Harvard Business Review - December 2008 Case Study

When Steve Becomes Stephanie:

Let me first write a disclaimer that I'm not an expert and that I did not read the expert opinions after the case. However, this case was probably the oddest one that I've read so far. Not that transsexuality is odd...it was just a very difficult one for me having no background.

First, the question:

How can Henrietta help Steve tranisition in a company where not everybody is on board?

The key players in the case:

• Henrietta: Senior VP of Human Resources at LaSalle Chemical


• Karl Deiner: CEO of LaSalle Chemical


• Steve/Stephanie: Group Sales Director of LaSalle Chemical


• Alex: Co-worker with Steve in the Sales group

Overview of the case:

Steve came into Henrietta's office identifying his upcoming gender transition. This was a completely out of the blue thing as Steve is a married man with kids and considered to be an athletic and attractive guy. He's 38 and considered the goldenboy of the sales group. Henrietta asks Steve if he's going to take a non-client facing role during this process. Steve then jokingly replies, "So I'll just be another lower paid woman in the office?" There was some discomfort, but Henrietta has some due diligence to complete before talking with the CEO.

He outlined his transition timeline and within 6 months the changes will start becoming apparent. A couple of weeks later, Alex and Steve were waiting for a flight home and talking at an airport bar on a Thursday afternoon. Steve mentioned how valuable working with Alex has been to being successful in his new position and wants Alex to know what a great job he's doing. Alex acknowledges the compliment but does not particularly like Steve. Alex is in his late 50s and felt that Steve stole his job after a merger occured with Steve's past company. They caught the flight back and as Alex was catching up on emails he noticed an anonymous manilla envelope on his desk.

Alex was heading on a two-week hiatus as he helps his wife recover after a first round of chemotherapy. So, Alex opens the envelope to see confidential information about Steve's transition timeline. Alex then storms into Henrietta's office to sit down and discuss this issue of what he feels is completely immoral and indecent. He wants to know if Steve will be fired.

At the end of the case we find Henrietta working out how to address the issue to the CEO the next Monday and how to come up with a strategy to create a positive awareness campaign at the organization level.

The question again:

How can Henrietta help Steve transition in a company where not everybody is on board?

Personal thoughts:

Very tricky case. While gender transition is becoming more mainstream...to the extend where transgendered individuals are mistresses on prime time television shows and competing to become America's Next Top Model....I don't think much of corporate America has created a lot of tolernce and education material for employees.

While Steve has every right to transition, there will be some employees that don't believe it to be socially acceptable. As such, his role of being the Director of Sales, a client facing role, may be a tough one to keep while transitioning. Many times sales folks are hired because of their personality and looks. The case made mention of Steve being an attractive and athletic guy. Being in a client facing role I think it could be important for Steve to ask his clients what their opinion is working with someone in his unique situation. If LaSalle Chemical stands to lose clients, then I don't think Henrietta has much of a choice but to offer Steve a healthy exit offer.

Regardless of what the clients say, Henrietta does need to create an awareness training regarding the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community. Essentially, we're all people. Exteriors change based on plastic surgery and other chemicals all the time....but we're still the same on the inside. Steve may start doing his job even better after transitioning into Stephanie as it will be a huge weight off her shoulders.

One thing is absolutely for certain, if an exit offer is extended to Steve of maybe 1-2 years worth of salary, Alex (his older co-worker) should NOT be given the promotion to the Director role. This won't be a one-time occurance in a company...and his acknowledgement of feeling that being transgendered or transsexual is immoral, he is not management material.

Phew...well, those are my thoughts, did anyone else that read the case have an opinion?

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.

October HBR Case Review

So, much like last month I am giving my case analysis with blind eyes to the expert opinions provided after the case. My format will be a brief outline of the case, the case question, and then my input on the case.

Can Knockoffs Knock Out Your Business?

Brief description:

The case starts with an outside consultant locating and seizing roughly 100 tons of fake products from a warehouse in Hong Kong. The consultant then calls the CEO of Ruffin, Bill Bronson to let him know that the seizure occured. We then find out that Bill has a vested interest in tracking down knockoff products from a nearly fatal accident involving a knockoff watch representing his watch company.

Bill is currently in Dubai and working with Kamil Zafir and Nels Volgren. Kamil and Nels were discussing the upcoming protocols being built into their products that will make reproduction nearly impossible in 12 months. The new product security protocols are partly relying on a laser-etching device purchased from China. They've also been doing some simple things like evaluating the contractor's raw material orders to "red-flag" when they order too much product.

Two weeks later, Bill was in Beijing and noticed an abundance of knockoff products. Lily Wang, Ruffin's east asian director, told Bill that the knockoffs were "free billboards" and they weren't "lost sales"

Bill has added additional lawyers to the staff, employee time is now having to be allocated to testify at the nearly 20 different civil and criminal lawsuits. Essentially, profits were being eaten away by legal costs.

Case Question:

How far should Bill take his campaing against counterfeiting?

Personal Analysis:

Well, I think that some of the efforts that Bill has initiated are excellent countermeasures to the knockoffs. The laser etching and other special markings are an excellent way to help customers verify authenticity. However, knockoffs are an inevitable byproduct of a high-end brand. A clear solution to this problem is to eliminate the outsource production process. Bring the production of the watches and other products back into company hands. This method will help to reduce the leak of confidential manufacturing techniques. Now, you may say that corporate espionage will still happen. While this is possible, it is much less likely than putting corporate products in the hands of external outsourcers in a foreign country.

