• You also found that over the past 6 months, the Senior Leadership had been very proactive in their attempt to drive a much different strategic vision and had communicated strong performance expectations for every Senior Leader and their respective functions. In the case of the Marketingfunction, it soon became clear to you that the former Vice President had not taken the corporate strategic mission and expectations seriously and that now in effect, Marketing was behind in driving and achieving that strategy.
• You also recently learned that your predecessor had been asked to leave. As you talked with the HR Partner you discovered that he had a long term affair with one of the regional directors, and that senior leadership had basically turned their head and not confronted that situation, until this past year when there relationship turned bad and she alleged sexual harassment.
• Although the culture of the organization in general and your organization appears to be one of "go along, get along", the more you have gotten to know the people in your organization, the stronger the message you have gotten that people are very unhappy and not very motivated, and in fact as the economy has started getting better, you have learned several of your key people are looking for other opportunities.
• You have one long-term Regional Director who is very strong willed and he has a track record of pretty much doing what he wants and clearly has not been very aligned with the corporate direction. From what others have told you, he intimated your predecessor, as well as others, and thus not only was not held accountable for results, but basically drove his own agenda in his region.
• In your most recent meeting with your boss, the CEO, he was very clear and very strong in his message to you - "get the marketing mess cleaned up and build a marketing strategy that will drive our business objectives - and do it quickly! - I must see a drastic change in performance from Marketing!"
Key Questions/Considerations:
1. What is the performance problem or challenge?
2. What is your evidence for that determination?
3. What do you believe is your greatest challenge in this case as amanager?
4. How will you address this problem/challenge? Why take this approach?
5. If you had to label your approach with one or two words, whatwould you call your approach to this PM problem/challenge?
6. What must you do to "clean up the marketing mess?"
7. What must you do to build a strategic marketing strategy?
8. What must you do to shift the performance mindset of the organization?
9. What will you do to actually change how performance is managed?
10. What will you do at the organizational level regarding performance?
11. What will you do at the individual level regarding performance?
12. How will you accelerate a cultural shift to increase organizational performance? How will you create a culture of accountability?
13. How will make needed changes while minimizing the potential of losing key employees who may be looking for other opportunities?
14. How will you measure performance improvement?
15. What will you communicate to the CEO and Senior Leadership?