AIB (MBA) 2015 Report for the subject "Leadership" by A.R.W.M.M.D.Rohana

1. LEADERSHIP
A.R.W.M.M.D.Rohana Kumara
B.Sc (Sri Lanka), MBCS (UK), MBA (Aus-Reading)
Australian Institute of Business
Master of Business Administration
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2. Executive Summary #
Information technology and software development sector is one of the rapidly emerging
industry in the world. Due to several research and development most of the new products in
every field come up with software backbone to support their rich user experience. Now world is
moving to era of internet consumables and electronic transaction along with the internet of
things (IOT), smart phones and etc. Since 2000 IT sector experienced there was a huge gap to
fill to cater the huge demand for the IT and software solutions. Every company is moving to
electronic transaction world. To fill that gap several software companies were started, some of
them were succeeded and some got the opportunity to move up the ladder and become stable
IT giants in the world.
Zone24x7 Incorporation is one of the leading software development company in Sri Lanka and
United States, which was founded on 2003 by Llavan Fernando. Initially zone24x7 had 8
employees and they deliver software solutions for the US and Canadian clients. Over the years
Llavan’s leadership and past experience help zone24x7 to find more clients in the US and
Canadian region. Not only that his vision diversify the company profile from software
development to most advanced technological areas like robotics, internet of things, hardware
devices, mobile application development, quality assurance and finally research and
development. Over the last 12 years Mr. Llavan’s leadership help to grow the organization from
8 employees to 250 employees in 2015. Zone has earned great reputation and awards from all
over the world because of the great leadership and client focus vision of our CEO. The objective
of this assignment will be to identify and analyse the leadership qualities of the CEO of
zone24x7 and give suggestions for further enhancement of those qualities to reach future
corporate goals.
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3. Contents
Contents.......................................................................................................................................3
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................4
2. Background of leader..............................................................................................................5
2.1 Education and work experience............................................................................................5
2.2 Leadership capabilities..........................................................................................................5
2.2 Situational factors..................................................................................................................6
3. Qualities and behaviours of good leader................................................................................9
3.1 Action, observation and reflection model.............................................................................9
3.2 French & Raven’s five bases of power...............................................................................10
3.3 Influence tactics...................................................................................................................11
4. How do I perform better than current CEO of the company.................................................13
5. Conclusion.............................................................................................................................15
References.................................................................................................................................16
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4. 1. Introduction
Zone24x7 Incorporation was founded on 2003 by Mr. Llavan Fernando and over lase 12 years it
became one of the leading software development company in Sri Lanka and United States.
Headquarters situated in San Jose, United States and has advanced technology centre in
Colombo Sri Lanka. Over 250 top notch industry experts are currently working at zone24x7 and
they deliver the world class technological solutions to their clients. Zone24x7 is one of the few
companies in Sri Lanka which develop robotics, internet of things solutions and hardware
devices. Because of the engineering excellence of the solutions zone24x7 won several awards
and also several patents were under their belt too.
All these success was achieved within decade of time because of the strong leadership and
vision of Mr. Llavan Fernando and he was supported by his wife Mrs. Sow-Chin (Chief Financial
Officer) and son Mr. Neschae Fernando (Vice President of Strategy and Technology). It is really
important to study and understand the secret behind the success of the company leadership to
become multimillion dollar Software Company within decade of years. Understanding of the
leadership qualities and tactics will help for us to upgrade our knowledge and groom ourselves
to become the next level great leaders in this field to give our best output to the industry to
grow fast.
In this assignment I will determine the reasons for the success of zone24x7 Inc due to
leadership qualities of the Mr. Llavan Fernando and suggest some areas that he need to focus
on to gain more success in future. Not only that, through this assignment I will explain how I
could lead the zone24x7 if I become CEO and how to make more impact to the organization,
employees and the clients to meet their expectations thorough engineering and value
excellence.
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5. 2. Background of leader
Every successful leader has some level of education, experience and exposure gain through
both formal and informal education along with the years of hard working. It is really important
to study about those factors about the leader to understand his level of expertise to overcome
the toughest situation in his career and make successful story for the organization.
2.1 Education and work experience
Mr. Fernando obtained his B.Sc in Electrical Engineering at University of Reading United
Kingdom in 1975 specializing cybernetics. Then he obtained his M.Sc in Instrumentation and
Systems in the same university few years later.
Mr. Fernando has over 32 years of research and development, mobile computing and
successful management experience. Mr. Fernando has held positions at TeleSensory (1982-
1994), Data Products, Wilkinson-Sword (U.K.) and Tinsley (U.K.). He served as CTO for Inforite
and Strategic Business Development Manager at Wyse Technology (1995-1996). Mr. Fernando
was a co-founder / CEO of @pos Transaction Systems from 1996 to 2001, which was acquired
by Symbol Technologies, Inc (later known as Crossvue) a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola
Inc. Mr. Fernando also co-founded Leef Technology and FelMac Research, leading technology
companies.
Then in year 2003 he became Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zone24x7 Inc. With over
30 years of broad ranging experience in research & development, mobile computing and
business management, Mr. Fernando is responsible for the company’s overall strategic
direction.
