Reference no: EM132229918
Delegation Case: The Missing Research
Review the following case study:
Mary Jones, Market Research Manager, is planning an exciting two week vacation to Tahiti with her spouse. She has decided to delegate authority to John Links, Senior Research Analyst. John was a strong performer and technically excellent at Market Research reports. Mary reasoned that he should have no problem guiding the more junior employees. Before she leaves, she goes through the list of hot issues she was handling carefully with John. She also reminds him that she needs his research report for the Senior Management Meeting when she returns.
Mary returns to the office with a golden tan and "eases in" to work by investigating her overdue email. While perusing the 200+ messages, she finds one from Human Resources which indicates that “Melissa accepted the offer” as Statistician. Mary bursts into John’s cubicle: “John, what’s this about a new hire?”
John retorts: “Well, welcome back! I thought you would be delighted that we made progress on that hire! You’ve been looking for weeks.”
Mary pauses and says, “It would have been nice if I could have met her first! I guess we better meet to discuss how things went over the last few weeks.” As they sat down to discuss progress, Mary’s blood pressure began to drop. It looked like all of the hot issues were under control. Mary smiles and says, “Well John, it looks like you did a nice job running the department! Are you almost finished polishing up that research report? I need to spend a few hours tomorrow converting it into slides for my presentation at the Senior Management meeting.
John looks up with a sheepish grin: “Um, sure. I need a few more hours though.” At 5:30 that evening, Mary drops by John’s office to check on the report. She finds John, staring at a computer screen. He shrugged and said: “Um, it really isn’t where I hoped it would be at this point. I guess all that management stuff really put me behind on this. I can give you what I have so far.”
Back at her office at 6:00 pm, Mary sighed and put down the three page outline she just read. Normally, she would have a 20 page analysis to start with. Now she was going to have to work all night to scrape up enough research so that she wouldn’t look like a fool in front of the company's senior managers. She wondered whether she made the right decision delegating her authority to John. She could have asked her boss Renee, the Director of Marketing, to cover for her…
To begin your post, review the discussion. Then click on the Reply link, and provide your answers to the following questions:
1) Did Mary make a good decision delegating? Why or why not?
2) What mistakes did Mary make in the delegation process? What could she have done differently? Make certain that you have provided at least one unique suggestion that has not already been mentioned in the discussion.
3) Identify and explain one advantage and one disadvantage of asking her boss to manage her group during her vacation. Hint--think hard on the disadvantages.