Martha Rinaldi - Should She Stay or Should She Go?

Martha Rinaldi:

Should She Stay or Should She Go?

The holidays were over and it was the beginning of a new year, January 2009. Martha Rinaldi had not yet made a decision about what she should do: stay in her current position at Potomac Waters; ask to be reassigned to a different brand; or, accept a standing offer at Deep Dive Pizza, where she had interned the previous summer. Things were certainly not going as she had hoped upon arriving at Potomac Waters as an assistant product manager (PM) in the Health Drinks Division. For the past four months she had been working on Invi, a new brand of fruit health drinks.

She gazed at the adjacent desk of her colleague, Jamie Vaughan, and wondered whether she could continue working with him and whether Natalie Follet (her manager) would be able to help her develop her marketing skills. An associate PM, Vaughan had been working at this position since February of 2008. Relations had been tense with Vaughan from the first day. He had started without formal training in marketing, as he proudly told her many times, and often voiced his resentment of “know-it-all” young MBAs. Both Vaughan and Rinaldi reported to Natalie Follet, also a company veteran and only the second female PM in the Health Drinks Division of Potomac Waters. Having worked half-time at home for six months for personal reasons, Follet communicated mainly through email. Recently, in a rare, in-person meeting, Follet criticized Rinaldi for lacking initiative. Follet would be back working full-time at the office soon. (See Exhibit 1 for short biographies of Vaughan, Rinaldi, and Follet.)

Despite her short time at Potomac, Rinaldi had already lived through a few tense and sometimes vocal exchanges with Vaughan and Follet. Making matters worse, many of her tasks on the job had been menial (copying, fixing powerpoints, etc.). She wondered if she had a career at Potomac.