Memo for BDO

Role-Play Activity: Sam Response to Conflict

Your role-play character: Sam, Local Office Managing Partner

Part 1: ​ On your own, read your character’s background information.

About you:

You are a long time employee who has been with BDO for almost 20 years. As a local office managing partner,

you are not enforcing the use of the CRM with your team due to the extra work required. Your team is

working hard and outperforms the other offices (with annual revenue growth of 6% compared to the

company average of 3-5%), so you don’t understand why management is upset about some simple data entry.

Confidential Information (Tanaka does NOT know the following):

Your feelings about the situation:

You believe that word of mouth marketing has worked well for your office in the past, resulting in annual

revenue growth of 6%. Why spend money on a marketing campaign that might bring in less loyal customers

than those brought in by peer recommendation? You see no need to waste time on data entry for the CRM

tool; the old way of tracking customers was fine. Employees are already working at capacity and this will just

give them more work. You don't see the value in the new system and think it’s a waste of money and time.

What you want (your interests, what you most care about):

Ideally, you would like to be able to continue to rely on the monthly call reports that other members of

leadership team and managers are currently required to use, instead of the CRM. At a minimum, you would

like another full-time employee to help manage the additional workload of implementing the CRM.

Additional Background Information:

You have been a loyal and successful BDO employee for almost 20 years. You applied and interviewed for the

regional managing partner position that Tanaka now holds. You are very angry that Tanaka, an outside hire,

got the position over you. She is much younger and less experienced than you. You do not understand what

made her a better candidate for the promotion. Since Tanaka became the regional managing partner eight

months ago, you have not been impressed by her performance as your boss.

You do not think that Tanaka is aware that you applied and interviewed for the regional managing partner

position.

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Role-Play Activity: Sam Response to Conflict

Problem Statement:​ ​ BDO has implemented a new strategy that requires all offices to use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. After three months, Sam (local office managing partner) still has

not implemented the CRM system in his office. Tanaka (regional managing partner) has scheduled a meeting

with Sam to address this issue.

Part 2:​ On your own, organize your thoughts before your difficult conversation.

1. What outcomes do you want as a result of your difficult conversation with Tanaka?

2. What are your arguments to persuade/convince Tanaka to allow your office to continue to use the old way

of tracking clients and not implement the CRM system?

3. When talking to Tanaka, how do you intend to handle the conflict? (i.e. competing, collaborating,

compromising, avoiding, accommodating)

Part 3: ​ Pair up with a Tanaka (green handout) and hold your difficult conversation.

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Role-Play Activity: Sam Response to Conflict

Part 4:​ After your difficult conversation, debrief with your partner:

1. Rate your conflict outcome?

2. What was the outcome of your conflict? (win-win, win-lose, lose-lose)

3. What was the biggest issue during your conversation?

4a. How did you manage the conflict during your difficult conversation? ​(Did you: raise your voice, feel uncomfortable, try to win, etc.?) 4b. How did your partner manage the conflict during your difficult conversation?

5. Do you think that your strategy (from Part 2) was successful? Why?

6. If you could re-do any part of the conversation, what would you change? Why?

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