HBR CASE STUDY A hot team turns around a moribund

HBR CASE STUDY A hot team turns around a moribund

Subject: Business    / Management   
Question

    please read the attached HBR case study 'Should This Team Be Saved',
    1)Describe Peter’s professional background and experience, and how he came to Vigor Skin Care. What was his goal when he accepted his leadership role at Vigor? Did Peter have a strategy to turn around the product line sales to be more successful – if so, what was it? How did Peter proceed with selecting team members to help him with his goal – did he have a plan?
    2)What did Sandy propose to contribute to the team’s effort? What did josh propose to contribute to the team’s effort? Collectively, how did their personal styles and teamwork perspectives enable Peter to move forward with the goal?
    3)Describe the balance of social/relationship-building behaviors and task behaviors demonstrated by the three team members. Is this a good balance for team success – why or why not? How did the way in which the team worked together benefit each of them individually?
    4) What manufacturing issues did Peter encounter as the Vigor Skin Care product line was increasing in success and sales? What was going on with his team at this point – what were Josh and Sandy’s behaviors, and how did this impact Peter’s objectives at this point? Should Peter have kept the team together, and if so what would be your recommendations for proceeding?

approximately 200-250 words in length

HBR CASE STUDY A hot team turns
around a moribund
division, but now,
with success behind
it, the team is
running icy cold. Should This
Team Be Saved?
by Hollis Heimbouch S, this is Captain McMahon.
We're anticipating a fair amount of
turbulence as we head over the Rockies, so
I'm turning on the fasten seat-belt sign
until we clear this rough patch. Thanks
for your patience." Peter Markles clicked the "save" button and looked up from his laptop. His
gaze shifted from the pale blue computer screen to the cloudless blue sky
visible through the porthole. "Rough
patch?" he wondered. "It looks as
smooth as glass out there." Appearances
certainly can be deceiving, he mused,
before turning his attention back to the
JULY-AUGUST 2001 31 HBR CASE STUDY • Should This Team Be Saved? computer on the tray table. Peter was
drafting a speech for this evening's celebration; his team at Vigor Skin Care
would be receiving the company's highest award for performance. Never mind
that the team had slowly been losing
steam. Tonight, they would party. Tomorrow, Peter would have tofigureout
what to do. Rejuvenating the Business
When Peter took the reins four years
ago. Vigor Skin Care was the sleeping
dog of the industry, producing an unremarkable line of cosmetics, soaps, and
skin-care lotions that barely broke even
year to year. Vigor was a division of one
of the largest packaged-consumer-goods
companies in North America. At first,
Peter hadn't known exactly how to save
the flagging business unit-he could
admit that now-only that it deserved
an honest try. After all, wasn't Vigor's
original mission-to provide safe and
healthy skin-care products for the whole
family-still valid? True, the company's
product portfolio wasn't as slick and
trendy as some of the recent entrants in
the market, but Peter had always liked
underdogs, and Vigor was just that.
Peter had spent thefirst15 years of his
career with another one of the country's largest consumer goods companies.
He had been hired right out of college as
a district salesperson and had spent
thousands of hours driving from account to account in the upper Midwest.
During his tenure at the company, he
was a dynamo: first, he was named
national accounts manager, then global
accounts manager, and twice he was
named Vendor of the Year by one of the
giant retail chains. Eventually, he became a division vice president.
Years later, Peter still loved the thrill
of closing the deal-give him a decent
HoUis Heimbouch is an executive editor
at Harvard Business School Press in
Boston and a contributing editor at HBR.
HBR's cases present commort managerial
dilemmas and offer concrete solutions
from experts. As written, they are hypothetical, and the names used are fictitious.
32 product, and he'd always beat his sales
targets. He thrived out in the field,
bringing along the junior sales staff,
offering them tips on how to manage
difficult accounts, and bucking up the
team when a crucial sale fell through.
Although Peter had never gotten an
MBA, his hard work, street smarts, and
people skills more than made up for
what he lacked in advanced degrees.
The corporate guys may have the credentials, he reasoned, but his gut was
almost always right, and he'd developed
a reputation for making the most out
of what he was given and then some.
Nevertheless, when the offer came to
lead Vigor Skin Care, Peter knew it
would test all his skills. On the face of
