[Big Fish]03月11日Issue70--By swolf54

swolf54UID: 2421931

TOPIC: ISSUE70 - "In any profession-business, politics, education, government-those in power should step down after five years. The surest path to success for any enterprise is revitalization through new leadership."


Leadership is always a key fact in determining an enterprise's success or failure. How to maintain an effective leadership to help the enterprises make continues success in the fierce competitive market? It is contended that the surest path the success for those enterprises is revitalization through new leadership. The argument goes that, in any professions, those in power should step down after five years. As far as I'm concerned, though leadership's revitalization do helps to bring new ideas and renovation to those companies, it may be not suitable to all situations. In order words, we should consider this problem on a case-by-case basis.
Admittedly, truly because of the revitalization can many enterprises gain succeed or revitalize from the edge of bankruptcy. Since new leadership often brings new management idea, new enterprise strategy, new experience, and new working styles, it can renovate some obsolete working styles or past operating systems, which may have become not suitable for the development of enterprises any more. Take an iron factory in my town as a vivid example, since the old manufactory function and outdated management idea, the iron factory met many problems and fell into financial crisis, then almost went bankrupt last year. In order to save the factory, the shareholders decided to hire new managers and officials to replicate old ones. The new leadership brought new ideas of manufactory and new management to the factory, which successfully increased the production amount and solve the financial crisis. Similar situations also occur in other areas and those cases illustrate us that new leadership do contributes in an enterprise' success.
However, revitalization through new leadership not sufficiently indicates those in power should step down after five years. In fact, a too short leadership may do harm rather than good to enterprises. We should notice that revitalization of five years means the effective working time for every leader is just five years. Nevertheless, compared with the life of most enterprises, five year is so short a time that it may influence little to the enterprises. Thus the leaders may don’t have enough time to carry out their policies in the enterprises. What's more, besides short-term goals, every enterprise has long-term strategies. Without a constant leadership, how could the enterprises keep on pursuing their long-term strategy? Maybe every new leadership has his own plan about the long-term development of enterprises, but those plans will soon be revised by their successors. From this perspective of view, maybe five year is too short for the leaderships to successfully lead the enterprises.
Finally, revitalization of leadership is not always fitting to all companies. There are lots of companies that succeeded with long-term leaderships. Because the long leaders get better understood of their own enterprises and they are often more respected by the employees, they sometimes may advance the relatively unstable new leaderships. For example, Microsoft is under the long-term leadership of Bill Gates; Apple is under the long-term leadership of Jobs; Alibaba is under the long-term leadership of Ma Yun. All of those successful enterprises enlighten us that long-term leadership may also lead to the success of enterprises.
In conclusion, since revitalization and endure leaderships both have their merits and short points, they should be adopt according to the different situation of various enterprises. There is not a black or white choice satisfying the need of whole industry.