Nick was a mid 40’s manager with a military background. He had recently moved from Pennsylvania to Atlanta to work in a processing center for an insurance company. He was hired as head of communications because of his relationship with Steve, for whom he had worked a few years ago when both he and Steve worked for a Fortune 50 company. Nick has two kids, the younger of whom is headed to college in the fall.

Nick’s management philosophy was strongly influenced by his military background. He believed in following process, respecting the management hierarchy, and following the orders of his superiors without question. He prided himself on getting things done.

When Nick believed that his job as head of communications was at risk due to some organizational changes, he went to Steve with a proposal to broaden his role to include organization change efforts, in addition to his communication responsibilities. This would mean that training, which previously reported to the site manager, would report to him. Nick felt he was competent to manage this function because of his training experience in the military.

When the organizational change was made, the training team was shocked by the decision given Nick’s experience and the loss of a direct seat on the management committee for the site. This was particularly troubling to Pamela, the head of training, who had previously reported to the site manager and had significantly more training experience than Nick. (Pamela was a late 30’s training professional who has 15 years of experience working for money center banks and consulting firms. Over the years she had designed, developed and delivered training for mid- and senior-level executives in North America, South America, Australia, Europe and Asia. She had also managed a team of 50 trainers with an annual budget of over $10 million.)

The perception in the organization was that Nick got the job for two reasons: (1) his past relationship with Steve and (2) he was a man. (Only one member of the 12-person management team is a woman.) Whether these were the reasons or not, Nick was put in place and began to change the way in which the team operated with its internal customers.

One of Nick’s first changes was to change Pamela’s work schedule. While working for the site manager, Pamela had the flexibility to come into work 30 minutes late and leave 30 minutes early in return for not taking a lunch break. This was important to her because she had young children to get to and from school. Despite the quality of her work and her overall productivity, Nick made her change her schedule because he thought her face time at work was important to serve as a model for others.

With the change in the management structure, Pamela was no longer a peer of the members of management team. Because Nick believed in hierarchy, he became the mouthpiece for the training function in the management committee. He also began to attend meetings with his peers to discuss their training needs without members of the training team. This created two problems:

· His explanations of the customer needs to the training team were often incomplete, thus making it difficult for the team to create an appropriate solution.

· His peers sensed his lack of technical expertise, so after meeting with Nick, they would call Pamela, who they had been happy working with before the reorganization, to discuss training needs directly with her.

Nick seemed to believe that, despite the fact that his team was more experienced in the training field that he was, he new better. While promising that he would not do the job of his training team leaders, he constantly challenged their decisions to run training programs for their clients on the basis of allocating resources to their highest and best use, without asking his people about the business case for the training. He incorrectly assumed that they did not factor this into their decisions.

Over time, Nick has gotten more involved in the technical aspects of training despite having not practical experience or training. On occasion, he will review design documents in detail and require changes to be made that do not make sense for the audience or are not effective for learning styles that were different from his own.

To make matters worse, despite a corporate emphasis on customer focus, Nick thinks it is a waste of time to adapt corporate programs to meet the needs of their local clients. He believes it is more important to get the training done rather than make sure it is on target for the client. (Much to their credit, the training team has rejected this idea and done what was right for the client.)

He has even begun to get involved in the smallest minutiae like sending out invitations to his peers to attend training kickoffs when the design of the program called for them to attend later in the program. He should have known this given that he had been invited to attend the program over 20 times before he took his new job, but he always sent his assistant instead!

Communication with the team has gotten worse. The team often gets more information about pending changes in business structure and strategy from their colleagues on the West Coast than they do from Nick directly. In protecting the confidentiality (or perceived power of having information) of management team discussions when others do not, he has left his team feeling ill informed and speculating on the worst possible outcomes.

Given this situation, the morale in the department has declined significantly. Nick’s desire to focus on hierarchy and politics rather than technical expertise, and emphasis on face time rather than performance, have had a negative impact on the team’s morale. And, not surprisingly, all the team members are looking for new jobs.
Politics driving organizational decisions is an everyday occurrence. The question is not so much how to eliminate this reality, but how to do it in a productive way so that performance is not compromised. Given the mess that has been created, what advice would you give Nick and Pamela?

Poll Closed

Poll Closed