it. Vigor's challenge was no different
from the one every mature organization
confronts eventually: How do you rejuvenate the business? Peter knew he
couldn't merely push products that customers didn't want, nor could he simply
bulldoze his way through headquarters
demanding more resources. No, the division's turnaround would require equal
parts discipline, politics, and creativity.
He couldn't do it alone. Buiiding the Team
Sandy Fryda, Vigor's longtime marketing director, was the last person Peter
had expected to tum to for help-especially since Sandy appeared to have
been a major contributor to Vigor's
desultory performance for many years,
initially, he had pegged Sandy as one of
those polished corporate players, without the stomach for making bold moves.
The best he could hope for would be
defensiveness on her part; at worst, he'd
have to ask her to leave. But when Peter
finally met Sandy face-to-face, she had
surprised him. At a breakfast meeting
that lasted through lunch, Sandy candidly laid out her frustrations and ambitions for Vigor. "I've been waiting for
a chance like this," Sandy announced,
as she handed Peter a largefilecontaining the marketing campaigns and strategic recommendations she had drafted
to support Vigor's makeover. Like Peter,
Sandy believed that Vigor was a brand
worth saving. But headquarters paid at- tention to the divisions only when problems became crises, she explained. Vigor
needed an outsider to stir things up.'Tm
great behind the scenes, but you're the
guy who can save the day. And besides,"
she said with a wink,"l know where the
bodies are buried. I'll show you around."
So it began: Sandy would help Peter
navigate the tricky waters at headquarters. But who would contribute the creative vision that Vigor lacked?
Thirty-year-old Josh Bartola had already made a name for himself as the
founder of Snap, a small cosmetics company that catered to hip, young urbanites. With no business experience but
plenty of inspiration, Josh had turned
Snap into the market leader before
Vigor's parent company purchased it.
Snap was safely on the road to profHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Should This Team Be Saved? • H B R CASE S T U D Y itability, and Josh had stayed on as a kind
of nomad in the corporate research lab,
offering random and unsolicited advice
to anyone who would listen and sometimes stumbling unwittingly into the
middle of a turf war. There was little
doubt that Josh was a wildly creative entrepreneur, but he was also naive and
fiercely independent.
One day, Josh barged into Peter's office, wearing Dr. Martens boots and a
faded Clash T-shirt, interrupting a meeting between Peter and Sandy. "I've got
it!" Josh declared as he slapped the
table. For an hour, he waxed rhapsodic
about an entirely new positioning for
Vigor Skin Care that would address
consumers' desire for fashionable and
healthy products, josh had been developing a new kind of skin conditioner
JULY-AUGUST 2001 that was all natural, hypoallergenic, and
enhanced with vitamin E and UVA protection. The conditioner would be perfect not only in Vigor's existing skin-care
products but also as an ingredient in a
new line of specially enriched cosmetics-everything from skin cleansers to
mascara to lip gloss. Josh already had
the name, too: Ageless Vigor. Raising
their bottled waters in a toast, Peter,
Sandy, and Josh-the "fearsome threesome," as Josh had nicknamed themset out to breathe new life into Vigor. Creating Resuits
In Ageless Vigor's early days, Peter joked
that he spent more time with Sandy and
Josh than he did with his wife. When
Peter arrived at the office each morning,
he came to expect that the first voice- mail message of the day, left late the
night before, would be from Josh, excitedly describing his new ideas for Ageless
Vigor's packaging and branding. Minutes later, Sandy would usually arrive
with two cups of coffee and a list of the
day's action items. Sandy's uncanny ability to anticipate corporate headquarters' reaction-and to move the Vigor
team out of the line of fire when necessary-proved invaluable to Peter.
Acting as chief political adviser and
war room commander, Sandy would
help Peter sketch out Vigor's strategy.
And just when they were starting to feel
overwhelmed by all the tasks that lay
before them. Josh would storm into
Peter's office with a pizza, a new CD
they must listen to, and prototypes of
Ageless Vigor for the staff to try. Josh
33 HBR CASE STUDY • Should This Team Be Saved? was always full of enthusiasm and new
ideas, which he loved to bounce off of
Peter. "Give it to me straight," he would
demand. "Which ideas hold water, and
which ones are too out there?"
They were an unlikely team-Peter
the rainmaker, Sandy the corporate survivor, and Josh the rebel visionary. They
were stronger together than they'd ever
be on their own. In fact, Peter believed of the product line had made it to market-granted, with phenomenal resultsbut the rest of the line was still months
