November 2008 HBR Case Study

Ok, so I'm going to give my "expert" opinion on November's HBR Case Study. The case is called: "When Your Colleague Is a Saboteur". I want to stress that I have not yet read any of the expert opinions and this is my own little personal take on the case study.

Overview of the Case

The case tells us a story of Mark Landstad, a new Invenstment Banking Executive that has moved up through the ranks of CliffBank. He is sitting in his office going over a presentation that he will be giving to CliffBank executives on a company called Millhouse. He's searching through a network drive for updated information from the previous employee and was having ZERO luck finding the information.

He decided to ask his partner on the presentation, Nicole. He liked Nicole because she was so inviting and showed him around the office and introduced him to other senior managers in the division. He realized that Nicole would not be able to access her email due to a trip and began to write a second email to one of his mentors, Ian Beasley. Ian works at Millhouse and could provide a great deal of help to the presentation...but he avoids doing so as he didn't want to ask Ian for the help. So, he sent an email off to Nicole and continued working over the weekend.

On Monday he met with Nicole and asked her to quickly go over the presentation scheduled for a post-lunch meeting the same day. Nicole said she would review it and get back to Mark later. With 30 minutes until the meeting Mark was nearly pulling his hair out and Nicole hadn't given any feedback. She just said, "it looks good" and to get ready for the meeting.

In the meeting Nicole started the presentation and started to give additional information that Mark was looking for all weekend. Nicole deliberately didn't share this information with Mark. The CliffBank executives were so impressed with Nicole's information that Mark's portion of the presentation was never reached or acknowledged. After the meeting, Mark's new boss Paul told him that he should bounce Nicole's ideas off of his mentor, Ian. Mark did so, and Ian told him that Nicole had contacted him for a meeting as well. Another point that Nicole did not mention.

Mark became irritated and confronted Nicole. Her response was "I'm trying to grab ALL the credit on this project." Paul, Mark's manager doesn't really care about this problem and is really only interested in results.

So, the question that Mark is facing:
How can Mark regain is footing after being sabotaged?


My personal insights would be as follows:

Nicole is apparently a "shark" and not a true team player. As such, she must have a habit of this and the concept of "laying a pool of the dead on your way to the top" comes to mind. People with this mindset can still make it to the top...but they don't stay at the top because employees just won't work for them. So, eventually, Nicole will fail. But this doesn't really help Mark's immediate problem.

I would probably say that Mark needs to fight fire with fire on this particular project (as much as I hate thinking this). This is Mark's first project with CliffBank and as such, it is critical that he succeeds to put confidence in the eyes of the senior management. With his mentor, Ian, being an executive for the company that his project is for, Mark has a huge advantage in this situation. Mark should call Ian and explain to him that he needs "an advantage on this proposal to make a good impression with senior management and he does not want Nicole at the meeting." If Ian asks for additional information, he should provide it. Ian is aware of Mark's past, and is more likely to believe Mark in this crazy situation.

Forcing Nicole into a position where she has to take a back seat with Ian is a very harsh move, but he needs to demonstrate to Nicole that he isn't a pushover. Mark should intimate that he wants to give the information to Nicole, but wants this to be a "group proposal where they both get credit for success." if he does give information to Nicole, he should not give complete information. An even better alternative is to see if Paul wants to come to the lunch meeting if Nicole is there. With Paul seeing how well Mark gets along with Ian and Millhouse it is likely that Mark will be put into the lead on the project. This being said, Mark will need to give Nicole some of the credit on the proposal...or he may face constant problems on future projects. It may even be worth it to record future conversations with Nicole in case of future sabotage and to build a solid case for her dismissal. Any recorded conversations should be placed in an office vault due to the sensitive nature.

No executive team wants a member of the team to be solely after their individual success. A true test of a person's ability is not only their success rate, but their ability to teach others what they've learned along the way.

This was a difficult case for me to stomach and conceive...as I have never worked with someone like Nicole before. This is not to say that I won't the future...and I don't think I'd be able to have the same approach to the situation.