Business

Team Leadership Case 

From Snowboards to Lawnmowers

Michael Francis, a man in his late 30s, born and raised in Oregon, was an avid snowboarder. He was known among his many friends and associates as a risk-taker, highly intelligent, innovative, a bit of a rebel, but an extremely smart businessman. When he was in his early 20s, he started his own snowboarding company designing and manufacturing what became known as some of the most cutting edge boards available. Having recently married a woman who was raised on the East coast, he decided to sell his company and move to Vermont where his wife could be close to her family and in more close proximity to New York City where she did a fair amount of freelance work, and where he could get in a lot of good snowboarding. The sale of his business made him a wealthy man, and although working was not a financial necessity for him, he was seeking some new business challenge that could stretch him in a different direction. Although he had worked extremely hard to build his snowboard company and he had loved every minute of it, in many ways it had been easy for him to be successful in that realm.

Michael began to research potential business opportunities in Vermont. During the course of his search, his brother-in-law informed him of a relatively small, family-owned lawn tool company, Bedford Mower, in Bedford Vermont, that was going to be sold soon. The company had a few side product lines consisting of small lawn tools, but their main product, and the one that the company had been known for since its inception, was a special model of lawn mower. Michael’s brother-in-law knew about the company because one of his former college friends was the only grandson of the company’s founder, Edwin Emerson, and the ‘heir apparent’ slated to take over the president position as his grandfather and father had before him. Unfortunately for the Emerson family, the grandson had clear intentions of going to graduate school and pursuing a career in architecture, and had no plans to carry on in the family business. Because his grandfather, the company founder, had recently passed away at 92, and his father was being forced to retire due to severe health problems, the Emerson family had reluctantly come to the hard decision to sell the company.

Although his brother-in-law had half-jokingly informed Michael of the company thinking he would never go from making high-tech snowboards to lawnmowers, there were a number of aspects that appealed to Michael about the whole concept. Before he had died, Michael’s father had actually owned a small business repairing lawn mowers. Although Michael was only seven when his father died, he had fond memories of spending time with him in his workshop while he carefully took the lawnmowers apart and reassembled them. Another plus was the company’s location. It was located in a small town that his wife’s family had vacationed in summers while she was growing up. Michael had actually been there a number of years back while participating in a snowboarding competition and recalled liking the town very much. Obviously, the line of business was quite different than snowboards so it would also provide him the opportunity to test his business skills in a different venue. He decided to fly to Vermont in September and meet with the founder’s grandson and find out more about the company.

During his visit, Michael was given an extensive tour of the company and spent 5 days meeting with the grandson and the corporate attorney gathering as much information as he could about the operation. He was quite impressed with what he learned. In its 72 years of operation, the company had made a profit every year except during four years of the Depression. The financial records did indicate that the profit margin had been slowly, but steadily, decreasing over the last 10 years as the company accumulated increasing costs in some critical areas. The founder’s grandson informed Michael that his grandfather was very insistent on sticking to certain ways of doing business, and although his father had increasingly noticed that these practices were costing the company money, he had been reluctant to make changes given the founder’s strong position on the matter. Michael was not overly concerned about this trend because it was evident what the problem areas were and he felt that they could be taken care of with a few “quick twists.” The model of lawn mower the company produced was well constructed, had a good reputation for quality, and a solid customer base. The company also enjoyed ties with a strong and stable network of suppliers and distributors. In addition, employee turnover rate was much lower than average for that particular industry and the grandson stressed that the company consisted of a very loyal and committed workforce of around 300 employees. He noted, in fact, that a fair amount of the employees were actually related (e.g., cousins, siblings) and it was not unusual to have “third generation” hires working along side their parents and sometimes grandparents. Another plus in Michael’s mind was the fact that the company had existed this long as a non-union shop. He had run into some difficulty with the union in his last company and was hoping to avoid that in the future.

