Executive Summary:
Wendy Peterson, Vice Presidents of sales for AccountBack, hired Fred (Xing) Wu to penetrate the fast-growing Chinese businesses, and he surely contributed to his success in signing on his large client during his first year. However, she has problems with him not complying with the company rules, asking for multiple exceptions, and him threatening that he would leave to a competitor if he was not provided a personal assistant. Our recommended solution to the problem is that she sets up increased sales targets for his second year, while agreeing to provide his own sales assistant once he can achieve the increased sales target. This compromise solution keeps him at AccountBack and utilizes Wu’s professional skill set and connections …show more content…
However, once he learned what he needed to perform his job, he stopped spending enough time in the office, stopped interacting with his colleagues and took a secrecy approach to his work. In addition, he started acting as if he is self-employed, breaking existing rules and norms due to a weakness in the existing boundary system. The rules of the game and the expectations were set clearly but there was no punishment for breaking them (Control in the Age of Empowerment). For instance, he decided not to show up to a conference booth, even though he has committed to it and he got away. His explanation was that he had a more important meeting with a prospect. He wasn’t reporting his progress as requested by his boss as his colleagues were. He believed he could take whatever route he wanted as long as he was delivering results. Peterson was always easy going with Wu’s behavior as she fell for the confirming evidence trap. She was biased to focus on Wu’s account success as supporting evidence of her choice of hiring him and ignored all his misconduct (The Hidden Traps in decision making). After all, she hired him mainly for his access to key executives in Plano’s Chinese business community which …show more content…
Peterson now feels she is losing control over him. She had invested in several activities to bring her team closer and fears that providing Wu an assistant at this stage combined with his work habits and performance will drive his colleagues out and eventually fail in meeting her revenue growth goal.
Should Peterson cave in for Wu’s request and risk all she’s built, should she deny him an assistant and risk losing her contact with their biggest client or can she meet Wu half way with a win-win proposal?
Alternative
Wendy Peterson, Vice Presidents of sales for AccountBack, hired Fred (Xing) Wu to penetrate the fast-growing Chinese businesses, and he surely contributed to his success in signing on his large client during his first year. However, she has problems with him not complying with the company rules, asking for multiple exceptions, and him threatening that he would leave to a competitor if he was not provided a personal assistant. Our recommended solution to the problem is that she sets up increased sales targets for his second year, while agreeing to provide his own sales assistant once he can achieve the increased sales target. This compromise solution keeps him at AccountBack and utilizes Wu’s professional skill set and connections …show more content…
However, once he learned what he needed to perform his job, he stopped spending enough time in the office, stopped interacting with his colleagues and took a secrecy approach to his work. In addition, he started acting as if he is self-employed, breaking existing rules and norms due to a weakness in the existing boundary system. The rules of the game and the expectations were set clearly but there was no punishment for breaking them (Control in the Age of Empowerment). For instance, he decided not to show up to a conference booth, even though he has committed to it and he got away. His explanation was that he had a more important meeting with a prospect. He wasn’t reporting his progress as requested by his boss as his colleagues were. He believed he could take whatever route he wanted as long as he was delivering results. Peterson was always easy going with Wu’s behavior as she fell for the confirming evidence trap. She was biased to focus on Wu’s account success as supporting evidence of her choice of hiring him and ignored all his misconduct (The Hidden Traps in decision making). After all, she hired him mainly for his access to key executives in Plano’s Chinese business community which …show more content…
Peterson now feels she is losing control over him. She had invested in several activities to bring her team closer and fears that providing Wu an assistant at this stage combined with his work habits and performance will drive his colleagues out and eventually fail in meeting her revenue growth goal.
Should Peterson cave in for Wu’s request and risk all she’s built, should she deny him an assistant and risk losing her contact with their biggest client or can she meet Wu half way with a win-win proposal?
Alternative