2.2 Leadership capabilities
Educational background and the several decade of years of industry exposure gave him lot of
knowledge and capabilities as a leader. Because of having such valuable asset he was able to
build zone24x7 from scratch and day by day he help to grow the organization with the help of
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6. knowledge and capabilities that he gained over the years putting in to practice. We can identify
some of his great leadership capabilities discuss below, which directly impacted to the success
of zone24x7.
• Influence and lead the employees through learning from example and experience.
• Listening to employees and open for the discussion.
• Encourage employees to embrace a wide array of leading edge technologies and tools to
build the technical competence.
• Facilitate employees with latest hardware and software resources to get par with the
latest technologies.
• Provide and facilitate different kind of trainings for each employee to groom their self to
next level.
• Building credibility and trust with internal employees as well as clients.
2.2 Situational factors
Leaders should drive the followers to the defined goal under any circumstances by using
different tactics and should help the followers to adopt the situation to meet the goal. Mr.
Llavan is that kind of a leader who react according to the situation. He evaluate the situation
well and prepare the followers to overcome and meet the goal with providing guidance and
support with providing best resources to meet the organizational goals.
Following situational factors we can see from Mr. Llavan’s journey with the zone24x7 which
help the organization as well as employees to overcome different critical situation. Not only has
that he helped to groom the employees to the next level of their career depending on the
situation that they face in their work.
• Goal setting for the each senior employee in the organization.
• Provide constructive feedback to the employees depending on the situation.
• Delegation of the project tasks with US and Sri Lankan teams based on their expertise.
• Negotiation and problem solving with internal employees and client to meet their
expectations.
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7. • Development and marketing planning.
• Create opportunities to come up with own products to compete the IT world along with
service providing to the clients.
Above mentioned situational factors help zone24x7 to grow 250+ employees started from 8 in
2003. Based on the requirement Mr. Llavan change the architecture of the organization to face
the situation strongly and survive in the industry to generate more revenue through
engineering excellence, quality software solutions to the client.
Because of that zone24x7 has able to diversify into many verticals which includes Hi-Tech,
Government/non-profit, Retail, Logistics and Transportation industries. Today the knowledge
zone24x7 has obtained over the course of these 12 years are captured into 8 Centres of
Excellence due to great leadership.
• Complex Connected & Smart Systems
• Remote Monitoring & Management
• Omni channel Retail
• SDKs and System's Integration
• Secure Payment Devices
• Independent Testing & Validation
• Secure Document Management
• Technology Proof of Concepts
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8. Figure 2.1 Organization Structure
Project Team
Source – Authors Work
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Software Architect
Tech Lead
Software Engineer
QA Lead
QA Engineers
Project Manager
VP Marketing VP Engineering VP Finance
CEO
VP Strategy &
Technology
HOD DevelopmentHOD Quality Assurance HOD Project Management

9. 3. Qualities and behaviours of good leader
It is really important that understand the qualities and behaviours of good leader. Those good
qualities could help us to understand our weaknesses about our leadership and give some
indication to improve the areas that we need to have as a good leader. In this chapter I discuss
about the qualities and behaviours which good leader must have to lead his team to the
expected goal and the vision.
3.1 Action, observation and reflection model
Leadership development is enhanced when the experience involves three different processes;
• Action – what did you do?
• Observation – What happened?
• Reflection – How do you feel about now?
Source – http://www.slideshare.net/guesteb14d2/ppt-ch-3
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10. If an employee acts but doesn’t observe the consequences of his actions of reflect on their
significance, then it makes some sense to say he has learned through an experience. This helps
to make experience become key to developing employee’s leadership ability.
3.2 French & Raven’s five bases of power
In 1959 French and Raven come up with this theory, which help to understand how you can
acquire power and effectively exercise influence over the followers. Each five bases of power
discussed below.
Figure 3.1 sources of leader power in the Leader-Follower-Situation framework
Source – Authors Work
• Expert Power
This is the power of knowledge. Some people can influence others through their relative
expertise in particular field. Followers can have more expert power than leader and
leader should know how to respect that and use it for the betterment for the group.
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11. • Referent Power
This is refers to potential influence one has due to the strength of the relationship
between the leader and the follower based on the loyalty and the friendship. Leader
should manage the level of referent power which follower to not to go over the leader.
• Legitimate Power
This is a function of the situation in that it depends on the person’s formal position in
the organization. This is also called as position power which leader could use to
determine goals, make decision, assign tasks and allocate resources.
• Reward Power
This involves the potential to influence others due to one’s control over desired
resources. This is related to legitimate power because it is the ability to distribute
positive or negative reward so leader should use this proper way.
• Coercive Power
This is opposite of reward power, it is that relates to the capacity of the leader to
influence through administrating sanctions or removing positive events. It is the ability
to control others through the fear of punishment or the loss of values outcomes.
3.3 Influence tactics
Influential tactics are the actual behaviours used to change behaviours, attitudes or opinions of
influence others.