Sitting in his hotel room his last night in Vermont, Michael became increasingly excited about the possibilities as he outlined some ideas for some fundamental changes to both the product line and the way the company could operate under his reign. He felt that the company had the foundation to be something great but was a bit antiquated in terms of its product orientation and its processes. Over breakfast the next morning with the founder’s grandson, Michael expressed strong interest in acquiring the company and sketched out a few of his ideas for change. The grandson listened attentively to Michael’s ideas and then politely interrupted him. “I agree whole-heartedly with where you are going with this, and I do think this place does need to move into the current century” he said with a chuckle, “but in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to tell you that this company is very much a typical ‘New England’ style institution – a very conservative, traditional, paternalistic, bureaucracy. Don’t get me wrong…my family has treated the employees very well over the years. That’s why the turnover is so low. People like working here. Until he turned 90, my grandfather was here every work day along with my father closely overseeing the operations. My grandfather and my father knew every employee by name, knew about their families – who had a baby and whose kid went off to college, what they liked to do on their family vacations. Hell, I know for a fact that they’ve helped put some employees’ kids through college, or lent a hand when numerous employees were struggling with mortgage payments and things like that. But I guess my point is that people here are used to this company being run in a certain way, and in general, I think change is hard for them. It’s hard to believe, but there are still a number of operating practices in place that my grandfather instituted when he started the company. Like the Friday executive meetings. From the day the company was large enough to warrant hiring its first manager, my grandfather would hold a meeting every Friday to discuss the company’s operations and strategy and to give management their ‘marching orders’ for the next week while drinking scotch and smoking cigars. It’s a tradition at the company. It’s pretty much the only time that large conference room is used. My father and grandfather insisted I attend a number of the meetings and they were pretty amazing – it was like sitting in on an exclusive ‘old-boys’ club with lots of back slapping, politicking, managers lobbying for more resources for their departments, or for promotions for themselves. Lots of major decisions being made in those meetings over scotch and cigars. As you saw from the organizational chart, the company is very formal and ‘top-down’ in terms of decision-making. There is a very clear chain of command and notions such as ‘employee empowerment’ and ‘self-managing teams’ that we studied in business school do not apply here. Personally, I couldn’t stand it, but the employees don’t seem to mind. Their jobs are well defined, they know what is expected from them, and they do it and do it well. I’m not saying someone couldn’t make changes here, I’m just saying you might have your work cut out for you is all.”

After returning to Oregon, in October Michael decided to make the move to Vermont and purchase Bedford Mower. He spent the next few months doing extensive research on lawn equipment, its design, manufacture, and market. He finalized his strategy for making the company more profitable and competitive. Given that the acquisition came during the company’s slow season, right after Christmas, he contacted the three Vice Presidents and informed them that Bedford Mower would be closed down for three weeks to allow for some remodeling and restructuring. He asked that all employees be notified that due to the new ownership transition, they would have three weeks paid leave, and were to report back to work on February 1st in the town hall building to meet the new owner and president of Bedford Mower.

Michael felt that in order for Bedford Mower employees to fully appreciate that “they were all embarking on a new, energizing, innovative path” the company was going to need a new look. When he walked around the building, everything spoke of stodgy tradition and bureaucracy. All the walls were painted standard issue beige or light green, and lined with pictures dating back to the company’s inception. They depicted the founder standing next to the first lawn mower he had designed and built by hand, the founder and the first salesman dressed in suits while cutting the grass of potential customers as a means of demonstrating their product, the company’s first building, and numerous photographs of company picnics and employees throughout the years. Because they were a part of the company’s history, Michael couldn’t quite bring himself to throw them away, but he ordered them taken down and put into storage. He didn’t want the employees dwelling on the past, he wanted them in the mindset of thinking about the future. He hired a corporate interior consultant and together they picked out vibrant colors for the walls, and arranged to have several pieces of Michael’s contemporary art collection hung in the main hallway.

Part of Michael’s overall strategy was to reorganize the company from a traditional functional department structure (i.e., all the marketing and sales employees located in one department, finance employees in another) to a cross-functional product team structure whereby existing, and new, product line areas would be staffed with employees from each of the functional areas. So instead of a finance employee working with other finance employees in the distinct Finance department, that employee would now be working with members of marketing, sales, and operations, in a product specific area. Another addition was that under the restructure, functional employees would now report to a newly appointed product manager for that particular product line, as well as their traditional functional manager. This product-oriented structure was one that Michael had used in his snowboard company and it worked very well for them. In order to facilitate the new form of interaction across functional area employees, Michael had the workspace redesigned from a series of small offices to a series of open workspaces organized by short cubicle walls with product line employees clustered together. Michael also ordered all of the desks, many that looked old enough to be antiques, donated to a local charity and had them replaced with new, sleekly designed desks and chairs that were more space efficient. A total remodel of the corporate conference room was completed including the removal of the bar, pool table, old leather lounge chairs, and ash trays.

