Question

Acme Paper: Selecting a Diverse Team[i]

Acme is a national manufacturer of paper products. They provide a full range of napkins, toilet paper, tissues, paper liners, etc. for restaurants, hotels, and other businesses. Their headquarters is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They have been in operation for over 30 years, and recently have taken on some larger accounts, fueling rapid growth in the last 5 years. Now Acme has a chance to obtain a major account in a new (to them) market segment: Native American Indian casinos.

            Joe Kilgore is an executive VP of sales and marketing, and Eileen Espinosa is his executive assistant. Both have been with the company for over 10 years. Joe and Eileen are meeting today to discuss which 3 of 6 potential employees to assign to a team to create the proposal for the new casino scheduled to open next year, the Desert Mountain Golf Resort and Casino. If successful, this would assure the future of Acme, which is at a point where they need to expand greatly to take advantage of economies of scale, or be swallowed up by a larger competitor. By getting this account and breaking into the casino market, Acme could double their annual sales within the next 5 years.

In addition to the corporate-level success, the 3 on for this team who create that success will assure their personal careers also. They will likely move up into higher management, overseeing this and other casino accounts which are expected to result from this “foot in the door.” This is definitely a high-profile, high-risk, high-reward assignment. Joe and Eileen are discussing the top 6 candidates, whose credentials are summarized below. Within the hour, they must rank each candidate, indicate reasons for and against choosing that person, and recommend who that person would work well with on this new team.

1. James “Mac” McConnell, 62, married, male, Acme’s supply chain and inventory management efficiency wizard, who has been with Acme for most of his career. He made his considerable reputation many years ago, in the era of “Just-in-Time” innovations in inventory control. He showed company clients how to reap previously-unheard-of savings through the new (in that era) methods of JIT. However, Mac has not demonstrated similar success (yet) with the new SAP systems. Although James is of Scottish descent, with reddish-blonde hair and blue eyes, he spent 10 of his growing-up years in Honduras, where his father worked for Dole. Both Spanish and English are first languages for Mac.

2. Helen Markley, 35, married, mother of 3 children 8, 10, and 13 years old; a real “soccer mom” who spends week-ends with her kids at their sporting events. She has been with Acme for almost 10 years. She is a high-energy person who frequently is the top award-winner in annual sales, and is considered key player in Acme’s local growth and success to date.

3. Roberto “Robbie” Romero, Hispanic but does not speak Spanish, 26 years old, married without children, is a military veteran who has been with Acme for 18 months. He is a systems expert who most thought was being groomed to succeed Mac, although nothing formal has been done, and he and Mac are not especially friendly.

4. Sierra Garcia, 27, single, female, with Acme for 2 years but came to Albuquerque only 6 months ago. A native of the Blackfeet tribe, she was recently promoted to the home office from a small branch office near her tribal homelands in Canada. She was considered a rising star, and was one of the youngest persons to reach her level of management in the local region. She was the unanimous choice for her newly-created position. She reports directly to the Joe, VP of Sales and Marketing, to help with outreach to tribal communities in both the US and Canada. She seems the natural choice to help Acme get into the casino market.

5. Jacqueline “Jackie” Shannon, 48 year old black female, divorced empty-nester. Jackie has made many friends in her 5 years at Acme. She has led market research and product development efforts with great success. She always seems to have a spreadsheet in hand to back up her recommendations, and so far, she always seems to be right in her predictions. While she and Helen are both star performers, their personal styles are very different. Where Helen is spontaneous and energetic, Jackie is analytic and logical. Helen has been seen in jogging shoes at work, while Jackie wears the highest heels and latest fashions in the company.

6. Juan Robles, 52 year old single Hispanic male, with Acme for 20 years. Juan joined Acme right out of the military, which paid for his education. He is a nuts-and-bolts guy, with a MacGyver-like streak of creative genius. As head of Production, he also leads Acme’s informal R&D efforts by customizing products for large clients. Years back, he designed one of those big toilet-paper dispensers that lasts 10 times as long as a traditional roll, giving clients huge savings.

Discussion:

A- Following are comments which arose in the discussion of the candidates. For each comment, identify which aspect of diversity that comment represents.

1. Send Sierra, she’s Indian, the casino executives will relate to her better and trust her more than the non-Indians.

2. Send Mac. Indians hold their elders in high regard. They’ll think Robbie is way too young to take seriously.

3. Send all three women. I heard the casino’s Director of Housekeeping for the casino hotel is a woman who has a lot of influence over the casino CEO. She’ll relate better to another woman.

4. We can’t send Sierra and Robbie in the same group. It’s never a good idea to send mixed male-female groups for overnight business trips. Too much chance for hanky-panky, and then you end up with a divorce or worse, a sexual harassment lawsuit!

5. Sierra and Mac often have lunch together. They both grew up with horses and both rode and even showed their horses in something called “dressage.” They say it’s the kind of riding where you wear tall boots, not cowboy boots. They seem to talk about horses every chance they get. They might be good teammates.

6. Helen’s maiden name was Miranda. She and Robbie had similar upbringings, with Hispanic heritage, military fathers, and lots of brothers and sisters. Robbie wants a big family, but will wait another year or two before having kids, as he only married his wife last year. Robbie is always interested in Helen’s endless stories about her kids’ sports accomplishments. They might make good teammates.

7. No point in putting Mac on this team. He’s already 62, he could retire tomorrow, or have a heart attack next week. We need someone who the clients will see they can depend on for the long-term.
8. We should send all the men. I heard many tribes don’t have women on their tribal councils. It is sort of balanced, because the property is all owned by women and passed down from mother to daughter. But the men make all the decisions. So maybe it would be better to send the 3 men.

9. We can’t send Mac and Robbie together. Mac is strictly by the book, and Robbie thinks rules are there to be broken. Talk about your oil and water!

10. Juan is 52 and as far as I know, never been married. I never heard of him dating anyone either. I think he’s gay. Maybe we should cross him off our list, just to be on the safe side.

11. Helen’s never available on week-ends. She’s always tied up with her kids’ soccer games, wrestling matches, baseball, those kids are into everything! She’s even a coach for one of the teams. They went to State Championships last year, I heard. This casino project will require evenings and week-ends, so I think we should cross Helen off the list right now.

12. Jackie and Robbie are both serious church-goers and would likely not want to work on Sundays. I think we should cross them off the list too.

B- LIST your 3 choices for your selected team, and for each, give 2 REASONS why you chose them.

Answer 1

answer-

A-

1- Ethnic aspect of diversity

2- Ethnic as well as Age aspect of diversity

3-Gender aspect of diversity

4-Gender aspect of diversity

5-Interest and hobby towards horses is the aspect of diversity

6- Hispanic beliefs to have big family shows the cultural belief of the diversity.

7-Age is the aspect of diversity in the comment.

8-Gender aspect of diversity

9- Interest of individuals is the diversity aspect

10-Age and sexual orientation is the diversity aspect.

11-parental status is the aspect of diversity.

12- religious beliefs is the aspect of diversity.

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