The defense industry is the place where people have no right to misalignments. Consequently, the company should have a strong and effective management team to achieve the planned goals with no right for mistake. As one of the largest in capitalization and biggest in the scale of operation companies, Lockheed Martin’s leadership is worth fundamental managerial analysis. In fact, the leadership team has its most significant power in their specialization (Cooper-Duffy et al., 2017). Strictly divided tasks, combined with an overall understanding of the general business matter, are the key factors of Lockheed Martin’s growth.
For instance, the current company’s CEO, James D. Taiclet, is a former U.S. airforce officer, which signifies that he profoundly understands the business specification (Lockheed Martin, n.d.). From a scientific management perspective, this factor plays a critical role when managing human capital effectively by balancing the workers’ number and focusing on certain industry divisions (Butchibabu et al., 2016). The analyzed team has almost all characteristics of effective teams. For example, when it comes to decision-making, only one person takes the risk of the projects’ outcomes: the CEO.
On the other hand, the team risk-taking characteristic is absent due to the previous factor of one decisive person and business specification: the risk should be as low as possible. When it comes to goals setting, the company has a standard procedure of a large-capitalized company, which is aggravated by the U.S. army regulation since the government is the main company’s client. However, the leadership team has effectively used this drawback for their profit. Instead of waiting for the approval, company’s management uses the excess time to analyze the competitor’s products and strategies. Consequently, when the project is approved, the management team adjusts its own products to the current market situation without waiting for extra time for double approval.
Finally, this innovative process might be considered as one of the key success factors of Lockheed Martin. This is since many cutting-edge products become accessible to the market faster than competitors’ ones. In addition, this strategy is combined with lowering the risk since the main projects’ details are thoroughly verified by the government entity, which enforces the significance of the goals-setting strategy.
References
Butchibabu, A., Sparano-Huiban, C., Sonenberg, L., & Shah, J. (2016). Implicit coordination strategies for effective team communication. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 58(4), 595–610. Web.
Cooper-Duffy, K., & Eaker, K. (2017). Effective team practices: interprofessional contributions to communication issues with a parent’s perspective. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26(2), 181–192. Web.
Lockheed Martin. (2021). Leadership and corporate governance. Web.