In mid January, Michael called a meeting with the three presiding Vice Presidents (of Marketing/Sales, Finance, and Operations/Manufacturing) in which he discussed the changes he wanted to be made in the company. When the Vice Presidents walked into the conference room, they were quite surprised to see all of the physical changes that had taken place, and unsure as to why three people they had not previously met, two woman and two men, were sitting around the new conference table fully engaged in conversation with the new president. Michael quickly introduced the four strangers as “talented employees” from his former company who had agreed to come on board and work with him at Bedford Mower as product managers. When the VP of Operations commented, “but we don’t have product managers here,” Michael smiled and said “Well we do now, and let me tell you how that is going to work.” He noted that the company needed to think bigger and broader than just their current focus on producing residential lawn equipment for domestic markets, and also needed to adopt a leaner, flexible structure and operating processes. He reported that they were missing a big opportunity for larger profit margins by not being in the professional lawn care market and by not having more of an international presence. He also commented that the current chain-of-command structure was too “management heavy” which was causing the company to incur unnecessary salary costs and resulting in slower response time. The VPs exchanged worried glances and one said, “Well, we’re certainly all for what is in the best interest of Bedford Mower. To that end, as you can see, we have brought along copies of the company policies and procedures manuals, as well as the results of our last strategic planning meeting to help you get more acquainted with us and how we’ve been able to operate successfully for so many years…” Michael interrupted the VP saying, “I’ve seen all of that. That’s what Bedford Mower was before. What we are here to talk about today is how Bedford Mower is going to be reinvented!” With that, he proceeded to outline the following changes.

· The company would add two new product lines: (1) professional lawn equipment, and (2) a line of residential equipment to serve more international markets.

· The company would maintain their two current product lines of (1) residential mowers and (2) small lawn tools, but these would no longer be the sole focus of the company.

· A Japanese equipment design firm would now be responsible for ‘updating’ the design of the company’s current mower line, and for providing the design ideas for the two new product lines. The existing two-person, in-house design department would be eliminated.

· Parts for product lines would now be purchased from a large manufacturer in India that provided quality parts at a much more competitive price than the local parts supplier currently used. Use of the current local supplier would be phased out within two months of the company’s reinstatement of operation in February.

· Work processes in the non-manufacturing side of the company would move from a functional design to a new cross-functional product design focusing on their four defined product lines

· Two layers of non-manufacturing management would be eliminated – a layer of mid-level managers and the immediate work group supervisors. The mid-level managers were to be let go and the supervisors given the option of assuming their former non-supervisory position, or being let go.

· There was to be more decentralized decision-making taking place within the product line groupings with the product line managers reporting directly to the president.

· Most employees on the non-manufacturing side would now report to two managers, their functional area manager as well as their new product line manager.

· A new, more high-tech extension of assembly line equipment would be installed in the manufacturing site to replace some of the existing assembly line equipment. Both lines would be run temporarily until the assembly line employees became acquainted with the new line – at which point the old equipment would be permanently removed.

When Michael concluded, the 3 VPs sat for a few minutes in silence not quite knowing what to say. Finally, they began to voice strong concerns about a number of Michael’s initiatives especially the movement into the new product areas and the new structuring. They argued that the company had developed a strong identity and brand around their core product, the residential lawn mower, and that moving away from this target into “uncharted” product areas could cause them to lose their established brand base, and go under if the new lines failed. The VP of Operations/Manufacturing added, “Why do we have to mess with how people work? Around here marketing folks work with other marketing folks, they don’t work with finance and operations folks. And I mean no disrespect to your friends here, but why do employees need another manager to report to? I think this is going to be very confusing.” The discussion continued for 2 ½ more hours with Michael mainly defending his decisions against the VPs’ increasingly stringent arguments. Finally, Michael said, “Look. I know change is tough, but it’s necessary for advancement in any area. This company cannot continue on as it had been operating, and I made this acquisition to move it in a different direction. If any of you feel that you cannot make this work, I understand and will respectfully accept your resignation. My hope, however, is that you will all stay on and help me move the company into a new and exciting era.” With that he provided them with the list of mid-level managers who were to be let go, a memo that would be sent out that week to all employees explaining the new changes, and a list of action items that he needed them to accomplish between now and the company’s re-opening.

