Reflection for Week 4 - MN3032C

In week 4 case study, we look into Madonna, the popular female music icon in the world.
I believe most of us have heard or listened to atleast a Madonna's song in our lifetime whether or not you realized it is a song sung by this popular female artist. For the record, she has been in the music industry for 30 years and is the highest ever paid female singer compared to the likes of Beyonce, Britney Spears and many others.

Basically, Madonna has the power to sustain her fame and influence the world even until today is not just a matter of luck even though they play a role in her music career. Most of all, Madonna has the passion and desire to create music that touches people life and this has spread to all over the world. Obviously, Madonna has the motivation and the faith that keeps her going on and on for 30 years and she has not failed to "wow" the audience and still keeping them as a loyal listeners or advocates to her songs and life. When I analyze her career time-line, I do find out that she keeps an image life cycle for 2 - 3 years before changing it again to another theme and image and then dispose them and keeping it for another 2 -3 years and keep doing so to keep up herself in this ever-changing music industry. For instance, when she started out as an artist in 1982, she depicted herself as a trashy pop star with her release album of "Lucky Star" that target young wannabe girls. Then in 1984, she transformed herself to resemble Marilyn Monroe's glamour image in her release album of "Like a Virgin" to target the more grown up rebellious fan base and keep doing so until 2009. Therefore, the steps and strategy that Madonna taken in her career has made her a visionary music pop icon. She keeps delivering and setting a new standard in the music industry and her fan base keeps growing because they love it.

Therefore, the lessons that we can pick up from Madonna about the strategic leadership from the case study is that she has control of the path she wants to take and follow them throughly and every success she accumulated along the way gives her greater power to influence the audiences and keep them loyal while keeps growing and expanding her fan base in other segment of the music industry. By being able to influence eveyone who listens to her music, Madonna has become not just a name, instead, it has become a brand name that everyone wants to associate themselves when they talk about music.

The major differences between Madonna case study compared to Carrefour and Gerry NHS case study is that the bureaucratic that get involve. Madonna has only herself and probably some advisors to give her the advise where she can implement them straight away whereas big organization like NHS and Carrefour has a complex organization structure where decision and implementations are one big serious issues need to be addresss every now and then. In the case of Gerry NHS, he may have set up an ideal blue print for success but if no one adhere or follow the "ideal" plan, the plan is still a plan and it is not viable or enough to help the organization to cut or reduce waiting time in the NHS. Furthermore, I do not see any major similarity if I have to use Madonna case study to compared with the other 2 case study.

Finally, the lesson I would want to remember from Week 4 is that everyone has the chance to be successful if they possess the attributes such as passion, desire, faith, adaptability and focus as what Madonna displayed in order to achive something in our life. Luck itself is not enough as one needs to reach the end point by having all the attributes and take action on them.