Organizational Leaders

In an organization, innovation is the seed that must be planted to produce growth. Without innovation, an organization will stay stagnant while their competitors climb up the beanstalk. It is not a simple task to implement innovation into an already structured process. Therefore it takes a certain type of individual to produce innovation successfully. This type of leader must have the ability to present innovation in a persuasive manner, so his or her followers will accept the terms of change willingly. In my experience, I worked with a manager who was unable to implement her innovative ideas because of her inability to persuade her followers.

I have been a teller for Bank of America for three years. During this time I have worked with one manager, with the exception of the two months that she was on maternity leave. For those two months our branch was assigned another manager. This manager was assigned to our branch to test a business proposal that she had presented to our market executives. This business proposal was to increase the number of depository relationships by implementing a new process of converting non-customers to customers. Initially, it was the responsibility of the personal bankers to identify non-customers and convert them into customers. The new process required the involvement of the tellers, operation supervisors, and managers. The four step process followed: (1) the teller would identify the non-customer, engage in a relationship building conversation, and notify the operation supervisor of the opportunity (2) the operation supervisor would continue the conversation and convince the non-customer to sit with a personal banker (3) the personal banker would convert the non-customer into a customer by opening an account (4) if neither operation supervisor or personal banker was able to convince the non-customer to open an account, the manager would intervene and successfully persuade the non-customer to start a relationship. This process was...