Leadership is at the heart of the OAG model, being the key component for a successful operation. This component is focussed on the leadership process cascaded from CEO to team leader and deals with intangibles such as:

• Encouraging, coaching, motivating, and inspiring.
• Empowering, creating synergy, effecting change and transforming.

An effective leadership process enables development and growth. Manufacturing operations are usually responsible for 60-70% of total business costs made up of labour, materials and transport. Good leaders in operations positively affect gross margin performance by improving performance while driving down costs.

To improve leadership, our assessment enables the senior management team to set aspirational goals to be cascaded throughout the management hierarchy and determine the current status of the process. The Leadership component contains 6 sub-components which, when examined in detail, reveal the current condition of Leadership within the business and the benefits of achieving your aspirational goals. The Leadership component of the assessment helps you achieve performance through best practice. The result is a detailed action plan which will improve all aspects of Leadership in the business. Here are the 6 sub-components of Leadership:

The leadership process connects all levels of the business. In small businesses, the immediate requirements, standards and ideas can be communicated quickly and accurately. In larger hierarchical organisations, communication becomes more complex and the leaders must themselves develop to maintain speed and accuracy. An organised leadership process creates highly engaged and motivated teams that are happier and produce more.

An environment of collaboration is where individuals work together to optimise business performance. An inadequately defined leadership process creates silos with conflicting goals and styles of decision making resulting in poor information sharing and a lack of collective ownership and engagement. Teams that collaborate internally are more effective at competing externally as decisions are collective, faster and of a higher quality.

Leadership behaviour directly affects performance and is a major influence on staff morale, productivity and retention. In smaller businesses leadership is concentrated in a small team and behaviour is generally governed by the personality of the key figures. As businesses grow, behavioural inconsistency within the leadership team becomes more damaging. Creating and reinforcing the expectation for leadership behaviour and conduct is essential for sustaining performance.

Successful teams work towards a common objective and the business environment should be the same. The key is to communicate the direction the business is taking and to establish the expectation at both a functional and an individual level. This is achieved by aligning functional objectives and job roles and responsibilities to the business objectives and monitoring achievement to milestone goals.

Leaders throughout the organisation act as role models for its values and ethics. They motivate and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organisation. It is an attribute that influences the ongoing and sustainable success of the business. From making hiring decisions to determining how to handle a difficult customer, company core values can guide the decision-making process in a variety of situations. The leadership process should embody the values of the business by consistently applying them within their decision making. Identifying, communicating and reinforcing core values is essential in creating an environment with a recognised identity.