If the company chooses to stay involved with a foreign outsourcer (which is legitimate from a profit margin perspective) I think that they need to dictate the production facility policies to punish those involved with corporate espionage with jailtime in their local country. Put forth some counter-intelligence efforts...push some fake product designs to each facility and see what is sold on the black market. This could be a method to find the "bad eggs" and get rid of them.

Just some thoughts....as I'm not entirely familiar with these issues on a practical basis. So, my thoughts are entire theory-based. Don't get me wrong...I want to have some experience in those situations. I just don't have any yet.

Harvard Business Review - Sept. 2008 Case Study

For those of you that haven't picked up September's issue of the HBR I will give a brief synopsis of what the case is about.

First, the question:

"Are Brady's worst fears justified?"

Synopsis:

Barton Brady is the CEO (I think) of Serendipity Associates (SA). It is a consulting firm that specializes in strategy...or at least branding. Two of Brady's biggest clients, Pixar and Dan Brown have just pulled out of SA to a competing firm. A senior partner, Yasmin Buonarroti, suggested that it was from a price-war loss...but that didn't make sense to Brady as margin pressures weren't really a concern of his firm.

Yasmin was waiting for Brady in the boardroom when he arrived at the office and showed Brady a blog post from Rhetorical Butler talking about SA in a VERY negative light. (It is likely that "Rhetorical Butler" is Hank Wittgenstein who is described to be a rogue philospher that heads up a competing firm. Wittgenstein is a low-cost consultant that is outsourcing some of his work to Ireland.)

We end the case with Brady going for a walk to think about how he will respond to this blog to stop the hemmorage of his client base.

Personal Analysis:

(I am writing this before reading the Expert advice...hopefully I have a matching opinion)

Brady's fears are definitely justified. With an upcoming competitor trying to strategically position himself as a low-cost and high quality consultant it will pull clientele away from more than his consulting firm.

In today's digital age a blog post can be detrimental to one's brand and no matter the response....the message is out there. That being said, it is important that Brady create a post speaking about the benefits of keeping the consulting teams "local" or at least "regional" to better service customers. He needs to further outline why outsourcing work will inherently reduce the quality when a firm adds degrees of separation. He will also need to address the issue of the blogger, the metaphor overuse or misuse in the consulting industry. It will be VERY important that Brady does not attempt to specifically address his company...but the industry at large. Talk about re-inventing the SA brand into its own sans-metaphor society that delivers sustainable results to clients.

I think that the concept of globalization is great to expand current lines of business. But, to deliver the type of work that strategic consulting firms are known for.....the consulting team will need to be working with the company and have a large presence at the company site. The concept of outsourcing consulting work will only reduce the quality of work.


So...that's my take on the Case Study. I apologize for the stream of conciousness type of writing I did there...but I've got a lot of things in my hopper.

Has anyone else read the case? Do you have any additional insights or suggestions???

May 2008 HBR Case - Will Our Customers Bail Us Out?

For those of you that haven't had the opportunity to read the May 2008 case study I'll give the highlights. A company, Clarinda, is struggling and already downsizing. It can ask the customers to hep keep the company afloat--however, will this hurt the company?

David is heavily leveraged in debt on the company and is being forced to stay on the course to try and turnaround this company. So, he is trying to determine how to get out of debt with the company and get out of the picture. They just lost 1/3 of their yearly business and have some major problems.

Dave wants to contact his customers and inform them of the company's situation but is getting told not to by peers and lawyers. The answer should be "Things are fine." Their largest customers has an opportunity to help Clarinda, but Dave was struggling with how to approach them--and what to say to them.

My personal take on what Dave should divulge to the customers:

Personally, I think it is extremely important that Dave discloses the current state of the company. Why the layoffs occurred, and the future of the business. If his customers in this industry are as loyal as the case infers this is going to be very important to disclose the current state of the business. There appears to be a great deal of trust in this industry, and Dave would be weakening the trust between him and his customers if he did not have full disclosure.

Regarding Dan, the drunken salesperson. I think this is something that must NOT be disclosed to customers. I really feel that this should be handled in-house. The best case scenario is to sit down with the guy and lay the cards on the table. Express how Dan has changed over the past couple of years and how that is impacting their business. They're close friends. When a friend confronts you about something you're not doing or something you are doing that is hurting themself and others around them it can be an eye-opening and hopefully life-changing event. If this is the case, GREAT--they can mend their issues and move forward. Otherwise Dave is highly likely to lose a very close friend and valuable member of the business.

So, I will tear through June's Case study soon enough...until then...you may see some more new blog postings about other things....

Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock

Well, I must admit that I'm a big fan of the new Guitar Hero Game, Legends of Rock. If you want to actually check out their website it can be found here. But the basic concept is that you play the guitar.

Some of you may have read the Harvard Business Case study that talked about the open source electronic gaming system that had a "music synthethizer". Should they do open-source? Of course, I'm no expert. But, of course the answer is yes. Now, they need to have a standardized API set....but people that are passionate about improving their existing technology are always going to be very careful in their development. So, it is a great strategy to open up the software to outside developers.

I just realized that this blog is a perfect avenue to answer all the HBR case studies....maybe I'll be more in depth on the next one or two. Since the digital music device case is a couple months old I should be able to do that fairly quickly here.