EMBA 718 Leadership and Change Management

Unit 4: Team 1 Aston-Blair Case

Nate Mertins, Chad Morris, Bill Nickerson, and Brianne Simon

Aston-Blair Team Case

1. Analyze this situation using course concepts discussed in lectures and readings. What went
wrong? What are the problems facing him right now? What caused them?
The Aston-Blair case describes the formation, selection, and experience of a task force with
multidepartmental membership. The problems faced by the task force leader at the end of the case
raise issues of who does the selection; the establishment of group norms, values, and goals; the
leadership of a task force; confidentiality and responsibility; individual rivalry; and intergroup
conflict and politics. At the end of the case, Bacon finds himself in a difficult situation due to the
leaking of confidential company information. This major problem stemmed from the fact that
Bacon withheld an important document from Meir and the rest of the task force team at the request
of Bodin who loaned the document out. Dr. Cornelius was informed of Bodins six summary
statement report which suggests that the regional sales managers were consistently overstating their
sales estimates in order to ensure adequate inventory and rapid delivery. Bodin shared his findings
with Bacon and Reiss, in confidence, and they all agreed that none of the information would be
presented in the August 4th presentation or to the task force team until Bodin had the opportunity
to discuss everything with his boss; Vice President Jed Burns. Unfortunately, Bacon left the paper
on his desk, where Meir was able to read it, and then passed on the information to Dr. Cornelius.
Cornelius has taken it upon himself to schedule an appointment with Burns to reveal Bodins
findings and that situation ignited Bacons current problem. Reiss, who witness the entire ordeal, is
now extremely upset with Bacon for allowing others to obtain the confidential information and is
fearful of the consequences it will bring for Bodin, once Burns finds out. The entire problem stems
from the confidential information Bodin provided to Bacon. One of the factors that has caused
Bacons current problem was that he didnt take precautionary measures to hide the document. By

EMBA 718 Leadership and Change Management

Unit 4: Team 1 Aston-Blair Case
Nate Mertins, Chad Morris, Bill Nickerson, and Brianne Simon
leaving it on his desk, he facilitated the information to other people. Another factor that might have
caused Bacons problem is his lack of communication. Perhaps if he has shared the information
with his task force team they would have understood better and not leaked the information to other
people in the company before the scheduled time. Another obvious problem for Bacon was the high
tension between him and other people within the company who were present during the meeting.

2. What could Michael Bacon have done differently that might have avoided his present
difficulties?
The conflict process has five stages: potential opposition or incompatibility, cognition and
personalization, intentions, behavior, and outcomes. The task force has a lack of communications
both inside and outside the team, which can cause conflict. First and foremost, the team members
knew little about each other and they were divided into individual subgroups after the initial
meeting, they did not have regular meetings to discuss their research; which caused insufficient
exchanges for information. The report written by Bodin was kept confidential, which has potential
to create a sense of distrust and low credibility among the team members and will decrease the
effectiveness of teams. Secondly, only the product managers were involved in the task force, who
made the final forecasts. There is no previous communications or interactions with market
managers, which increases the possibility of competing conflict. In addition, Casey and Trott were
kept uninvolved and uninformed by Bacon, so they were not able to accommodate the conflict.
The task force has weak team structure, which is also a source of conflict. Higher degree of
specialization in the tasks assigned to group members increases the likelihood of conflict. Bacon
lacked the abilities of an inner-directed leader who would speck in defense of his team; since he
didnt stand solidly behind Meirs ideas. Also, he has not treated all the members equally; he spent
much of his time working with other group members except Meir. Moreover, Bacon has not set up

EMBA 718 Leadership and Change Management

Unit 4: Team 1 Aston-Blair Case
Nate Mertins, Chad Morris, Bill Nickerson, and Brianne Simon
norms within the group. When Bacon called the members of the task force to share the findings and
to discuss a strategy for presenting their recommendations, Meir was unable to attend since he was
in New York gathering sales data. As a result, Meir missed important information about systematic
biases in the Sales Divisions input into the forecasting, which would have helped dramatically to
support his findings that regional sales managers were consistently overstating their sales estimate
in order to insure adequate inventory and rapid delivery.
Furthermore, according to Effectiveness Team Model, diverse teams should benefit from different
perspectives and do better. Nevertheless, blend of the old timers and tenderfoot in the task force, to
some extent, created conflict problems as they have a friction between them. Negative emotions
made Reiss oversimplify issues; who had a sense of distrust and disloyalty to Bacon. Negative
feelings take a narrow view of the situation and cause less innovation solutions. This can be seen
that, although Bacon was accommodating and tried to explain what had happened, Reiss was
competing and overt questioning Bacons responsibility.
3. What should he do now to resolve those difficulties? Provide specific recommendations and
action steps at the time described in the case, immediately following the disastrous
presentation, and before the afternoon meeting.
In order to improve the effectiveness of the task force team, team members should have integrative
bargaining with the marketing managers. The team must first gather enough information and use it
to develop a strategy. Secondly, Bacon should improve his ability in leadership and define the
ground rules. This will increase the level of feeling of responsibility from all the members of the
task force. Moreover, the task force needs to explain, amplify, clarify, bolster, and justify their
original demands, since it is important to make the management realize that the company will
benefit from their recommendations. Meanwhile, Bacon should be engaged in a distributive
bargaining with Reiss with the target point that will reach an agreement on the sharing of the

EMBA 718 Leadership and Change Management

Unit 4: Team 1 Aston-Blair Case
Nate Mertins, Chad Morris, Bill Nickerson, and Brianne Simon
confidential report of Bodin among all the members. This will solve the problem of information
sharing and can help Meir to respond to the questions that marketing managers were asked.
Team members should spend more time together in order to enhance the relationship and
communications. This will improve the climate of trust inside the team; which can facilitate
cooperation and reduce the need to monitor each others behavior. Trust is also the foundation of
leadership, members will be more likely to accept and commit to Bacons leader goals and
decisions.
Trott and Casey should involve themselves in the coming meeting, since this will give the task
force members a feeling of getting support from the upper managers and will motivate them to
move forward to defend their team, which will also improve the comprehensiveness of the team. In
addition, as the originators of the task force, the two vice presidents also own certain powers. Their
involvement plays an important role, which can enhance the teams image and credibility,
meantime, which can also increase the probability that marketing managers will intend to accept
their recommendations.
Declining demand is also a reason for the excessive inventories and sizable losses, so it is better for
the manager to find a new way to do the marketing survey in order to collect and analyze the data
more accurately; for instance, online questionnaires and interviews.