2024

Leadership and
organizational
behavior

FINAL PROJECT
WHAT HAPPENED?
I work in a company that provides digital services to large companies for their subscribers, and
I am regional manager for the account managers that take care of our customers and the
delivery of our services.

A few months ago I was promoted and am now in charge of a larger group of account managers,
in charge of accounts that are new to me, as well as other two new support areas. This
increased my scope of work, and meant I had to spend some time figuring out how they were
working, which processes they were in charge of executing and whether they were doing so
correctly. It is important to mention, that one of this support areas was not transferred to me
with their supervisor, so it was just a group of analysts who had little experience and
understanding of the tasks they were doing, almost no training, and no visibility of the
importance of the tasks they were doing (which are pretty important in terms of customer
satisfaction, and impact the company’s spending), so it was a pretty unfocused, powerless
group, fearful of making mistakes as a few of their members had been recently fired.

Soon after I received the leadership of this last team, I realized that the handoff document,
which was supposed to describe all the tasks this team needed to perform, had been
incomplete, and some crucial processes were not being fulfilled, and so I began an
investigation and asking the areas they serve what deliverables and tasks they needed my team
to provide. While this was ongoing, it was discovered that one process had been neglected by
my team, and this had had a significant impact on the company’s spending in the past months.

As this happened while I was out of office, my manager and a coworker talked to the person
responsible for the neglected task to figure out why she had stopped performing that task.
During this interview she displayed body language that was interpreted as rude to my manager
and coworker and came off as if she did not care about the situation at hand. Once I came
back, I was asked to investigate further and to take action as I saw fit with this person who was
costing us big amounts of money and did not seem to understand the gravity of the situation
and her participation in it.

As part of my new leadership, I had designated a supervisor to help me with the organization
and leading of this team, so I worked with her to establish our course of action. The first step
was for her to give her feedback on the whole situation, including making her aware of how her
attitude had been perceived during the meeting, and how this affected her gravely, as it
complicated her situation because my manager did not believe the omission of the process
had been a mistake, but a lack of responsibility for her work and how that impacted the whole
company, and he did not want someone with that lack of awareness to be part of a team with
such crucial responsibilities.

The supervisor was able to have a successful feedback session, where the team member
conveyed that she had not been aware how her body language came off, and that that was not
the image she wanted other people to have of her, that she actually cared about the job and
wanted to improve. Together, they worked on an action plan to make sure this situation could
not happen again, by documenting the process and implementing some controls, while I talked
to the whole team to make them aware of the importance of the role for the company and to
encourage them to take ownership of the processes they are in charge of, as this is now an area
that has visibility within the company and a good performance can lead to growth
opportunities.

However, since the omission had cost the company an important amount of money, my
manager asked me to give an admonition to the person responsible for the process, which
meant we needed to involve the Human Resources and Legal teams. Once we escalated the
issue to them, the Legal team decided to launch an internal investigation to figure out how
something like this could have happened, and the situation was taken off my hands and took
unintended turns.

When Legal interviewed the employee who had the omission, she mentioned that she had
stopped doing her part, but that she was only the last link in a chain of tasks that needed to be
fulfilled, but other people had been in charge of initiating the process and sharing with her all
the necessary information to complete the task.

During this investigation, a few people from other teams were investigated, including a person
from my account manager team that I had selected to initiate a career development process.
This person had also recently changed projects, and the omission to initiate the process on his
part was during his transition.

Once the investigation finished, Legal made the decision to terminate the initial person who we
had asked to be admonished, as well as a member of a different team who was responsible
for an intermediate step. As for my service manager, he received an admonition and had to sign
a legal document regarding his participation in this situation. Because he was the only person
during the investigation who admitted fault, and understood the gravity of the situation, as well
as because of his good track record, he was not let go.

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

This is the key question in this situation, as there were many changes going on at the time that
the mistake was made, and I believe that an unfortunate combination of multiple factors led to
different individuals to make mistakes or incorrect decisions that would have a very negative
compound effect.

In general, I think one key factor was that none of the involved characters had a clear view of
the full process, they only saw the small fragment that they were involved in and could not
guess the full consequences of not fulfilling their role as they had no visibility

I also believe there was ambiguity in the roles and responsibilities, because none of the
employees that were involved felt they had enough information to act or felt they should have
taken action to improve the situation before it got out of control, and they took a passive role
expecting someone else to solve this. The most concerning is the account manager, who was
responsible for sharing the information that initiated the process. As he was changing roles, he
felt he had too much on his plate, and made an unconscious decision that this process was
not as important as others, and that it could be resumed later without meaningful
consequences, because he had no idea of the implications of not sharing the initial
information. He not only saw a very narrow scope of the process and acted based on that
information alone, but he did not bother to assume that this was a crucial role for a project he
was leaving, and that he should have made sure that he transferred it correctly to the new team
in charge. Also, as he has expressed desire to be taken into consideration for a promotion, he
should be more aware of these types of budgetary implications.

As for the more operational role, in charge of executing the last task, I believe a lack of
motivation and role definition led her to do the bare minimum, and so did not notify anyone
when she stop receiving the information she needed to perform her job correctly. I think that
because she came from a team where the leader made all the decisions and did not provide
any context information regarding the tasks they were performing, she did not feel confident in
her role, that she could freely speak up, or take any action to make sure she had all the input
necessary to fulfill her role.

WHAT CLASS CONCEPTS ARE RELEVANT TO THIS

SITUATION?
The first one is role ambiguity. I believe both workers displayed some degree of ambiguity in
the definition of their roles.

For the account manager, a crucial part of their role is making sure that spending is taken into
account for the account budget, that all processes are well documented and implemented,
and running smoothly, and empowering everyone involved to speak up when they believe
something is not working as it should be.

For the more operational role, she should have known that a crucial part of her role is detecting
broken processes, informing her supervisor when she is not receiving the input she needs to
perform her assigned tasks.

Another key concept is empowerment. These employees lacked the empowerment to get
involved in solving an issue they might have detected, but that they believed they did not have
enough authority or autonomy to even point out.

WHAT DID I LEARN FROM THIS?

First of all, this gave me very useful information on the teams that I had just taken on, as well
as on the individuals that make them up, and what I need to work on to make sure they are clear
on their roles, what is expected of them, how I can motivate them and make sure they feel
empowered to act autonomously. With the operational team, I am taking a more task-oriented
approach to leading them, as they didn’t have much clarity on their objectives as a team and
the tasks they performed. Also, they felt like their tasks were menial and didn’t contribute to
the mission of the company, so they were pretty unmotivated and afraid of being let go. So I
have also been working on making sure they feel valued, that they understand the meaning of
what they are doing, and that they feel empowered to make suggestions that could improve
their work, the scope of their area, and that they feel confident enough to ask from other areas
what they need to fulfill their activities. This has been a huge lesson for me, as this is my first
time leading a team with these characteristics and has forced me to adapt my leadership style
to meet their needs.

As for the account manager, I know he would prefer me to be a leader that delegates fully, but
I realized he also doesn’t have much clarity of what is expected of him in his current role, and
what he is expected to develop to be eligible for the promotion he is expecting, so he also needs
some directive leadership in some capacity that he did not initially receive and that he might
not feel necessary at the moment.

I have been working with my team on coaching sessions where I am helping them become
aware of these situations and come up with a plan for how we are going to work together to
improve. In general, I think this opportunity, and the more open communication that they were
not used to, are motivating them to take a more hands-on approach to their work, identifying
opportunities for how they can assume responsibility and propose improvement.