More than anything, Michael hated meetings. In fact, he had a sign on his office wall that read “Excessive meetings are the tool of those who do not have the capacity to get things done.” As such, he also informed the VPs that the Friday Executive meetings that had taken place since the company’s inception, would no longer be held. He noted that with the new, leaner structure and decentralized decision-making process in place, communication between levels should be more efficient and that it did not seem necessary to have all managers meet with him every week. His plan was to have the cross-functional teams meet on a weekly basis with their product line manager, and have the three product line managers meet with the “top management team” (the 3 VPs) every month. He also informed the VPs that he was a big proponent of open forum meetings, and that he had arranged to have the town hall available the last Friday of every month to hold a company-wide meeting where anyone could ask questions, or discuss anything they felt was relevant to the company or their jobs.

The next day he met with Mrs. Hockson, the manager of the Human Resources department, who had been with the company for 40 years. He informed her of a number of steps that needed to be taken in that area. He shared that he has aware of the company tradition of “legacy hiring” by which employees’ relatives tended to be given preference in hiring decision. Because he was concerned that this practice could lead to nepotism and less than optimal hiring and operating decisions, he was implementing a new policy that prohibited the hiring of current employees’ direct family members. Those who were already employed could stay, but no additional family members were to be considered for job openings. When the HR manager stated that the town, and the family members, was the viable employment base for the company, he recommended that the HR department begin broader recruitment efforts that would include 2 towns within 45 minutes of Bedford. Michael also told her that given the transitions that were taking place and some pretty hefty start-up costs he had incurred, they would need to postpone the employee performance reviews, and associated wage increases, for about six months. When she expressed concern about this decision, Michael noted “I have always been more then generous with my employees and when people here get to know me, they will see that. We will catch everyone up in due time – right now is just not that time.” As Michael, got up to leave, the HR manager hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well you know Mr. Francis, a tradition around here is the company president’s barbeque that is held every July at his home. It’s quite the big deal with all employees invited as well as our distributors and suppliers. Some of them even fly in from other parts of the East coast. And I’m the one in charge of planning the whole event – which I like to get started on in February. I know that you and your wife bought that nice piece of property down by the lake which would be a perfect spot for the barbeque and I’m sure your wife would want to get involved in the picnic plans as well.” Quickly, images flashed through Michael’s head of the old company photographs he had removed depicting horse shoe competitions and softball games and whole hogs on a barbeque spit. Then his mind quickly transitioned to the fact that he had promised is wife, a strict vegetarian and not your typical picnic-planning type of woman, that they would finally take their delayed honeymoon in Europe for the month of July. He turned to the HR manager and said “You know, I was really thinking about doing something different this year. People are probably bored with the whole picnic thing by now. What if we have some type of winter sports event in which all employees can get involved? Wouldn’t that be fun? I like that idea -- let’s talk about that in a few more months.”

Michael arrived early to the town hall on February 1st to go through his Powerpoint presentation one more time before all of the employees arrived. He had asked his former employees, the new product line managers, to get there early also to help him set up as well. His wife had offered to be there with him as well, but he told her that probably wasn’t necessary. He hated to admit it to her, but he was pretty nervous about the meeting and was having second thoughts about this new venture he had taken on. Things with the VPs had not gone well during the transition time and he felt like the only people he could rely on for support and encouragement were his four product line managers. He had also become increasingly aware of the rumors that were running rampant throughout the town. He had pretty much stopped going into town to eat at the local restaurants or shop at the hardware store because it felt like every time he did, he would overhear people bashing the new Bedford Mower owner and the change he was forcing on the company, and lamenting the fact that he was going to run them out of business within the first year. Not knowing who Michael was at the time, the town people had felt free to be quite open with their criticisms. Michael stood behind the stage curtain and peered through an opening as the employees slowly filled the hall. He was struck by the fact that with the exception of the three VPs and the HR manager who were taking seats in the front row of the audience, he knew no one. Mrs. Hockson gave him a quick, reassuring smile, but the three VPs completely avoided eye contact with Michael. He had asked his product managers to join him up on the stage so that he could introduce them more easily…admittedly, he also wanted them there for morale support.

