Acton-Burnett, Inc.

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CASE REPORT ON ACTON-BURNETT, INC.

Final report on Leading People and Teams

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Case Report on Acton-Burnett, Inc.

1. What mistakes did Ryan and Keene make during the process?

The sequence of events in the case points to the fact that Ryan and Keene made some critical mistakes that led to unimpressive outcomes within the task force. The facts below justify this assertion.

Baker’s choice as task force Lead

The first mistake was appointing Baker, a greenhorn in managing cross-functional project, as leader of the taskforce responsible for taking Acton-Burnett Inc., out of two consecutive loss periods. Prior to his appointment, Baker had not led a team, hence is not rightly suited for such critical task. Albeit being a promising Stanford graduate well regarded internally, his experience was only limited to corporate planning and he had no real expertise in other sections of the business. Considering the company’s preference for hiring MBAs and given that both Ryan and Keene are MBAs, it is safe to assume they choose Baker because he had an MBA, instead of a more senior executive without an MBA. While leading the taskforce may be a good way to horn Baker’s leadership skills, it was risky putting him to a test with such an important project.

Task Force Formation

Proper consideration was not given in appointing the taskforce team, as each team member had varying experience, background, reporting line, education (MBA and non-MBA) and seniority levels. Although this is expected in cross-functional teams, the complexities managing diverse personalities contributed to the pitfalls Baker experienced.

Ryan and Keene’s choice to appoint three product managers to represent the Marketing division, instead of the market managers, on the excuse that the market managers were busy was wrong. However, it can be deduced that they did not involve the market managers due to past resistance for change in the forecasting process by the market managers. Given that the product managers report to the market managers, such decision was bound to cause conflict between the product managers and market managers. It may have been good to appoint a market manager as a senior figure to coach Baker, manage the politics, influence and rally every member of the taskforce towards achieving the set goals

Thirdly, Baker had not influencing in selecting the taskforce team, as the Rayne and Keene appointed members. To compound matters, some of the team members were selected by other members of the top management, without recourse to Baker. Fundamentally, this is a colosal error because it meant Baker would have no real authority since he had little influence from the team composition, and this gave rise to the taskforce becoming a platform for settling departmental conflicts

Communication and Timing