Reference no: EM133151453

After Jason McDonald, chief operating officer of Commodore International retired, Grace Anderson and Natalie Francen took over as co-CEOs and a greater role in running the company. Francen, for instance, held regular meetings with senior operations staff who previously reported to McDonald. Ultimately, this became problematic. Francen believed Commodore could pull-off just about anything, and her enthusiasm led her to set overly aggressive deadlines.

One former employee said the situation got so bad that internal deadlines simply were not taken seriously. As a product launch date inched closer, it was common for a few teams working on the same project to realize they were unlikely to make the date, but no one spoke up, under the belief that another team was even farther behind. "Everybody just kept their mouths shut, waiting for somebody else to break," says the former employee. Because the teams were not fully communicating, the executives overseeing them had little clue as to the source of the problems.

Since Francen believed Commodore could pull off just about anything, meetings and forums where employees could provide input and ideas were not scheduled on a regular basis. At the meetings that were scheduled and held, employees did not feel comfortable to voice their concerns and comment on company and industry issues, so everybody just kept their mouths shut.

Employees and former employees described a process where they were frequently re- assigned in the middle of complicated, long-term projects because there was no executive in control who could make firm decisions about key elements of the production process. That led to wasted time, and immense frustration for employees, one person said.

Commodore employees complained amongst themselves about being dissatisfied with their work and felt their work did not have a major impact on the growth and success of the company. Many employees were not being developed and groomed for advancement to prepare for the company's future, and several key employees left Commodore for new opportunities with its competitors. Not only does a disengaged workforce slow productivity, but industry experts also estimated that the coststo Commodore ran into the billions of dollars. According to a former employee, the new operational staff members were never empowered fully to do their jobs.

Using The Motivation Process discuss and explain how well Commodore's Grace Anderson and Natalie Francen followed this process.