Leadership Issues Of WOW Sight And Sound

Leadership efficacy is essential and imperative in the context of organizational success, growth, development, and expansion. Leadership effectiveness is directly related to the effectiveness of management policies and leadership plays a crucial role in motivating the workforce, and influencing and encouraging the employees to get more engaged in the process of organizational decision-making. Such engagement eventually empowers employees, making them more prone to experience personal growth and development, which in turn, increases their productivity. And as employee productivity is the key to organizational success and as employee productivity can be considered as a positive outcome of leadership efficacy, leadership efficacy and organizational success can be considered as integrally related.

Moreover, any organization, despite having a highly skilled workforce potential of ushering innovation can fail to gain the competitive edge if it is devoid of effective and able leadership because good leadership is a precondition for integrating and implementing innovation through effective chance management and chance implementation. Hence, it can be said that leadership effectiveness is the key to organizational productivity and workforce productivity. So, taking into consideration the role of leadership in the context of ensuring the growth, development, and success of an organization, this report is going to discuss the leadership issues of WOW Sight and Sound, considering the fact that the importance of leadership in the organizational contexts can only be understood by analysing leadership issues of a particular organization. In this respect, the report will emphasize how ineffective leadership can lead to the decline and eventual closure of a business organization in a stark manner.

Company Background

Founded in 2003 and liquidated in 2012, Wow Sight & Sound was an online retail company under the parent company, Wow Superstores Pty Ltd. The company dealt in products like consumer electronics, video games, and movies. The company used to sell a wide range of electronic equipment, encompassing televisions, portable media player, mobile phones, navigation systems etc and it also used to sell products like DVDs, video game consoles, video game CDs, music CDs, etc, in the ocurse of entering into the online domain in 2008. The company, due to ineffective leadership, resulting in erroneous business decision making, was eventually placed in liquidation in 2012 after it failed to succeed in the development investment sector in which the company invested hugely (Zappone, 2012). The company used to have around 500 employees working across its 10 stores in Queensland, 2 stores in New South Wales, and 1 in Victoria, before getting liquidated and facing decline and eventual closure (Zappone, 2012).

Leadership Issues at Wow Sight & Sound

Ineffective leadership was the primary issue the ushered the downfall and eventual liquidation of Wow Sight & Sound. In this respect, the primary leadership issue that can be pointed out was lack of decision-making skill. The leadership at the company lacked the ability to integrate evidence-based practice in the course of leading the company towards the direction of success. It has been observed since the inception of business organizations that if effective leadership has the potential to position a start-up gradually as a market leader in the long run, ineffective leadership can bring down an industry leader to the verge of collapse. Leadership efficacy is the key to organizational success and this success is usually ensured through effective and rational decision-making based on evidence (Dell, 2012). In this respect, Wow Sight & Sound suffered from dearth. It has to be noted that the leadership at the company never had the experience of switching into another industry, and particularly to a high-risk industry like building industry. The leadership at Wow Sight & Sound was incapable of managing diversification of the business as it did not have the experience or skill to manage such an important business aspect. But despite lacking such management skill, the leadership at the company embarked on the process of investing in a completely different sector, resulting in error in decision-making, demonstrating lack of farsightedness at the very onset (Dell, 2012).

The primary problem with the leadership at Wow Sight & Sound was that it strived for diversification for the sake of amusing itself and not for the purpose of catering to the needs of the stakeholders and/or shareholders (Dell, 2012). The company was propelled into the building (and especially the hotel) industry without the leadership’s experience in effectively managing diversification and transformation, leading to a loss that cost them the company itself. Moreover, in the context of managing the supply chain and logistics effectively, the leadership at Wow Sight & Sound showed inefficacy. This can be argued by citing the fact that the leadership encouraged investing in stockpiling of products that were actually not being liked by customers anymore (Dell, 2012). It has to be noted that the leadership at the company failed to gather information from market research, which made it difficult for the leadership at Wow Sight & Sound to determine if it was right for the company to invest in stockpiling products that were gradually becoming obsolete in the context of consumer preferences (Dell, 2012). Such redundant stockpiling that was continued by the leadership of the company added to the causes the brought about the decline and eventual liquidation of Wow Sight & Sound.

Moreover, in terms of selecting the brand ambassadors too, the leadership at Wow Sight & Sound demonstrated inefficacy. It has to be noted that the leadership invested in brand ambassadors without ascertaining if such branding and promotion can actually draw more customers and leverage profit (Dell, 2012). Lack of research skill that was thoroughly demonstrated by the leadership of the company contributed largely to the wrong decision-making in the context of investing in marketing and promotion of the company, resulting in continual loss, which contributed largely to the liquidation of the company. But it should be taken into account that the wrong investment decision made by the leadership of the company actually triggered the downfall of the company, pacing up the process of its liquidation. Investing in the property selling business that was thoroughly different from the sector in which Wow Sight & Sound was operating, costed the leadership of the company dearly and the error of decision in this regard was the outcome of proper marketing and business management skills of the leadership of the company. Finally, it can be said that the leadership of the company failed to resort to the situational leadership style and hence, they showed apathy towards developing and keeping in store a contingency plan, due to which the company had nothing more to do then accept liquidation (Cherry, 2020). If the importance of situational leadership was understood by the company’s leadership, then Wow Sight & Sound could have been pulled out of the troubled waters.

Conclusion

Taking into consideration the role of leadership in the context of ensuring the growth, development, and success of an organization, this report discussed the leadership issues of WOW Sight and Sound, considering the fact that the importance of leadership in the organizational contexts can only be understood by analysing leadership issues of a particular organization. In this respect, the report emphasized how ineffective leadership can lead to the decline and eventual closure of a business organization in a stark manner. It was found that ineffective leadership was the primary issue the ushered the downfall and eventual liquidation of Wow Sight & Sound.

References

Cherry, K. (2020). The Situational Theory of Leadership. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-situational-theory-of-leadership-2795321

Dell, S. (2012). The life and death of WOW Sight & Sound – 7 lessons. https://www.marketingmag.com.au/hubs-c/the-life-and-death-of-wow-sight-sound-7-lessons/

Zappone, C. (February 27, 2012). 500 jobs in peril as retailer ceases to WOW. Brisbane Times. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/500-jobs-in-peril-as-retailer-ceases-to-wow-20120227-1ty57.html