When it was time to begin the meeting, Michael walked confidently out onto the stage and announced, “Hello, my name is Michael Francis, and I’m the man who is going to help you move this company out of the last century!” He had enough time before the lights dimmed in preparation for his presentation to quickly look around the audience and see scowls, arms folded in defiance, or people nudging each other and rolling their eyes. He proceeded to have a moment of total panic as the first slide appeared with the words “Introducing Innovative Lawn Technologies, Inc. formerly Bedford Mower” and he experienced great remorse over his last minute decision to change the name of the company, as a flood of angry responses emanated from the darkened room. He quickly proceeded to go through his presentation at a record pace finishing in half the time he had planned. As he requested that the lights be turned back up, he could barely look at the gathering of employees. Nevertheless, he told them that he knew what he was implementing represented a lot of change, and it would take awhile to get used to things, but after they did, he was confident that they would be as excited about the new direction of the company as he was. He then said that he would like to hear any ideas, concerns, or questions that anyone would like him to address. The audience was eerily quiet. He was prepared for the VPs to take this opportunity to publicly voice their numerous oppositions to his ideas, but they just sat in their seats expressionless. Michael made several attempts to get the audience to engage in some discussion by offering things like “Well I’m sure there have been plenty of rumors flying around about me and what I plan to do here, so if anyone has any of those to share, I’d be happy to address them.” Still nothing. Finally, an employee raised her hand and asked if any members of the Emerson family were present at the presentation. Michael indicated that they were not. Another spoke up, asking if the Emerson family had been consulted on any of the new changes that were taking place. Getting a bit defensive, Michael responded that they had not expressed any interest in participating, and since they were no longer the owners of the company, he did not think he needed to consult them. After a few more failed attempts to initiate discussion, Michael began to close the meeting. Suddenly, one of the new product line managers quietly reminded him that he had yet to introduce them to the employees. He turned and quickly introduced them one by one announcing that these were “the talented individuals who would be leading the new product lines.” The managers noted that they received no warmer of a welcome than had Michael as their introductions met with only a few, half-hearted, intermittent bouts of applause. Michael closed with “Well, I am looking forward to working with all of you. Now please, go over to the newly renovated building and get acquainted with your new work place!” He quickly turned and headed back stage followed quickly by the product line managers. As they headed out back to the parking lot, Michael called “We need to get out of here for awhile – do you guys have your boards with you?” They did, and all climbed into Michael’s SUV with their gear and headed for the nearest mountain.

Over the next few months, Michael had little interaction with the employees. Part of this was due to his promise to himself to not become a workaholic and to maintain his work-life balance philosophy he maintained at his former company by which he would only be in the office Mondays thru Wednesdays. He now had a great administrative assistant and he stressed to her and his top management team that he was always available by cell phone or his blackberry if problems arose and he was needed. But the reality was, that even when he was physically present, he found it hard to be around the employees. Walking around the building, his attempts to make conversation with people were met with abrupt responses. They weren’t actually openly rude, but they sure weren’t friendly. He held only two of the all-employee open forum meetings so far, and no one said a word in the meetings except him. It became obvious that the meetings were a waste of everyone’s time. When he approached the VPs with inquiries as to how things were going, he received responses such as “Well, we’re all doing our best to acclimate to the changes…but it’s hard,” or “I guess things are going as best as they could be under the circumstances.”

Five months into the company’s reopening, the product line managers invited Michael on a Saturday night to drive with them to the next town for dinner. Sitting in the restaurant, one manager said “Listen Michael, we didn’t drive 45 minutes to the nearest town just for the calamari. There are serious problems in the company and we didn’t feel comfortable talking to you about it in Bedford given that, literally, everybody and his brother seems to work at ILT. We know you’ve been a bit depressed about how things started out at ILT and the four of us decided to wait it out awhile and see if things would turn around, but this whole product line concept is simply not working. Seriously, we have really tried, but at this point, you are pretty much paying us for doing nothing because there really are no product teams operating at ILT.” Michael was a bit surprised to hear this news because he had been meeting with the product managers every month, and although the teams had not made great strides, there was clearly some progress being made in terms of developing the two new product lines and updating the existing lines. “Well” said another manager sheepishly, “the little bit of progress that you have been seeing is pretty much a result of our personal efforts, not that of the product teams.” They proceeded to inform Michael of the numerous failed attempts at product team meetings for which employees would either fail to show up, be present but not have anything to contribute, or spend time bickering with their team members from other functional areas. The latter incident was becoming increasingly common as team members came to the meetings clearly with agendas from their functional managers that had everything to do with gaining more resources and product control for their respective functional areas, and nothing to do with working cooperatively with other areas to advance the product line. The two managers from the new product lines communicated that it was also evident that employees on their teams had no interest in helping to launch any new products and would spend the majority of their time defending the old, existing product lines.

