Guest Lecture Report - Essay Example

Guest Lecture Report David Morthland was employed as a VP Human Resources at Willamette Industries, a company specializing in forest products like varied types of paper, packaging materials, lumber and plywood. As per the information and data facilitated by David Morthland, Willamette comes out as a highly successful company that evinced exceptional growth and profitability over a limited time span. Being a labor intensive company, the leadership and team work concepts presented by David Morthland could readily be deemed to be pragmatic, in consonance with the ground realities of the industry he belonged to and deserving of apt attention and consideration.

Though David Morthland delved on a range of nuances associated with leadership and team work, yet the pivotal concept from which his entire lecture ensued forth was the fact that Willamette happened to be a company that not only consciously selected the organizational culture it owed allegiance to, but the overall teamwork and leadership philosophy of the company originated from this carefully chosen sense of organizational culture. It was not only that Willamette encouraged teamwork, but the salient elements underlying the organizational culture like a vertically integrated set up, decentralized decision making, commitment to job responsibility, dedication to quality and customer service, and a concerted growth strategy made teamwork an innate aspect of the success coveted by the organization.

The other interesting thing that David discussed was the benefits of empowering employees, especially at the operational level. The power and the capacity to have a say in the larger organizational strategy and planning not only made the planning more practical and in consonance with the ground realities, but also allowed for an optimal exploitation of the human resources in the organization, assuring that each issue gets resolved at the shop floor, without requiring the time and attention of the senior managers.

While discussing leadership, David Morthland touched upon two imperatives that are recognizing the salient attributes that a leader intends to inculcate in his followers, which in the case of Willamette happened to be attitude, commitment, collective input and strength, and the evincing of specific behaviors by a leader that accrued the followers’ commitment, trust and loyalty. This was indeed insightful in the sense that it made me understand the fact that a leader needs to be clear about as to what one expects from one’s followers and what one’s followers expect from one, to be really effective.

The other great thing that I picked up from David Morthland’s lecture was the effectiveness of encouraging empowerment, delegation, autonomy and collaboration in labor intensive industries. It is but natural to understand that in a labor intensive company, a centralized and autocratic approach not only gives way to hurdles at varied levels on a daily basis, but may stymie the long term organizational goals and success. One reason that set Willamette apart from the other companies in the same industry and helped it achieve an exceptional growth and profitability was the willingness to inculcate autonomy, decentralization and empowerment at all levels within the organization, are they happened to be team selection, designing management development programs, expanding business, managing conflicts or asserting commitment to organizational values.