Question

Read the mini-case, *BELOW* and answer the questions at the end:

Minicase: You Can’t Make Stuff Like This Up

Steve once worked as a regional sales director for a large health insurance company called Blue Star Health. Blue Star Health was once quite suc- cessful but had become complacent over the past five years. Competitors gained market share using aggressive marketing and sales tactics, and Blue Star was selling antiquated products and using inefficient processes for settling claims. With falling revenues and margins, Blue Star became an acquisition target and was bought by Anthum, a Fortune 100 company. At the conclusion of the deal Anthum brought in an injection of cash, a reputation for operational excellence, and a new vice president of sales, Jim Blaylock. The CEO of Anthum described Jim as bright, experienced, successful, and “more energetic than the Energizer Bunny.” Jim had joined the corporation immediately after college; because of his “potential” the company sent him to law school and rapidly promoted him into increasingly responsible positions. Senior management had tremendous confidence in Jim’s leadership abilities and appointed him as the vice president of sales in Blue Star Health, even though he had no previous sales experience.

Steve was initially impressed with Jim’s freshness and energy; he was constantly touting “Midwestern values” and the “work ethic of the Mid- west.” However, the sales management team soon became disenchanted with his views: Steve and his sales team were working 70 to 80 hours a week and becoming exhausted and frazzled. Moreover, Jim’s interactions with internal and external clients were lessons in poor human relations. He seemed to seek confrontations, and as time passed, his behavior became steadily more extreme. Jim harangued people, ignored appointments and made no excuses for missing them, made promises he never kept, called sales directors at 6:00 a.m. with insignificant questions, and abused bro- kers. Those who questioned Jim’s leadership were summarily dismissed.

One day Jim asked Steve to arrange a meeting with a broker at 9:00 p.m. The broker was from a large benefit house and was older, and the meet- ing time was late. However, he was a longtime personal friend of Steve’s and as a courtesy agreed to the meeting. Jim did not show up for the appointment and would not answer Steve’s calls to his cell phone. After an hour, Steve and the broker went home. When Steve asked Jim why he missed the appointment, he said he was drinking with a friend and did not think the meeting with the broker was important. Jim refused to apol- ogize to the broker and was surprised when business with the broker’s organization came to an end.

Jim loved working on high-visibility projects and landed an opportunity to convert the membership of another acquired company to Anthum. This was an important project for Anthum, and shortly thereafter Jim set up an elaborate “war room” in which all sales planning and action would take place. He asked Steve to lead the conversion project, repeatedly an- nouncing that the acquisition was to garner new contracts and to bring quality employees into the organization. At this point Steve had over 70 direct reports in five different locations across the state and some aggressive sales targets. It would be impossible for Steve to hit his revenue numbers and run the conversion project. But Jim cut Steve no slack, and the computer system intended to convert the contracts did not work. Jim spent no time with any of the newly acquired sales team members, and as a result they showed no interest in working for Anthum. Yet Jim made grandiose statements about the quality of the sales force at the acquired company, which implied the current sales employees were unsatisfactory and fostered a sense of mistrust in both sales organizations.

Because of Jim’s shoddy treatment, the long hours, and poor sales and invoicing processes, the morale of the sales team began to plummet. Tan- trums and tears occurred frequently, and Steve spent a lot of time smooth- ing feathers and telling team members that things would get better over time. But there was only so much Steve could do, and as team members began to quit, Jim blamed Steve for the decline in department morale. As the situation continued to deteriorate, Steve requested that Jim meet with the remaining staff to talk about their frustrations with Anthum. Jim opted to set up an all-employee breakfast at a local restaurant to address their concerns.

The night before the meeting a major snowstorm hit the city, and the streets were covered with a foot of snow. Some employees had to drive 40 miles to attend the meeting, but everyone made it to the restaurant. The only person missing was Jim, and Steve started calling him 10 minutes before the meeting start time to check on his status. Jim did not answer, so Steve began to call and leave messages every five minutes. Jim finally an- swered his phone 30 minutes after the meeting start time and told Steve that the reason he was not at the meeting was that he decided to go skiing and people would have to meet with him another day. He also asked Steve to quit bugging him by leaving messages every five minutes. Steve could do little to put a positive spin on this message, and the employees left the restaurant bitter and hurt. Of the 60 people who showed up for the meeting, only one was still with Anthum six months later. Jim never ac- knowledged his behavior and was “shocked” at the turnover in the sales group. Despite the turnover and declining sales revenues, Jim was still considered the company’s darling, and it was commonly believed that the CEO tacitly condoned his behavior.

Questions:

1. Was Jim Blaylock a destructive leader, a competent manager, taskmas- ter, figurehead, or a cheerleader? What data would you use to make this determination?

2. If Jim was an incompetent manager, what do you think were the under-lying root causes of his incompetence?

3. Why do you think Jim was seen as a high-potential candidate? Why did the CEO still think he was a high performer?

4. What would you do if you were Jim’s boss and heard about the infor- mation described here?

5. What would you do if you were Steve?

Answer 1

answer-

1- Jim is either a figurehead or has managerial incompetence. Managerial incompetence concerns a person’s inability to build teams or get results through others. A majority of people in positions of authority can (1) build teams but not get results; (2) get results but destroy team morale and cohesiveness; or (3) neither build teams nor get results. Figureheads do not play to win; they play to not lose , Jim seems to seek confrontations and his behavior become steadily more extreme. He harangued people, ignored appointments and made no excuses for missing them, made promises he never kept, called sales directors at 6:00 a.m. with insignificant questions, and abused brokers. Those that questioned his leadership were summarily dismissed. Jim’s shoddy treatment, the long hours and poor sales and invoicing processes, the morale of the sales team began to plummet.

2- Jim’s underlying root cause of his incompetence as a manager is the lack of organizational fit. I believe that Jim lacked the ability to build the sales team together and lead them in an efficient manner. It did not seem that he knew understood the value of keeping his word to his employees or even the company’s customers. According to our textbook, Jim portrays blind spots in his new positions and does not understand his lack of awareness with his employees impacts what they do and how they do it. I also believe that he may have been promoted to fast. He skipped the process of learning how the organization works from the ground up and what it took to be a leader and or manager from a mentor. The senior management were so ecstatic to push him up through the ranks that it seems to me he missed all the necessary training to accomplish the organization’s goals.

3- I believe that Jim was seen as a high potential candidate because he was very outgoing and energetic. He could be seen as someone who was able to do anything. The CEO probably saw Jim being promoted as a positive thing moving from one department to another was a good thing. Unfortunately, that is not always the case; we see it in the military all the time. Where someone is liked by the leadership and can do no wrong. They end up being placed in sections where they can reap the rewards of what someone else has done, and then is quickly moved so that they cannot do too much damage in one place. Unfortunately, for this type of person, leadership changes or the situation changes where they are left in a section longer and they have to rely on what they know or fail. It seems to me that Jim is on the way to the door because of the massive personnel changes and the fact that nothing is getting any better in the section he is running .

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