THE COMPANY
The Grayson Chemical Co. manufactured industrial chemicals for sale to other industrial companies. The company was about 40 years old and had been run by a stable management in which there had only been two presidents. Within the past few years, however, declining earnings and sales had brought pressure from the board of directors, investment bankers, and stockholder groups to name a new president. The company had become increasingly stagnant—al-though at Grayson they refer to it as conservative—
and had steadily lost market standing and profitability.
Finally, the board decided to go outside the company to find a new CEO and was able to recruit a dynamic manager from another major corporation,Tom Baker.
Baker is 47, an M.B.A., and had helped build his for-mer company into a leadership position. However, when another executive was chosen for the top job, Baker decided to accept the position with Grayson.
Baker was clear about what he needed to do. He knew that he needed to develop a top management team that could provide the leadership to turn the company around. Unfortunately, the situation at Grayson was not very favorable.
Decisions were made by the book or taken to the next-higher level. Things were done because “they have always been done this way,” and incompetent managers were often promoted to high-level jobs.
THE MEETING
Baker met with three members of the board, Robert Temple (chairman), James Allen, and Hartley Ash-ford. Each had a different bit of advice to offer.
Robert Temple said: “Look, Tom, you can’t just get rid of the old organization if you want to main-tain any semblance of morale. Your existing people are all fairly competent technically, but it’s up to you to develop performance goals and motivate them to achieve these standards. Make it clear that achieve-ment will be rewarded and that those who can’t hack it will have to go.”
James Allen, puffing on his pipe, noted:“Let’s face it, Tom, you need to bring in a new top management team. Probably only six or so, but people who know what top performance means, people who are using innovative methods of managing and, above all, peo-ple you trust. That means peopeo-ple you’ve worked with closely, from ABC or other companies, but people you know.You can’t retread the old people, and you don’t have time to develop young M.B.A.s, so you need to bring in your own team even though it might upset some of the old-timers.”
Hartley Ashford smiled and said: “Sure, you’re going to have to bring in a new team from the out-side, but rather than bring in people you’ve worked with before, bring in only managers with proven track records. People who have proven their ability to lead, motivate, and perform from different industries. This way you’ll get a synergistic effect from a number of successful organizations. And the old people will see that favoritism is not the way to get ahead. So get a top performance team, and if you lose a few old-timers, so much the better.”
ISBN: 0-536-63893-4
An Experiential Approach to Organization Development, Seventh Edition, by Donald R. Brown and Don Harvey.
Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc.
CASE ANALYSIS FORM
Name: __________________________________________________
I. Problems A. Macro
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B. Micro 1.
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II. Causes 1.
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III. Systems affected 1. Structural 2. Psychosocial 3. Technical 4. Managerial 5. Goals IV. Alternatives
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V. Recommendations 1.
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ISBN: 0-536-63893-4
CHAPTER 4 ENDNOTES
1. Amy Merrick, “Sears Orders Fashion Makeover from the Lands’ End Catalog,” Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2004, pp. A1 and A8; Emily Scardino,
“Sears Looking for Best Fit,” Apparel Merchandis-ing,February 23, 2004, pp. 14–17; Robert Berner,
“The Fog Surrounding Lands’ End,” Business Week, March 10, 2003, pp. 78–79.
2. Pallavi Gogoi and Michaiel Arndt, “Hamburger Hell,” Business Week, March 3, 2003, p. 108.
3. Teresa Colvin and Ralph Kilmann, “A Profile of Large Scale Change Programs,” Proceedings of the Southern Management Association,1989, p. 202.
4. Alex Taylor, “CEO Bill Ford Must Cut Costs and Stop Feuds to Turn His Company Around,” Fortune, vol. 147, no. 9 (May 12, 2003).
5. Michael Moeller, “Remaking Microsoft,” Business Week,May 17, 1999, p. 107.
6. Shari Caudren, “Change Keeps TQM Programs Thriving,” Personnel Journal, October 1993, p. 104.
7. John Huey, “How McKinsey Does It,” Fortune, No-vember 1, 1993, p. 60.
8. Christopher Rhoads, “German Resistance to U.S.-Style Management Consulting Grows,” Wall Street Journal,February 10, 2004, p. 14.
9. Excerpt from Playboy Magazine; copyright 1974 by Playboy.
10. John Lewis III, “Growth of Internal Change Agents in Organization Development,” doctoral diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1970.
11. Philip Hunsaker, “Strategies for Organizational Change: The Role of the Inside Change Agent,”
Personnel,September/October 1982, pp. 18–28.
12. See Harold J. Leavitt, Corporate Pathfinders (Home-wood, Ill.: Dow Jones–Irwin, 1986), p. 10.
13. Lynda C. McDermott, “The Many Faces of the OD Professional,” Training and Development Journal, vol. 38, no. 2 (February 1984), pp. 14–19.
14. Edgar Schein, Process Consultation: Its Role in Orga-nization Development(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1988), p. 13.
15. Ann Harrington, “Where Do MBAs Want to Work?”
Fortune,April 19, 2004; “See the World Erase Its Borders,” Business Week Online, August 28, 2000 (www.businessweek.com); “The Gaijin Are Coming!
The Gaijin Are Coming!,” Business Week Online,
February 15, 1999 (www.businessweek.com); and the internet site of Bain & Co. at www.bain.com.
16. Warren Bennis, Organization Development: Its Na-ture, Origins, and Prospects(Reading, Mass.: Addi-son-Wesley, 1969), p. 48.
17. See Richard Beckhard, Organization Development Strategies and Models(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wes-ley, 1969), p. 13.
18. Michael Beer and Edgar Huse, “A System Approach to Organization Development,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science,vol. 1, no. 8 (1979), pp. 79–101.
19. Edgar Schein, Process Consultation, vol. 1: Its Role in Organization Development(Reading, Mass.: Addi-son-Wesley, 1988).
20. Ibid., p. 11.
21. Ibid.
22. Ellen Fagenson, and W. Warner Burke, “The Cur-rent Activities and Skills of OD Practitioners,”
Academy of Management Proceedings,1989, p. 251.
Also see W. Warner Burke, Organization Change:
Theory and Practice(Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002).
23. Susan Gebelein, “Profile of an Internal Consultant:
Roles and Skills,” Training & Development Journal, March 1989, p. 52.
24. Bennis, Organization Development, p. 43.
25. Patricia Hurley, “What in the Name of OD Do We Do?” Training and Development Journal, vol. 37, no.
4 (April 1983), p. 44.
26. N. Polansky and J. Kounin, “Client’s Reaction to Ini-tial Interview: A Field Study,” Human Relations, no.
19 (1956), pp. 237–65.
27. Bennis, Organization Development, p. 50.
28. Ronald Lippitt, “Dimensions of the Consultant’s Job,” in The Planning of Change, ed. W. Bennis, K.
Benne, and R. Chin (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1961), p. 160.
29. Eric H. Neilsen, “Reading Clients’ Values from Their Reactions to an Intervention/Feedback Process,”
Academy of Management Proceedings,1978, p. 318.
30. Beckhard, Organization Development Strategies and Models;Bennis, Organization Development; Schein, Process Consultation.
31. Huey, “How McKinsey Does It,” p. 66.
32. The authors of this classic story could not be traced.
ISBN: 0-536-63893-4
An Experiential Approach to Organization Development, Seventh Edition, by Donald R. Brown and Don Harvey.
Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc.