Jack Ma's leadership communication and organizational culture at Alibaba

¶ … Leadership of Jack Ma

Communication and Leadership

As a leader, one of the major distinctions of Jack Ma is communication within his leadership. According to Lussier and Achua (n.d.), failure to listen is a fundamental reason why leaders fail. Leaders have to understand the objective of the message, when and where the message should be transmitted and who should receive that particular message. Jack Ma has the capacity to simply and clearly communicate the business vision of his technology company in basic terms. As a former teacher, Jack Ma\'s talent as a communicator and strategic planner encouraged him to pursue his aspiration for wider impact (Sterling, 2016). Jack Ma exhibits remarkable communication components in his capacity to employ analogy to reach out to his intended audience. For instance, he states, \"Ebay is a shark in the ocean. We are a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we will lose. But if we fight in the river, we will win.\" In this manner, Jack Ma is able to appeal to the attention of the audience and inspires belief.

A major element of what makes him to be such an efficacious leader is his capacity to employ aspects such as comparison and the \"rule of three\" to aid the audience understand and conform with his vision (Sterling, 2016). In addition, Lussier and Achua (n.d) outline that to augment one\'s performance and make strides in an organization, a leader has to be receptive to feedback, both positive and negative. This should be perceived as a chance to improve and become better. According to Lutz (2015), initial rejections in career aided Jack Ma to become creative. Subsequent to establishing \'Alibaba\' in 1998, Jack Ma faced a great deal of criticism because the company lacked a platform for ease in commercial transactions. In turn, this propelled Jack Ma to establish his own payment program, referred to as Alipay, which has become very successful in the present day enabling payment transfers of various currencies between global buyers and retailers (Lutz, 2015).

Recognizing and Leveraging Organizational Culture and Climate

Organizational culture takes defines the personality of an organization, which consists of assumptions, values and artifacts. Values are social philosophies, objectives, and standards held within a culture to have worth. Secondly, norms are the unwritten regulations that guide members of an organizational culture of their expectations in a wide range of circumstances. Lastly, artifacts are perceptible, substantial, and audible remains of behaviour grounded in cultural norms, values, and suppositions (MGMT 560, n.d.). The corporate culture instituted by Jack Ma for Alibaba encompasses the values and beliefs of fair treatment. All personnel in the organization are treated equally as members of the Alibaba family unit. In particular, all members of staff have the right to convey their honest opinions and to offer criticism to the different departments within the company as well as the executive board via a dedicated internal communication platform.

This level of transparency and acceptance of criticism is one of the major reasons why Jack Ma is perceived as an exceptional leader enabling tremendous growth of the organization by attaining new conceptions and constructive advice. In addition, in this manner, Jack Ma\'s established culture makes it personnel have a sense of worth and comfortability to express their individual opinions which give rise to an engaging labour force setting and more inventive ideas (Shao, 2014). A third feature of the corporate culture is a sense of family unity. The mass wedding being one instance, Alibaba has taken care to provide family-like support to its workforce. The company fashioned its own mortgage fund called \"iHome\" in 2011, enabling workers to apply for interest-free loans for property down payments (Shao, 2014). This portrays Jack Ma as a leader that is caring for the welfare and happiness of his personnel.

Leadership climate encompasses the values and perceptions held by members of an organization owing to leadership actions. Some of the positive climate indicators include prevailing trust within the organization, open and candid communications as well as teamwork, fair play and information sharing (MGMT 560, n.d). Jack Ma has instilled a philosophy that believes in teamwork. Different from companies in the Western world and Silicon Valley, Alibaba is big on teamwork, which encompasses frequent outings and games. This creates a kind of unity and focus in the fraternity, which propels them to work even harder, have job satisfaction, and enjoy the workplace setting (Clark, 2016).

Developing High Performing Teams

Teamwork is delineated as the capacity to work in tandem toward a mutual vision. It includes the capability to direct personal achievements towards organizational aims. It is the drive that permits common individuals to achieve uncommon outcomes (MGMT 560, n.d). The key role played by a leader with regard to teamwork is to influence individuals by providing purpose, direction, and motivation and at the same time functioning cogently to achieve the mission and enhancing the organization. There are four stages of developing a team, which comprise of performing, norming, storming and forming. Jack Ma has been able to develop an efficacious and successful team in Alibaba. In particular, the company develops functional teams. In delineation, a functional team is a group of employees that belong to the similar functional department, for instance, marketing, human resources, research and development (MGMT 560, n.d).

Having opened offices in Silicon Valley, Alibaba is keen on creating cross-functional teams. In particular, the company has been hiring personnel from other corporations such as Microsoft, who are developers. The individuals forming these teams specialize in data mining, machine knowledge, disseminated computing in addition to hardcore software engineers to improve the working of Alibaba, what is now regarded as the biggest e-commerce platform in the globe (NGRUPPUSOBLOG, 2016). However, in these teams, there is flattened hierarchy where the personnel are free with each other and have nicknames, which increases a sense of bonding in the employees (Shao, 2014).

Application of Conclusions