behind schedule because of problems
with suppliers and quality controls.
Peter had already sprung into action,
working with his manufacturing director to iron out the kinks in the system.
Vigor's manufacturing director seemed
happy enough for the attention, but precious political capital better deployed in another battle. Was Josh
worth that kind of fight? Did Vigor still
need the dashing feats of creative genius that only Josh could provide?
As if matters with Josh weren't
strained enough, there was Sandy to
worry about. Peter suspected that she
was feeling burned out by the pace of
the last four years. The hours had been Peter was deeply troubled by the sense that his closest allies, Sandy and
Josh, seemed to have none of their original gusto when it came to tackling
the day-to-day problems involved with distributing Ageless Vigor. that the team actually made him a better leader. Like Vigor's new antiaging
cream, the trio seemed to thrive on
some mysterious fonnula."I don't know
how it works," Peter had confessed to
Sandy, "but it does." And Peter wasn't
the only one who noticed. The fearsome
threest>me seemed to have undergone a
transformation, each person exceeding
his or her abilities, each making the
most out of what he or she had to work
with. There was no way around it: the
last four years-all those heated discussions, the endless presentations, the
down-tO"the-wire decisions-had been
the time of Peter's life, thanks in no
small part to Sandy and Josh. Dealing with the Fallout
The plane pitched and yawed a little, as
Peter once again clicked "save." As far
as anyone could tell. Vigor Skin Care's
star was still rising, but Peter knew that
the division had stumbled these past
two months, even if the numbers didn't
reflect that yet A manufacturing problem meant that best-selling Ageless
Vigor moisturizer had been out of stock
for three weeks. Peter's sales team had
spent two years getting key retailers to
carry the line, and even one delay could
permanently strain those relationships.
His other concern was that the launch
of the second phase of Ageless Vigor
products had been more costly and
slower than expected. Only two-thirds
34 Peter found the meetings a bit tedious long, the work intense, and now Vigor
for all their urgency. He missed the cre- had moved to a different phase in its
ative process of working out strategies life span. The days had become more
with his team and the energy that Sandy predictable, the early morning huddles
and Josh brought to the table.
less frequent, and Peter didn't rely on
Indeed, Peter was deeply troubled by Sandy as much as he once did when it
the sense that his closest allies, Sandy came to managing his superiors in headand Josh, seemed to have none of their quarters. Peter had started to hear from
original gusto when it came to tackling others that Sandy was showing up late
these sorts of day-to-day problems. In- to meetings and wasn't returning phone
stead, they oniy seemed interested in calls or answering e-maiis as promptly as
"blue skying" – spinning out wild ideas she used to. If only Sandy would regain
for the future. What had happened to some of her enthusiasm, perhaps the
the fearsome threesome?
team would be okay. Peter needed a
Within the past month, more than a strong person to bring greater prefew of the voice mails Josh left were to dictability to Vigor's operations, and
explain why he couldn't meet with when Sandy was at her best, she unSandy and Peter at their usual time. doubtedly could fill that role. Perhaps
He always seemed to be rushing off he should ask her to step up to a new asto lunch with executives from another signment. Or was she ready to move on?
division of the company; clearly. Josh Perhaps he was ready for her to move
was flattered hy their requests for his on. One way or another, they needed to
advice. Peter suspected that the divi- talk, even if he didn't know quite what
sion's interest in Josh was more than just he wanted to say.
casual. And why not? Who wouldn't
benefit from having someone like Josh
"This is Captain McMahon. Well, air-trafon hoard? Vigor certainly had, and now fic control says the worst is behind us, so
an initiative was under way at head- I'm going to turn off the fasten seat-belt
quarters to encourage this sort of cross- sign. We'll be landing in 40 minutes."
pollination among the business units.
With one more glance out the winBut there was still work to he done at dow, Peter loosened his seat belt. Yes,
Vigor, and Peter didn't have another tonight there would be speeches and
Josh waiting in the wings. If Peter applause and toasts to the future. But
wanted to keep Josh, he would have to tomorrow, Peter would have to face the
put up afightat headquarters. And that, question: Should he try to keep Vigor's
as Sandy had taught him, might expend product team together?
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