Acton-Burnetts: Problem During the Formation Case (Case Study Sample)

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Introduction
The case study was developed from Acton-Burnett’s meeting, whereby a requirement by the Hale Acton and Chairman of the board required Ryan(vice president of marketing) and John Keene(vice president of corporate planning) to overlook the company’s strategies to forecast sale. This was as a result of continuous losses experienced by the company.
(1) During the whole task, Ryan and Keen made several mistakes, which are discussed herein.
Problem during the formation
For instance, Baker is given authority to oversee that the executives Ryan and Keen are entrusted with jobs, which were hard to perform due to limited time and resources. After whistle blowing by Acton, Baker, who was the chairman of the company, inspires and takes the mantle of the new formed functional task force. The whole set of the idea was brought from every level of the organization to him, they aspired his leadership. Acton’s and Robert Herd’s focus was to revive the company via forecasting, which they believed it was lacking in the company, hence the drastic losses. However few recommendations are made on their ideas by the other stakeholders.
On this aspect, Ryan and Keen had performed the appointment function on behalf of Baker. Baker failed to recognize that his decline to have an influence in the appointment role could be a stumbling block on his tenure of leadership on the organization. In addition, both Ryan and Keene role to commission the taskforce to Baker is like a discrepancy of many ideas and objectives. Although leading the team is good challenge for Baker to experience leadership skills, the accomplishment of the taskforce is impaired. This therefore was the key mistake at the beginning made by both Ryan and Keen to give duties to incompetent individuals.
b. Problem of selection of the team
The procedure that they used to select the taskforce is not credible, that is, the individual’s preference, level of job experience, kind of relationship, individual achievement were never put under consideration. It only involved random handpicking method of appointment. Every member in the taskforce team has a separate role to play; basing from individual’s background, kind of reporting line, their seniority, age factor , and experience that each one of them possessed. In a cross functional group like this one, diversity is normality, and it has positive impact such as ease in embracing change in the organizational setup, although the size of the team and different reporting line off members of the taskforce lead to difficulties to Baker in efficiently leading and achieving the success of the team. In this aspect, since Ryan and Keen had the some influence in the selection but failed to be actively involved.
Ryan proposed that it was unnecessary to appoint marketing managers because they had a lot of other work to do. In reality, such choice is cautious but so incorrect, regarding the current state of the organization’s performance. Looking on the other hand, it could be an excellent decision to have a marketing manager who have some influence, and follow the organization’s objectives, and also act as mentor to Baker and the whole team. In such a way, the level of output could increase, hence improvement of the organization’s performance. Thus, the decision of Ryan was a mistake.

In addition, Ryan and Keene were not involved in the selection of some taskforce members, which was performed by other persons in the top management. On this regard, it is evident that Ryan and Keene failed to exercise their authority in selection of the team, and with such problems in a task-oriented group, the instances of departmental wrangles could always occur.
The selection criteria used to crown Baker as the taskforce leader is doubtful. He is quite young although with a promising career (basing on his qualification) and had less than two years’ experience gained at Acton-Barnett. He is well recognized internally, and has liked the rotation on the two teams. Ironically, there is very little information known about Baker’s experience as a cheer team leader. Although the taskforce provides Baker with an opportune moment to turn down critics and demonstrate him as an able leader, the taskforce fails to recognize the negative exposure that could happen to the management. Such could affect the private life of the Baker. All this could be questioned by Ryan and Keen at the initial stage during the selection.
c. Problem on timing and reporting
The first meeting was held on August 4th to react to the suggestions made on June 12th, which shows a period of less than seven weeks to complete the task. The task was considered a priority by Acton and therefore seven weeks cannot yield maximum output for the task. In addition, Ryan and Keene largely depend on Baker to offer solutions regarding the challenges faced. Also three out of four marketing managers knew that the provisions made by the taskforce could not work.
(2)What mistakes did Baker make during the process?
Just like Keen and Ryan did, David Baker never took considerable time to analyze, understand, and get solutions for the problem at hand. There is no single place pointed at the case that indicate efforts made by Baker to resolve the matters that he was mandated to solve. He had no clear vision on what he wanted to achieve, and no enough efforts or concentration made towards the matter. In addition, Baker did not scan the actions taken by Keene and Ryan on the taskforce members, and furthermore he failed to recognize that a representative from the manufacturing department was absent in the task force, which he could have revealed to Keene and Ryan.
As a leader, Baker should have asked Keene and Ryan to have some representative from division of marketing for the success of the taskforce, and thereafter distance himself with managers of the division of marketing, which later led to resistance to them. Such limitations were evident on 4th of August meeting, when a marketing manager stated that, “You guys in Hunneus’s group can’t even forecast what the economy is going to do; how the hell are you going to tell me what our customers are going to do with your model?”.
Also, Baker had earlier worked with Eldredge and no positive gains was realized, hence he should have met Eldredge before the flagging off of the task force and try to reconcile their differences in order to have good working relationship and enjoy support from one another.
Ironically, Baker sidestepped Eldredge from meetings, and did not show any efforts to support him.
Since he failed to perform his duties on a timely manner, deadline was put on his neck by Keene and Ryan; hence he had to face the penalties. This results to limited time plan to perform the tasks he allocated to them and they were unhappy.
Even after the team member claimed that they could not perform the tasks within the short deadline, Baker was not concerned to ask for extensions by Keene and Ryan. This is a clear evident that he was not strongly attached to his team and he failed to recognize their needs.
His complete level of incompetence was evident when there was duplication of work by both Elderedge and Bowe. It indicated how he poorly planned and failed to organize for regular meeting to minimize such inefficiencies.
Also, we note due to lack of experience, and failed leadership traits, Baker was incapable to face and solve the conflicts in effective way, and could not act when his decisions were needed. In this regard, looking at the period when Bowe presented Baker with data, which showed some levels of biases in the Sales Division’s inputs into the projection. As a result, Baker decided not to bring that matter into attention of the team in the August 4th meeting, and decided to solve it later.
Baker again showed lack of competency to solve challenges in the organization. For instance, when he found Eldredge reading Bowe’s report, bearing in mind that Eldredge is not allowed to get into contact with the report, he neither warned nor reacted to him. As a leader, he should have resisted such behavior because Eldredge is interfering with confidentiality of information. The breach of confidentiality by Eldredge leads to Dr. Hunneuus accessing the information on the report, and hence decided to go and discuss the matters contained in the report.
Such a situation has put Baker’s reputation at stake, Bowe’s job on the line, and an increase of rivalry between different departments, which jeopardized everything the task force, was trying to accomplish.
(3) Make an evaluation of Baker’s situation at the end of the case. Make it a human and political analysis.
Bearing in mind that the information that Baker had was confidential, Hunneuus felt that he was superior in rank (sales vice president) than Bowe, and could sarcastically ask how he could not access the information. Such situation could affect the decisions the decisions of Bak...