An Organisation of Wool-worths Group

One of the major Australian is Woolworths Group which has widespread retail interest all over the country as well as New Zealand. Woolworths Group is the second largest organization in terms of revenue in Australia. It is the Australian largest retailer of takeaway liquor. It is also the largest operator of gaming poker machine and hotel in Australia (Woolworths Group, 2018). The main businesses of the company include liquor retail, discount department stores, supermarkets, and hotel and pubs. 
The liquor retail operates as Dan Murphy's and BWS in Australia, the discount department stores operate under the Big W name in Australia, supermarkets operate under the Countdown brand in New Zealand, and Woolworths brand in Australia and hotel and pubs operate under Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group. It was founded in the year 1924. The Headquarter of the company is in Bella Vista, New South Wales, Australia. The total number of employee is 205000. The total revenue of the company is A$59billion (Woolworths Group, 2018). 

The company has reported that in 2016 the company has suffered a huge full-year loss of $1.235 billion. The company has also reported that there is a decline in underlying earnings by 40.8 percent from Australian petrol and food business of the company. The net profit of the supermarket giant slipped from last year’s $2.146 billion for the 52 weeks because the company had taken $2.628 billion of write-downs (Woolworths unveils $1.235 billion loss, 2018). Out of the total write-downs, most of the write-downs were associated to the company’s underperforming Big W stores and ongoing exit from the hardware sector. 
The earnings from the Australian petrol and food before tax and interest also dropped from $2.97 billion to $1.76 billion because of a decrease in items per basket and lower price.  It was the first loss of the company in a period of last 23 years. 
The chief executive of the organization Brad Banducci defined the financial year 2016 as a year of extraordinary change for the organization. He said that the decision taken by the organization and the investment made by the organization in such sector had produced the result of 2016 financial year. He also mentioned that the management is ready to rebuild the company. He also stated that the management is seeing the initial sign of recovery and progress the company is determined to improve the culture in Australian food and restore the competitiveness of the company (Woolworths unveils $1.235 billion loss, 2018). The management has taken appropriate measures to deal with the significant issues that the company is facing with the help of the decision to exit home improvement. 

An organization may face several difficulties if the organization does not have strategic planning. The concept of strategic planning is related to future. Strategic planning is a process of formulating the objectives of the company and deciding upon the resources to be used to accomplish the target objective (Cassidy, 2016). Strategic planning also involves formulating policies and procedures in order to govern the utilization, disposition, and acquisition of the resources of the organization.
In the absence of strategic planning, there would be various issues related to the goals and objectives of the organization. The goals and objectives of the organization may not be defined clearly, and hence there would not be clear strategy to accomplish the undefined and unclear goals and objective of the organization. The concept of strategic planning also facilitates to the proper use of the resources of the organization (Cassidy, 2016). 
In case of Woolworths Group, the strategic planning of the company would not be appropriate and due to inappropriate strategic planning the company suffered a huge financial loss in 2016. The company was not able to forecast the impact of investing in Big W stores. If the company had forecasted the impact of investment in Big W stores, the company would not have suffered the loss. If the company had a proper strategic plan, the company would not have invested in those filed and avoided the huge loss.  
The following are the process of strategic planning (Haines, 2016);
1)    Determining the mission as well as the objectives of the organization: the first step of the strategic planning is to determine the mission and objectives of the organization. If the objectives of the organization are not clearly defined the measures to accomplish the objectives and hence there would be a loss. 
2)    Environmental analysis: environmental analysis is one of the most important factors for the success of the organization. Environmental analysis is done to identify the opportunities and threats for the organization available in the environment. If Woolworths Group had done environmental analysis, it would not have invested in those stores and hence avoided loss.
3)    Self-appraisal: in this step, the organization evaluates their strengths to deal with the threats available in the environment. The organizations assess their internal capacity to exploit the opportunities available in the environment. 
4)    Strategic decision making: after self-appraisal, the organizations start to formulate a decision regarding its operations and activities. At this step also Woolworths Group was not effective and in the result, it suffered a huge loss.
5)    Strategy implementation and Control: after formulating strategic decision the organizations implement the decision in order to cultivate the fruit of the decision. The organizations also monitor their decision to control them in order to avoid deviation from the right path.

Leadership is also a very important concept which greatly determines the success and failure of the organization. Leadership is the ability to lead a group of people in order to accomplish the target goals (Buckman et al., 2015). If an organization is being successful, most of the credit goes to the ability of the leaders to lead the team to accomplish the desired goals and if the organization fails in achieving its desired goals the leaders of the organizations are being questioned.
In case of Woolworths Group, the loss was the result of the failure of leadership skills. The leaders of the organization were inefficient at that time to forecast the situation. They were unable to formulate appropriate strategies for the organization in order to avoid the loss. They did not select the right area of investment and hence suffered a huge loss. The leader of an organization should always be aware of surrounding and what is happening in the organization. If the company was experiencing losses, the leader should push the employees harder to achieve the intended goals (Banks et al., 2016). The leadership should be aware of outcomes of every taken action so that major issues can be avoided. 
The transformational leaders are a model of fairness and integrity as well as they set clear goals. As there were issues of a clear goal in the organization and hence appropriate measures had not be taken. As a result, the company suffered huge losses. The transformational leaders also encourage and motivate others to accomplish the goals within the given time frame. They also provide support and recognize the effort of the people to accomplish the goals. Therefore, it can be said that there was a lack of transformational leadership in the organization (Banks et al., 2016). 

The following are the intervention to solve or improve the situation. First of all the organization should have strategic planning. Without strategic planning, it is very tough to accomplish the intended outcomes. Strategic planning helps in selecting appropriate methods or measures to accomplish the target goals and objectives. The organization should also focus on developing transformational leadership in order to accomplish target goals and objectives. Apart from this, the company should also analyze the internal as well as the external environment to analyze the threats and opportunities available in the environment. The organization should also hire a financial adviser to assist the financial decision taken by the organization.

About Us - Woolworths Group. (2018). Woolworthsgroup.com.au. Retrieved 27 March 2018, from https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/about-us
Woolworths unveils $1.235 billion loss. (2018). NewsComAu. Retrieved 27 March 2018, from http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/woolworths-unveils-1235-billion-loss/news-story/5a6cd1f33658f536b47d95b305c5bc67
Cassidy, A. (2016). A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. CRC press.
Haines, S. (2016). The systems thinking the approach to strategic planning and management. CRC Press.
Buckman, B., Crawford, E., LePine, J., & Zhang, Y. (2015). A meta-analytic investigation of job engagement's role in the transformational leadership–job satisfaction-job performance relationship. In Annual Meeting of the Southern Management Association, SMA 2015.
Banks, G. C., McCauley, K. D., Gardner, W. L., & Guler, C. E. (2016). A meta-analytic review of authentic and transformational leadership: A test for redundancy. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(4), 634-652.