable the organisation to reduce the wastages and defects, often let gone by human effort (Biazzo et al. 2016).
• Kanban : This technique will be applied to the IT and software department of the organisation. B improving the workflow, these departments face a bottleneck situation. This situation can be avoided by visually mapping the entire process and then optimising the work with the help of it. This will end up the interdepartmental conflict between these departments, by open communication of their needs and create a holistic workspace (Brioso, 2015).

Conclusion
This report has taken into consideration the SINTEF organisation, with regards to lean management. A focused study has been made about the different leadership styles and a best suited lean leadership has been assigned to the organisation. Accordingly, effective traits required by the team members under the lean project manager has been mapped down, keeping in terms of the values of the organisation. SINTEF Leadership assignments are being prepared by our management assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable university assignment help service.

Appropriate tools and techniques pertaining the lean management have been listed and described as per the departmental needs. These techniques will enable the organisation to achieve efficiency and the desired results it has been aiming for. The process will take an appropriate period of time to be effective, but with the help of constant hard work and effective management, it will prove to be a success.

References
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