Leadership

When we use the word "leader," we mean the person who is in charge of a team, organization, or business in every way. The task of delegating to or persuading a group to carry out an imperative mandate falls on leaders (Khoshhal and Guraya 2016). In essence, a leader motivates their team members to concentrate their efforts on producing positive results for the company by presenting a road map to the intended goal. Therefore, in order to lead their followers to a desired outcome, leaders need to possess a certain set of special traits. Because of this, many leaders adopt various leadership philosophies. This document attempts to carry out a brief appraisal of the leadership qualities exempted by Dion Weisler. Dion Weisler boasts of a high executive resume as the chief executive officer and president of the administrative section of Hewlett Packard's leadership. As a result, this report highlights the unique leadership skills employed by Dion at HP’s critical business points, query two distinct decision-making techniques and provide recommendations on possible methods for improving his decision making for improved outcomes for the company.
Dion Weisler, aged 47 years, is one of the executive leaders in Hewlett Packard Company (HP) (Baumann 2014). Dion was born in Australia by parents from humble backgrounds. His father benefited from informal education on apprenticeship and developed a skill in watchmaking. Dion’s father proceeded in building up his skills and managed to come up with better chains of businesses that manufacture and supply men’s apparel. Dion’s mother was a teacher by profession, a career she put into a halt upon giving birth. The parents played a significant role in imparting knowledge and offering entrepreneurial advice on Dion’s family, therefore, contributing mainly to Dion’s development of proper leadership and management skills.
Weisler studied at Monash University in Australia where he succeeded to hold a bachelor’s degree in computing. He has had working experiences with Acer for 11 years and Lenovo Company, where he got skills on the proper mastering of supply chains (Bort 2017). He later on secured a job at Hewlett Packard Company in 2012, where he is receiving praises for boosting the company’s performance by maximizing profits in the low-end personal computer business. Dion Weisler currently holds the position of chief executive officer at Hewlett Packard inc. (Vanian 2017).
The former Hewlett Packard was an organization that traded a large variety of hardware machinery such as computers, calculators, and printers and offers software services such as office web application, to largescale enterprises-that includes the government and sectors of education and health, medium size enterprises and small-scale business across industries. The HP organization was brought into operation by David Packard and William Redington Hewlett in the year 1939 and commenced with the manufacturing of several electronic testing machines. The Hewlett Packard organization apparently offers its services at multinational levels and is located at Palo Alto headquarters in California.
Bill Hewlett and David Packard were oblivious of how much their convergence in thought would grow. Their dreams as college students at the start of the 20th century would later evolve into a multi-national enterprise. As technology giant owning a considerable market share, HP continues to offer reasonably competitive services and products in the now volatile technology industry. As at the close of business books by 2015, one of HP’s core sector estimated that it would end the year with about 105 billion dollars revenue (Hesseldahl 2015). While the tax indicated a 20 percent drop from the general annual income realized over the past 20 years, HP’s decline in competitiveness and revamping required a split of sectors (Darrow 2015). As a result of the slow decline in PC and printers experienced due to the renewed competition brought about by mobile devices, HP’s president of the executive arguably must have made the most terrible and most crucial decision in his life. His oversight, advisory, and implementation role before the split and during the division creates the backdrop against which this report is based on.