• Rational persuasion - use of logical argument or factual information and evidence to
influence others.
• Inspirational appeals – focuses on an appeal to emotions and designed to arouse
enthusiasm.
• Consultation – engaging others in the planning process to engender commitment to
change strategies.
• Ingratiation – using flattery and other tactics to create a good mood in the target
person.
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12. • Personal appeals – appealing for support or action from another person on the grounds
of your relationship/friendship with them.
• Exchange – offering a favour to another person in exchange for a favour in return.
• Coalition tactics – seeking the aid or active support of others to influence a target
person.
• Pressure tactics – treats of negative outcomes to encourage a person to confirm to a
desired approach or behaviour.
• Legitimate tactics – making requests based on authority position.
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13. 4. How do I perform better than current CEO of the company
According to the assignment scope in this chapter I’m going to discuss about the ways that I can
perform better than the current CEO of the organization using the leadership theories which I
learned in the subject.
As a leader Mr. Llavan is not much interact with the lower level employees of the organization.
But he regularly interact with senior management and do strategic planning for the
organizational path. Therefore as a leader I would like to interact more with every level of
employee in the organization and feel their emotions before making decisions. As a friendly
leader I would like to continue the current good practices that Mr. Llavan initiated and
introduce following new practices for the betterment of the organization as well as me.
• Guide the junior level managers to become successor in their unit.
Not only senior managers (Directors) but also junior level managers (Project Managers,
Tech Leads) are involve with the organization overall performance with managing
several associates under them. Therefore it is really important that each junior level
manager’s involvement for the decision making and help them to groom for their next
level to become successor of their unit. Creating pressure on them to become more
energetic and skilful set of people who are willing to take the higher responsibilities.
• Create friendly and comfortable working environment and culture within in the
organization.
Most of the employees are working longer period of hours within the organization to
complete their assigned tasks. Current environment of the organization is not much
interactive and help them to relax much. Relaxation will refresh their mind and help to
improve their productivity. Therefore as a leader I would like to change the interior of
the organization which close to nature and provide some sport facilities and music
instruments to refresh their minds and make them love to work long period of time.
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14. • Rewards for the greater achievements
In zone24x7 our associated develop various new proof of concepts, proof of
technology’s, innovations and get patients for them. Those kind of greater
achievements are not properly valued currently. Therefore as a leader I would like to
motivate those high profile employees and need to keep them for the future
innovations too. Therefore I would like to give rewards for their achievements and
motivate others also to become like them will give more advantage in future with
innovations.
• Goal setting for the each employee and department
Each leader as well as each follower should have goals to achieve. In an organization
those individual goals should align with the corporate or the organizational goals.
Therefore as a leader I should visit to each employee under me and ask about their
future goals and try to align them with their career and with the corporate goals which
they could achieve more in future and add value to their life.
• Using pressure tactics to get the best out of employees.
It is really important that creating pressure on the employees in a positive way to get
their maximum output and efficiency of working. One example is that, give
points/reward to the developers who have less than 1% defect count for every 1000
lines of the code of the developer. Which will lead every developer to code in standard
way to minimize their errors.
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15. 5. Conclusion
Using the theories and the examples mentioned above, I can conclude that everyone could
have leadership qualities in their blood and also it could sharpen up with the proper
educational background. All great leaders had both educational background as well as the years
of experience which help them to guide and motivate their followers to meet the goals.
Leaders should have set qualities and behaviours that would help them to motivate and lead
their followers to meet expected goals. Each leadership quality will help the leader to have
strong skill set like;
• Clear written, verbal and nonverbal communication
• Negotiation
• Influence tactics
• Using power and authority
• Situation handling
• Motivation
• Lead by example
• Relationship handling
• Understand the followers and be with them
• Create opportunities for the followers to grow
Because of the above skills leaders become famous among the followers and they are willing to
do anything for their leader at any cost. Reason for that is they know their leader take care of
them and help them to groom for the next level in their career and the life.
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16. References
https://www.linkedin.com/company/109745?trk=prof-exp-company-name (LinkedIn Company
Profile - zone24x7 INC.)
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/llavan-fernando/0/143/5b7 (LinkedIn Profile - Llavan Fernando)
Hughes, R, Ginnett, R & Curphy, G 2015, Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience, 8th
edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York (ISBN: 9780077862404)
McCleskey J 2014, ‘Situatioal, Transformational, and Transactional Leadership and Leadership
Development’, Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, vol. 5, no 2, pp. 117-130.
Singh, P 2013, ‘A collegial approach in understanding leadership as a social skill’, International
Business and Economics Research Journal, vol. 12, iss. 5, pp. 489-502.
Beer, M & Finnstrom, M 2012, ‘Learning by Design: developing an engine for transforming your
company’, leadership in Action, vol. 29, iss. 5, pp. 3-7.
Pihlak, U & Alas, R 2012, ‘Leadership style and employee involvement during organizational
change’, Journal of Management and Change, vol. 29, iss. 1, pp. 46-66.
http://www.slideshare.net/guesteb14d2/ppt-ch-3
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