First thing Monday morning Michael asked the VP of Finance to meet with him and bring him numbers. During their meeting, the VP informed Michael that ILT had been losing a lot of money over the first six months and they had a serious cash flow problem at this point. He reiterated his earlier concerns that the purchase of the new assembly line equipment was too costly, and any possible small increment in production that it could offer, would not warrant the expense incurred by its purchase. He further relayed to Michael that the Operations VP had informed him personally that the new line equipment was not providing any real value added over the old equipment and that it’s purchase was clearly a bad business decision. Michael was shocked by this piece of information because he had done such careful research on the new technology and had seen it in action at other companies’ plants. He just couldn’t understand why its use was not resulting in a higher production rate of mowers. In looking over the expenses more carefully, Michael noticed that the cash outlay for parts had been excessively high during the first two months of the company’s reopening – although it had subsequently lowered closer to the average amount. The Finance VP explained that there were consistent seasonal fluctuations in parts purchasing and that this spike in costs was not out of the ordinary.

On Tuesday morning, Michael walked over to the manufacturing facility and hung out in the observation room for about an hour unobtrusively watching the production line operate. This was the first time he had actually spent time there while the line was running since his visit before he purchased the company. He was surprised to see the old piece of line equipment still present on the assembly line floor. As part of the purchase deal for the new equipment, the sales person had promised to remove the old equipment at no cost, joking that they would probably be able to find a good home for it in some museum somewhere. He was further surprised to see that employees were still using the old equipment while the new equipment sat on the line totally unused, except evidently as a place for the workers to place their cups of coffee. Michael returned to his office and called the sales person who had sold him the new equipment, inquiring as to why his company had not removed the old equipment as they had promised. The salesman informed Michael that the morning drivers from his company had showed up to retrieve the equipment at ILT, one of the manufacturing managers informed them that they had found something different to do with the old equipment and they would take care of it themselves. After lunch, Michael returned to the manufacturing observation room and over the next two hours, watched again as the new line equipment stood untouched. He gave a quick call to the training technician the salesperson had sent out to spend the day with the assembly line workers and their managers four months earlier demonstrating how to use the new equipment. When Michael inquired as to how the training session went, the technician indicated that he thought it went “alright…although the workers had that deer-in-the-headlights kind of look on their faces as I was going through the demonstration.” He added that he told the workers not to worry about being intimidated by the new technology – that although it was “pretty complex,” they would “eventually get the hang of it.” “I told them that once they get used to the thing, they were going to love it – its production rate was lightening fast compared to that dinosaur they had been using and it was going to save them all kinds of man-hours. I jokingly told them that the thing could easily do the work of 20 of them, but they didn’t seem to think that was very funny.”

At the end of the day, as Michael was getting into his car, he recognized a young employee from the manufacturing department who had sought Michael’s advice a few times about purchasing a snowboard. Michael called him over, and opened his trunk to show him the latest model of snowboard his company had produced before he sold. After they talked for a few minutes, Michael told the young employee that he had been over to the manufacturing facility several times and was confused as to why no one appeared to be using the new line equipment. The employee looked very uncomfortable but when Michael assured him that he was not going to get in any trouble, he admitted that they had never really used the new equipment at all. He said “We were honestly going to try the new equipment, we were willing to give that a try and some of us were pretty excited about it too, but when that trainer came out to show us how to use the thing, it was pretty darn confusing. He went through all the steps pretty fast and he seemed like he was in a bit of a hurry to get done. He kept telling us that if we got messed up to just consult the manual he was leaving, but that thing was confusing too. Our supervisor was getting really mad about the whole thing, and then when the trainer told us that the machine would do the work of 20 of us, that was it. Our supervisor told the trainer that we had it now, and he could leave. When he left, the supervisor called us all over, patted the old equipment and said, “I say we stick with what we know, and what’s not going to take over our jobs,” and from that point on, we’ve been using the old equipment. And I’m real sorry about that cause I know it cost you a lot of money.” Michael thanked the employee for his honesty and went home to try to figure out what to do about the situation.