Transformational Leadership Qualities

Given HP’s apparent downfall following the collapse of sales on computers and printers experienced towards the end of 2015, Dion orchestrated a shake-up for the entire printing division. Before HP unveiling and commercializing its 3D printing service, the yet-to-be CEO announced a significant shakeup in core printing divisions as a way of improving their sustainability and promoting renewed drive and focus for the company (Hesseldahl 2015). As such, Dion needed to inspire HP's artistry to believe that they can blend in diverse capacities and manage to compete well in the market. As a result of the shakeup, HP’s renewed focus on printing saw them embrace 3-D printing and acquire Samsung printing. Mid this year, HP inc released bullish results in the revenue sector by recording a 7% revenue (Balakrishnan 2017). As highlighted, HP inc had not been performing “so well” and its shares hiked within 3 hours with its earnings beating global expectations.
Dion holds the idea that by changing leaders at critical business moments, divisions are more likely to improve their overall analysis of the market differently and at different times. In essence, different teammates, have different needs and different leadership responses beget mixed results from the teammates (Khoshhal and Guraya 2016). An internal memo sent to all HP staff emphasizes the specific experiences by crucial lead engineers and sector heads. Stephen, for example, features as a talented asset. Dion makes mention of his immense experience and knowledge and his potential in changing technologies into huge successes. By celebrating and affirming Stephen’s capability in his new designation, Dion proves as an affiliative leader as a way of nurturing high zeal and performance by Stephen (Hesseldahl 2015). While this mode of leadership style is not to be used as a standalone measure, (Benincasa 2012, p.1), there are a myriad of other supporting leadership styles.
Dion has been lucky in leading his staff to believe that profits realized amidst the stiff competition by rival companies were as a result of their resolve to quickly learn their newly acquired jurisdictions and market trends. Soon after the split by HP, the first half - HPE under its bullish cloud business, as led by its vice president Saar gillai seemed to be conquering the market reasonably well, as opposed to HP inc which was on a downward trend. A recent interview, however, on Dion’s view on the impending competition by Dell after its acquisition of another company had Dion mention that the split allowed HP to optimize all its services as opposed to the recent past which had the company handle an extensive portfolio (Vanian 2017). Given the small nature of the business, they did not “drop any ball” along the way.

Coaching Leadership

Following the downsizing of the mandate, HP inc’s Dion emerged as a coach of his own. By inspiring the team to venture into 2D and 3D printing, he had studied the market and impressed upon the company to take up 3D printing and compete in the industry (Gurdus 2017). In a mid-year interview recently aired on CNBC, Dion mentioned that “what made it cut for us is the ability to slice through the market and slice it further” (Balakrishnan 2017). In simpler terms, Dion’s ability to understand every aspect of the market by segmenting the markets and carrying out research on potential areas of growth have allowed HP inc, to grow. The gaming space, for example, provides an ideal space for HP inc’s targeted approach. Dion draws parallels to his mother’s “coffee cup” to his “locker room” leadership approach. By having product development team leads retreat in a room, discuss, agree and disagree on critical issues, Dion mentions that team members can understand that their contributions are equally significant; every decision requires a buy-in from the leadership for the entire company to make informed choices (Bryant 2017). Weisler takes cognizance of the critical role of disagreements and divergence of thought in every issue and believes making himself readily available to his staff improves communication and the overall quality of work for the company.
A pulse check on Weisler’s ability to relate to lab engineers, sector leaders, and customers indicates that he did well in inspiring innovative work. Dion maintains that his father advice to “use both ears and mouth in their proportions” allows him to take heed to the needs of the customers, who are his greatest market mouth-piece. As evidenced by his sentiments on an interview at CNBC studios, Dion believes that clients deserve the ability to use HP’s 3D printing technology to design and manufacture their products (Balakrishnan 2017). As such, Dion exhibits further affiliative leadership in his management style. Affiliative leaders create the sense of “people and clients come first.” As a coaching leader, Dion believes that there may be difficulties in getting divisions to rally behind a common path given the overall nature that large corporations have. His “tri-innovation wave” analogy requires that all segments of a system need to take cognizance of the prevailing circumstances, harness their capabilities and plan for opportunities in the future. Dion, therefore, believes that while different divisions of a corporation may have separate mandates, all strategies have to be shared with every member for maximum input and effort.

