Reference no: EM132226195

Case is related to Strategy management please answer it accordingly

The Missing Computers – A Case of Communication within the Organization Initial Conditions:

I was the general manager of a corporate division office. Our company developed large software systems. I had four program managers reporting to me, each with a program worth between $3 and $5 million. Bob was one of those program managers. I arrived at work one Monday morning at 8:00 am. By 8:01am every member of the finance department was lined up outside my office complaining that someone had stolen all their PC’s right off their desks. The first question I asked was, “Had we been robbed?” By 8:15am we knew the answer. No robbery had occurred. The PCs weren’t taken from the building, they had just been moved. All the PCs from the finance department had been found on the desks of Bob’s engineering team. Bob’s team was made up of 15 system analysts and programmers working on a 2-year program worth about $3.5 million. I instructed the financial staff to leave the computers on the engineer’s desks for now, until we could figure out exactly what happened. The financial staff was understandably ready to tar and feather Bob, while my job was to keep everybody calm. Without any real information, my goal was to make sure everybody remained calm and didn’t come to their own conclusions. By 8:30am Bob had arrived at the office, but none of his team had yet arrived. When Bob arrived I asked to see him in my office… alone. “What the heck happened, Bob?” I didn’t yell it out, I just said it with emphasis on the word “What”. Bob calmly explained that his team had committed to the customer that a specific deliverable would be in the customer’s hands by Monday morning. The team decided the only way to get it done was to work through the weekend. By Saturday afternoon they realized they were not going to get it done unless they had more computing power. So they took the computers off the desks of the finance department. They worked through Sunday and late into Sunday night and got the product delivered to the customer on time, Monday morning. When they left Sunday evening they were just too tired to put the PCs back on the desks of the financial staff. So Monday morning when the financial staff arrived they found no messages, no thank-you notes, no explanations, and no computers. Bob’s team had worked hard, and had delivered the product to the customer on time. The financial staff was upset but the customer was happy. Bob was in charge of a very important program with a very important customer. Bob was also what I called a “race horse”. He was a relatively independent employee. I could point Bob in a direction, give him minimal direction and get out of his way. I could be confident that he would get the job done. He had relatively good judgment. I didn’t want to do anything that would reduce his drive or independence. I often gave him freedom to exercise his judgment.

There you have the case. What would you do?

1. Would you chastise Bob for not anticipating the problem and tell him he should have foreseen the problem?

2. Would you praise him for getting the product to the customer on time regardless of the consequences to the staff?

3. Would you tell the financial staff to “just forget about it”, or “get over it”?

4. Would you stay out of it and let Bob and his team and the financial department solve their own issue to get past this?

5. Would you get in the middle of this situation or stay out?

6. What would you have told Bob? What would you have told the financial team?