Very early the next morning, Michael received a phone call from their new parts supplier in India. He said that he just was checking it to see how things were going and when they might be expecting their first parts order from ILT. He communicated that based on his early conversations with Michael, his company had been putting aside the previously discussed quantity of parts for ILT, but no orders had yet to be placed. He apologized for calling Michael directly but said he had made numerous attempts over the last three months to get in contact with the operations managers by email and phone, but had no luck in hearing back from them. Michael said that he would look into the situation and email him later that day. After they hung up, on a hunch, Michael called the small New England parts supply company that Bedford Mower had used for years. The president of the company took Michael’s call directly and expressed how delighted he was that ILT had not only decided to stick with his parts company, but had actually increased their supply order substantially in the months of February and March. He shared that with all of the new changes taking place, he had been concerned that the fact that Bedford Mower had been doing business with his father’s parts supply company for over 50 years might not matter to a new owner. Before hanging up, the president thanked Michael again for his business, and said he looked forward to meeting him in person at this year’s barbeque gathering. Looking back over the financial statements again, Michael realized that someone had obviously placed, and paid for, a huge order of supply parts from the existing supplier in the first few months of ILT’s opening with the intent to stockpile the parts in lieu of ordering from the new Indian supplier.

Friday afternoon Michael received a call from the HR manager, Mrs. Hockson. She apologized for calling him at home on his “day off,” but said that she had come across some disturbing news that she thought she should discuss with him. He told her that he would drive right in and meet her at her office. On his arrival, she informed Michael that it had been brought to her attention that union representatives had been invited into the manufacturing facility a number of times now to meet with the assembly line employees. She stressed that she had nothing against unions, her husband was a union employee, but she knew that the Bedford Mower had prided itself on providing working conditions that made the presence of a union unnecessary, and she just thought that Michael should be notified right away. Dejectedly, Michael asked her if there was anything else he needed to know about. She reluctantly added, that she had just done the calculations and ILT’s employee turnover rate had jumped 13% over the last five months – an unprecedented amount for Bedford Mower. In addition, there had been a marked increase in the number of informal complaints made to her from employees who did not like the way they were being treated by other employees during the product line team meetings. She looked at Michael and said, “I’m sorry to say this Mr. Francis, but things are going downhill here fast and something needs to be done.”

Instead of returning home, Michael decided to head to his office and call a few friends who also owned small companies, in hopes of getting some much-needed guidance. When he reached his office around 6:00pm, he was surprised to see his administrative assistant still at her desk. When he asked why she was there past 5:00, she blushed and said she thought she would just hang around for a bit and try to catch up on some extra paper work. No sooner had she uttered these words, than a burst of loud laughing emerged from the conference room down the hall. His assistant nervously looked toward the conference room and then quickly looked back down at her desk. Michael headed for the conference room and upon opening the door found the three VPs making their rounds about the room liberally pouring scotch for what appeared to be all of ILT managers and supervisors. Cigar smoke filled the room. The VP of Operations quickly caught Michael’s attention as he made a dramatic show of picking up one of the ‘no smoking’ signs that Michael had placed throughout the conference room and began to catch it on fire with his cigar. This antic resulted in an uproar of laughter until one of the managers turned and noticed Michael standing in the doorway. Suddenly, the room became quiet. Michael struggled to maintain his composure and said “What is going on here?” After a few awkward moments, the Operations VP (no doubt bolstered by many glasses of scotch) replied, “I’ll tell you what’s going on here! What’s going on here is that, we, the people in this room who have been with this company for years, we, the people who really care about the fate of Bedford Mower, we, the people that the Emerson family and the people of this town trusted with their livelihood, we, are trying to save this company despite the best attempts of some hippie snowboarder from California to run it right into the ground!! And that’s what is going on here!” Despite his anger, Michael almost broke out in a laugh after the VP’s drunken show. He sternly told everyone to have a seat at the conference table, and leave their scotch behind. He angrily informed them that despite their opinions, he actually did have the best interest of the company in mind, that he had not gone out and spent his entire life savings on a company only so he could run it into the ground, and finally, that he was a hippie snowboarder from Oregon, not California. He then called his assistant and instructed her to order dinner for everyone in the room, and then join them in the conference room with her laptop and a can or air freshener. He looked around the room and said “We all have a stake in this problem, and no one is going home until we figure out a way to solve it.”

* do not cite, quote or use without permission of author, Pamela Tierney