An Analysis of Decision-making Tools Used by Dion Weisler

Following the inevitable split, Dion’s first move in his executive position was to carry out a SWOT analysis of the company’s personnel. In his internal memo bearing the shake-up news, Dion highlights some staff, ranging from engineers to product development specialists and takes cognizance of their specific strength in creating products in their divisions. A SWOT analysis at the point of the split was a critical decision-making tool considering that the company was at a crucial stage and its survival hinged on its ability to read market trends, make important product development choices and to execute its mandate (Hamel 2017). Before his entry as the chief executive officer at HP, Weisler’s colossal task was to make lemonade out of a 20% revenue dive.
An additional positive decision Dion made was creating a more in-depth focus on its game market share. By dissecting the market needs and realizing the vantage position it had over its competitors, HP inc was able to surpass projected annual revenue and set out on a profit path.
The second decision-making tool Dion employed was more in-depth market research. Dion’s increased keenness in the research and development sector. Before HP’s split, Dion mentioned that “taking away R&D is ridding yourself of your limbs” (Nanjundeswaraswamy 2015). In essence, Weisler espouses the role that HP labs are doing in designing technologies which are later bound to be new products for the markets. Dion mentioned that he would be keen to preserve the research and development unit he was to inherit from the split and sighted huge successes depended on their ability to utilize the division fully.
HP inc’s entry into 3D technology and printing came after sustained efforts to cut through the 3D printing industry. Dion mentions that they had for an extended period wanted to “venture and disrupt the business through timely, cost-effective and quality standards” (Gurdus 2017). Dion believes that Johnson and Johnson are a strategically-placed organization and would provide the much-needed support in the industry as further potentials were yet to be discovered. Dion is additionally a hands-on leader who determines to follow through specific aspects that he deems essential. As evidenced by his interest and supervision on the development of HP’s mouse-free PC (Bort 2017), Dion would personally take the prototypes to his home and have engineers go through the device to note down tweaks.

Conclusion

The report takes cognizance of Dion’s unique leadership skills at HP. Notably, he believes in inspiring workmates into a mandate and bringing out the best in them through shared leadership. While it is difficult to provide thought leadership and direction to multi-national institutions, Dion has been able to understand that the staff at HP are qualified and may have unique perspectives in improving a product for the market. Dion has been successful in merging his knowledge on market analysis and sharing the intended goals through meetings. He arguably embodies most positive aspects of good leaders and not a manager.
The report takes cognizance of HP’s’ delicate position before and after the split. Dion’s leadership ability was tested considering the underlying circumstances. Given his ability to communicate a strategy and to oversee the transition, Dion’s actions point to the fact that leaders are in their innermost just as other workmates.

Recommendations

While Dion deserves many accolades for his prowess in converting a loss in market revenue to unprecedented profits, risks are essential in every business. As a leader, Dion needs to take many risks in entering uncharted business spaces and creating technology products that may prosper the market. Risks are however tricky and may require increased research into intended pathways. While risks are unwarranted by most corporations, they are often the only way for improved growth.
An additional area of improvement for Dion would be to delegate. While most bosses want to take complete control over work, leaders are better placed when they delegate owing to the simple fact that they have a lot of responsibility and may not be in a position to juggle everything at the same time.

References

Balakrishnan, A. (2017). HP shares pop on earnings beat, which CEO credits to focus on PC hot spots. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/24/hp-earnings-q2-2017-interview-with-ceo-dion-weisler.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Baumann, G. (2014). Meet HP split-off CEO Dion Weisler, who compares surfing to selling computers. [online] Silicon Valley Business Journal. Available at: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/10/05/meet-hp-split-off-ceo-dion-weisler-who-compares.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Bort, J. (2017). How Dion Weisler Rose To Become One Of HP's CEOs In Just Three Years. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-dion-weisler-rose-to-become-one-of-hps-ceos-in-just-three-years-2014-11?IR=T [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Bryant, A. (2017). Dion Weisler of HP Inc. on the Three Waves of Innovation. [online] The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/dion-weisler-of-hp-inc-on-the-three-waves-of-innovation.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Darrow, B. (2015). Bye-bye HP, it's the end of an era. [online] Fortune. Available at: http://fortune.com/2015/10/30/bye-bye-hp/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Gurdus, E. (2017). HP Inc. CEO: We got into 3-D printing to get ahead of the inevitable manufacturing disruption. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/hp-inc-ceo-we-got-into-3-d-printing-to-get-ahead-of-manufacturing.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Hamel, G. (2017). Decision-Making Tools & Techniques for Strategic Planning. [online] Chron. Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/decisionmaking-tools-techniques-strategic-planning-20890.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Khoshhal, K., Guraya, S., 2016. Leaders produce leaders and managers produce followers 37, 1061–1067.
Vanian, J. (2017). HP Inc.'s CEO Reflects on Dell, Apple, and Microsoft. [online] Fortune. Available at: http://fortune.com/2016/11/02/hp-ceo-dion-weisler-dell-microsoft/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].