THE EXPERTS' ADVICE:WHILE BRADY'S sentiments in taking the job back are understandable, his decision-making skills leave much room for improvement. It is evident that Brady has developed research skills, especially when it comes to using the internet and social networking. Surprisingly, he had so little knowledge about the company for which he left a good job and moved countries. Before engaging in such a major move, one should conduct a much more thorough research, both through publicly available channels as well as through one's own network.
It’s clear the company was not facing the realities of customers’ needs and the available possibilities. Compounded by his difficulty with strategic vision, Power’s lack of environmental scanning contributed to this situation by ignoring the competition and technological developments. In the right measure, optimism, which involves a certain positive distortion of reality, can be very useful.
However, when optimism lacks regular monitoring, it leads to a delusional distortion of one’s strengths vis-à-vis external realities, which is what Power’s company was facing. Hiring Brady, who came with a lot of international experience coupled with an ability to act strategically, was the right thing to do.
Power should be mindful of ensuring person-organisation fit. In Brady’s case, the challenge is twofold: first, there is the lack of fit between Brady’s job expectations and the realities he discovers when he joins the company. Studies show the benefits of the “realistic job preview”: that is, describing the challenges that the candidate will face, not only the positive aspects. In the medium and long term, realistic previews result in higher satisfaction, higher job commitment, more positive sense of organisational fairness and lower turnover.
The second challenge is between Brady’s values and attitudes and the company’s culture. Hiring Brady was an attempt to change the capabilities of the market research company but Power was not strategic and aware enough to adapt his work style in order to use Brady’s talents appropriately.
Both parties made avoidable mistakes: Power did not understand Brady’s aspirations and work values and Brady took matters too personally, interpreting Power’s intention to hire the consultant as a threat and Power’s lack of confidence in him, leading to an overly strong reaction against his boss.
So what is the way forward? Both men should take a step back and consider how their mutual interests can be served. Power needs to reassure Brady he has the autonomy he is seeking. He could offer him greater responsibilities, tie part of his compensation to the company’s performance or start talking about the conditions for making him a partner. Brady needs to reflect on his reactions and options. In the longer run, Brady needs to work on his emotional intelligence: learning to manage his emotions so he is better able to assess which actions are actually an attack on him.
– Jacob Eisenberg
THE TWO biggest organisational deficits that staff cite in surveys are lack of leadership and poor communication. And so it is here. Power’s first issue is that he ran his company through old media channels. To compete, he now has to espouse the profound change that social media presents as a channel through which he delivers services to his clients. He must ensure that the company as a whole embraces social media. To do that, Power himself must embrace it. By hiring and then delegating social media to Brady, he believes that he has addressed this. He hasn’t.
The bigger issue, however, is the relationship between the two men. For the company to thrive, it needs them working closely together. Brady has shown a remarkable lack of emotional intelligence in the managing of the relationship with his boss. For Power’s part, he has also demonstrated a striking lack of business intelligence in hiring someone to help turn the company around through a medium of which he has no knowledge. To compound the error, he lets the hire get on with it without fostering a proper business relationship.
Both men need to leave any alpha male or macho tendencies at the door and engage with each other in an open, non-confrontational way. They would do well to enlist the services of an independent third party to help bring this about.
Power and his company need to identify where they are, where they need to get to and how they are going to get there. His company is at a tipping point. If he has the stomach for the fight, he needs to engage with Brady to help re-build his company. If not, he could look to sell the company and Brady may be the man to sell it to. Tough decisions are needed and thus far neither man has shown the bottle to make them. Time to step up to the plate.
– Robert Cooper
SOMEONE TURNING up in your office with the immortal line “Hi, I’m from head office and I am here to help” is rarely welcomed. Substitute “head office” with the name of any leading consultancy and you can have an even worse reaction.
The scenario presented in this case study resulted from a failure on behalf of all the parties involved.
Paul Power failed to ask a fundamental question – what is the business problem that we are trying to solve? Having a clearly articulated problem, agreed upon by both Brady and Power, would have avoided the deterioration in the relationship that ensued.
On the other hand, Brady also failed to engage Power in his strategy over the previous 18 months. Brady allowed Power to remain detached from his strategy and to think that he could “relax now that the box had been ticked”. Brady should have worked through the strategy and its potential impact on the business with Power, using language he could understand.
The consultant has failed here too. Management consultants, as an industry, have a responsibility to clarify the client’s understanding of the problem to be solved and to ensure they are adding value to the client. There is also an ethical responsibility to ensure that the buyer of the service understands what they are buying.
Social media is an area of intense interest right now. It is also an area that has huge change and is still at an early stage in its maturity. Viewing this objectively, getting some outside assistance would make sense for the parties involved. So how would a better outcome have been achieved?
Organisations typically use consultants for two reasons – capacity or capability. Capacity is a requirement to apply skilled resource to a problem quickly and for a finite period. You avoid the entry and exit time for new resources especially around on-boarding. Capability is bringing insight, expertise and an external perspective to the problem at hand. In this case, if approached in the right way, Brady may well have welcomed some external challenge and validation of his approach.
To remedy the situation, I suggest an open discussion between Power and Brady, to gain a full mutual understanding of the business strategy and how the social media strategy will contribute to it. They should determine what additional investment Power is willing to make and how that is best utilised. They should spend some time trying to agree what roadblocks or challenges need to be overcome to ensure the achievement of their goals. In that way they can define a problem. Having a no-obligation conversation with the consultant may even help to shape the problem. Once they have agreement on a problem they can then engage and be clear on the contribution required from the consultant.
– David McGee
