Dong Mingzhu outline

 Page one

The person chosen for this paper is Dong Mingzhu, who is one of the most influential businesswomen in the world.  According to Ho (2019), Dong Mingzhu is the current chairperson of Gree Group since 2012 and the author of the book titled ‘Regretless Pursuit.’ Dong Mingzhu has worked in Gree Electric air conditioner manufacturing company for many years at different levels. She started as a normal salesperson in the year 1990 and was later promoted to the position of sales head by the year 1994. Two years later, Dong Mingzhu was again promoted to the position of deputy president of the company and later to the president company after five years.

I choose Dong Mingzhu because she has a motivating track record in her career despite her fierce leadership character. She is popularly known as an iron lady, as referred by the New York times because of her aggressive approach towards issues affecting the company. She is highly visionary and long term focused. Many describe her as being ruthless to anyone who she believes is hindering her from achieving the long-term goals. She highly criticized her competitors, who she claimed were offering low quality air conditioners to the customers. She is also on record confronting opposing stakeholders to sell their stocks if they did not believe in the company’s decision.

Nevertheless, Dong Mingzhu’s hard work and courage make her still very influential and a model leader. Dong is said to have taken no off since she joined Gree Electronic. She was able to reverse the company sales from a deferred payment model to a cash basis. By 1997, the company’s accounts did not record any receivables. During her first years of career at Gree electronic, she turned Anhui from being the most impoverished performing region to the most profitable region for the company within one and a half years.

Page 2

Many things are compelling and admirable about this leader, regardless of the fierce leadership approach that motivated me to study about her. First, the rate at which the company transformed under her leadership was highly competitive and incomparable to other leaders in the industry. Within eighteen months, Dong was able to transform the least performing region into the best performing region. This improvement in performance is a clear indication that she is hardworking and creative.

Within three years, upon her appointment as the head of the sales department, Dong was able to eliminate credit sales to cash sales a move that worked positively on the company’s profitability (Ho, 2019). Within a few years, the company’s stock price increased exponentially. Her innovativeness and aggressiveness much compel me. She not only transformed Gree Electronic bust also challenged the whole industry placing the company at the leading position not only in China but as a world leader. Under her leadership, Gree Company ventured into the smartphone industry, solar energy, electric cars, recycling, and robot technology industries. Dong played a significant role in enhancing the growth and expansion of the company through strategic alliances.

Due to her significant influence, her leadership style and management tenacity have attracted many scholars who have gained much interest in writing about her leadership traits and bibliography. I found her bibliography well written and highly compelling. The information written about her is realistically written and motivating to read. She is a model leader; many people would wish to enumerate.

Page three

The paper will affirm the business strategies employed by Dong as they have proved to be highly effective. I choose to affirm the strategies employed by the leader because her leadership style also abides by the four frames of business perspective, as described in the Bolman model. In my perspective, Dong’s management and leadership strategy abides reflects her concern on the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic perspective. Based on the structural frame, Dong laid out effective strategies for the company, such as introducing online payment modes, transforming credit sales to cash sale basis to boost the company’s financial performance, among others. According to Bolman and Deal (1991), the structural frame focuses on creating systems and appropriate procedures that work for a company. Dong introduced working systems for the company.

On the human resource frame, there is no much-documented evidence that Dong placed a high value on people’s needs in the workplace, but it is obviously true that she could not have achieved such success without a supportive and motivated workforce. According to Gerhart and Fang (2015), organization improved performance is an indication of a motivated workforce. Motivation is innate and cannot be forced but is induced. As mentioned above, Dong succeeds in expanding the product portfolio for the company in diverse sectors, and this is an indication that she cared for people’s needs who, in return, worked hard to make the laid strategies successful.

According to Palmer, Walls, Burgess, and Stough (2001), an effective leader can harmonize the interests of all the departments in an organization and align them towards a common goal. Dong’s success in leadership comes, as a result, her ability to work together with the other departments in the organization and have them, lender, sufficient support over the initiatives put forth by the management.

Dong has perhaps done best in creating a vision for Gree Electrical company by providing a sense of direction for the company to follow. She has, therefore, successfully incorporated the fourth frame of symbolism, as described in Bokmal’s model.

  Page four

In my opinion, the choice of my leader is authentic. Dong is a talented as well as a model leader. Based on the available biography about the leader, Dong exhibits a majority of the traits of a leader, as described by Covey. She is proactive as she takes personal initiatives to solve an existing problem. In her career, Dong has always challenged the whole industry with a new idea and ways of doing things rather than waiting for the company to get to a crisis. She has always been ahead of time and lays out progressive strategies to put the company at the forefront.

Her leadership has been based on long-term goals, which are achieved in a systematic approach. Dong does not entertain distractions while pursuing the long-term goal, a clear indication of her focus trait. Though she exhibits a tough leadership approach, Dong also respects the ideas of other people as long as she does not consider them as distractions. She adopts a positive attitude towards problem-solving and works well with other stakeholders. The ability to work together with other team members has helped the company gain the advantage of synergy, which has enabled it to succeed in most of its initiatives. The great transformation the company has enjoyed since she started her career at Gree group has been a continuous process for improvement of systems and procedures.

Dong share similar leadership traits with other successful leaders such as Jack ma of Alibaba and Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. Like these leaders, she is passionate about business, focused, has a positive attitude on business, and is tenacious. I would love to work for Gree group under the leadership of Dong since I support her leadership style, and I believe that she is likely to take the company even to greater heights as the current Chairperson of Gree Group board.

References

Lee Bolman and Terry Deal (1991). Four-Frame Model – Bolman and Deal. Available from https://www.businessballs.com/leadership-models/four-frame-model-bolman-and-deal/

David Ho (2019). Meet ‘iron lady’ Dong Mingzhu, the Chinese businesswoman behind Gree Electric. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3042278/meet-iron-lady-dong-mingzhu-chinese-businesswoman

Palmer, B., Walls, M., Burgess, Z., & Stough, C. (2001). Emotional intelligence and effective leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.

Gerhart, B., & Fang, M. (2015). Pay, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, performance, and creativity in the workplace: Revisiting long-held beliefs. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 2(1), 489-521.