Assignment 1 and 2

JWI 510: Leadership in the 21st Century

Michelle March

08/20/2019

Introduction

Blake Sports Apparel and Switch Activewear is a sports merchandise distribution company that mainly focuses on getting licenses from the client, which gives the company rights to manufacture the products and sell them to the retail market. Blake came in as a 2nd generation leader, mainly because his father founded the company which would explain his nature of being reluctant in the administration. In this case study, we look at how the company goes from being highly productive to bring a company that is almost going to fail. Technically a company is the employees without the employees the company is as good as dead, that means that the employees should also work together cohesively to make sure that everything is in place. This means that Blake, as the CEO, has the responsibility of making sure his executive team is cohesive. In the case study the executive is depicted as having challenges inworking together, what is the problem; is it that the working environment changed or it is just that the team was not good, it only required a demanding client to show the true colors of the team? You share a strong introduction, but remember you need to also state a thesis. A thesis will provide the reader with insight to the direction the paper is going – allowing identification of all key points to be discussed. I will look for development of your thesis in your final submission Part 2.

The Case: Problems and Successes

Blake Sports Apparel and Switch Activewear is a company that deals with, creating products from other companies which have issued them with rights of manufacturing products with their logos. So far, it has been a successful company since its conception, and lately, in the past few years, it has recorded a growth of about 28% annually as described in the Blake Sports Apparel case study. But recently there have been some changes in the company that would lead to the demise of the company. The first thing is the change in their previous client Cartlock that presented them a dynamic and thought-provoking environment, to Howell; which was Mature and well established. This is among the few changes the company experienced like for example; trying to grow Switch activewear which the CEO Blake is trying to cultivate as a branch for accessories. The problem now is with the team; there is miscommunication, there is the blame game, and the team is not cohesive. Thus, this paper trying to analyze and look if the executive team wasn't really, compatible and only a real challenging client like Howell would expose their flaws or instead it is just all about the decisions of the CEO.

Dysfunctions and Risks to the Business

At this point, it is clear that thethe executive team has issues and are directly affecting the business. The dysfunctions, according to the CEO, is that the executive lacks a structure, whereby if you look keenly at the organizational structure is defies this claim. But the structure that is lacking is how the executive work together, as we are going to see later the CEO is the problem. The other dysfunction is that the organizations require goals set that are aligned, which makes the executive team to lack direction somehow and instead of working towards particular taskstasks, they bad mouth each other to the CEO. This comes with the other dysfunction of inadequate communication, poor conflict resolution, and Power Dynamics. The mentioned dynamics among others creates a risk to the business, like products not making to the market due to miscommunication from finance and operations departments.

Successes and Strengths

This organization, just like any other organizations it has its strengths and weaknesses; for instance, the CEO mentioned that the company, while still working with Cartlock, they were doing good. That is seen through the 28% annual growth, whereby up to the present they have been doing well to the point of handling international markets. Just as according to Vroom-Yetton Contingency model, (JWI510, 6), requires that the ideas presented to the team should be brilliant and at the same be well accepted by team members for any decision to bear fruits. Which was the case when they worked witwith Cartlock. The ideas might not be brilliant, but the executive team agreed upon the ideas, and that is why the company was more successful before.

The team is also hardworking, the lack of cohesion is what is ailing the team; for instance, when they were moving from Cartlock to Howell, they had to serve the two clients which they did successfully until they finished the signing. Testimonies from the company executives are that they had to work on Cartlock in the morning and Howell in the afternoon.

Analysis

This part of this paper will look mainly at the dysfunction of the executive and how this affects the organization. In addition to that, there will be the possible causes of the dysfunction mostly because the team was performing and working perfectly before. There will be a careful analysis of all the issues related to the executive team dysfunctions at the same looking the possible remedies for these problems. The dysfunction of the Executive Team is mainly caused by lack of communication, lack of structure, poor conflict resolution, and power dynamics. Comment by Dr. March: I really like your transitional statements you use. Nice work.

Impact of Early Entrepreneurial Success

There is a phrase that goes more money, more problems. Since the inception of this organization, there has been mostly a success, with their constant annual growth of 28% and evident from the CEO's aspirations of making the company have a revenue of 1 billion annually. All these references are trying to create the picture of this might affect the executive team. Taking for example that the executive team had not changed in all those years, but the company changed from having organizations under their umbrella such as Switch Activewear that required their attention to improving the client, moving from Cartlock to Howell. The fundamental issue here is that the organization was changing, the business environment of the organization was changing, but the executive team is still on the conventional methods of conducting business, thus not understanding where their downfall came from, which made the team resort to blaming each other, and competing instead of working together.

For instance; some of their retailers went bankrupt and shut down, to the disruption of the market with an online store such as Amazon. So basically, the team is working under a new environment, but before they had been very successful, that led the team to lose self-awareness, which is part of Emotional Intelligence which is very important for any team to be successful (JWI510, 6). There need be a balance of IQ and EI, so basically the dysfunction of the team mainly caused with the low level/ lack of Emotional Intelligence and New Environment (that Howell did not provide, because Cartlock was the dynamic client).

Trust, Communication and Information Sharing

Trust, communication, and information sharing among the team members were very poor, specifically the finance department. (JWI510, 8), talks about the sins of leadership; the finance department does not inform the executive team about the employee bonus whereby it can be planned and implemented in such a way that it would create cohesion in the organization, maybe through organized company events. The misinformation of such is what creates mistrust that directly leads to a hostile environment of a zero-sum game instead of collaboration conflict approach (JWI510, 5), affecting the cohesion of the Executive Team.

One of the company Executives talks about how all the employees are, Passionate, loyal, and goal-oriented to the company goals. These are the requirements to create a good team; these team focused on the company goals; thus, there is some sense of alignment. The problem is that there is a lack of alignment when it comes to incentives, which is the responsibility of the CEO. According to Bruce Tuckman (JWI510, 4), a team should go through Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing whereby the first three stages are necessary and done through interaction that the CEO should create. Instead, Baker is the main problem of this situation, and as it will be discussed below, the lack of cohesion is mainly caused by the lack of compatibility of the team and his natural type of leadership.

Team Structures and Decision-Making Processes

The team structure is essential, Blake, as the CEO is supposed to assume the spot of being the head of the team instead of only coming in to solve conflicts or make changes with the team. The team structure, as mentioned before, is filled with Zero-sum game members, mainly because it does not show the leadership trait required to make the other team members want to be head of the group. The leadership vacuum is what causes the dysfunction of the team, making decision making hard mainly because individuals don't want to share information, or rather, the CEO does not foster cohesion in the team. Playing the Accommodator (JWI510, 4), as a peacemaker instead of getting on everyone's skin and get the results.

CEO’s Leadership Style

References

1. Everything DiSC by Jasim Khan, July 8th, 2019.

3. JWI510: Week 5: Overcoming Challenges to Get Results

4. JWI510: Week 6: Leadership and Decision Making

5. JWI510: Week 8: Achieving Results

6. Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden. 2017. Blake Sports Apparel and Switch Activewear: Bringing the Executive Team Together. Harvard Business Review

7. Jack Welch. 2005. Winning