Bob Knowlton Case Mr. Jerrold

Bob Knowlton Case

Mr. Jerrold

Simmons Laboratories.

It is a pleasure to contact you. Your organization is one of the best in the field and it has tremendous potential for growth. Let me introduce myself to you. I am Philip Noah from Star Consultants. My firm specializes in Organization development consultancy. We help companies identify their weaknesses and work on them. Our main objective is to improve company culture for better productivity and greater efficiency. Last week, I had the opportunity to come across the history and organizational structural details of your firm and I read it closely and with great interest. Much to my amazement, I discovered that your firm has had a high employee turnover compared to other rival companies. I was surprised because with an organization of your size and potential, there was no obvious reason for employees to leave. I spoke to some people who have worked for your firm and found that they all unanimously agreed that their leaving decision was based on company's culture.

Please don't get me wrong. I do not want to blame you or your firm for having an inappropriate or unfavorable culture, I would only like to point out that this may actually be the main reason behind high employee turnover which you would know costs a firm considerably in terms of money and time.

I have 10 years experience in the field of external OD consultancy. The job is not easy but its interesting, exciting and challenging. I have worked with some big names including Starbucks Coffee, Dell Corporation and Apple Inc. I helped these firms discover their true potential by minimizing the risks of employee turnover and internal conflicts caused by wrong company culture.

Let me take this opportunity to explain how company culture affects a firm. Company culture refers to the personality of a firm. It is composed of all the things that a personality is such as values, attitudes and beliefs. In each firm, there are people coming from various backgrounds with a variety of beliefs and mindsets. It is then the job of the firm to create a culture that would help its employees adopt the attitude and values that the firm cherishes. For example, some firms may encourage open communication between employers and employees while others may encourage respectful distance. The key is to find out which culture works best for your organization, adopt it and then have your employees adopt it too.

I would love to have a meeting with you so I could best explain what we could for your firm to improve its culture and thus reduce employee turnover rate. Kindly tell me when I can get in touch with you in person and we can discuss this further. I can assure you that you will not regret having me as your OD external consultants. So before you waste any time on HR development and other areas that you think might be causing a problem, please give me a chance to show you what you can do for the improvement of company culture. I can be contacted on the numbers given below.

Thank you,

Sincerely

Philip Noah

Bob Knowlton Case analysis

Bob Knowlton case cannot be described in one word but in one sentence it would be termed as a case of feeling threatened in the presence of someone more brilliant and bright to the extent that you could not see his obvious weaknesses. Interestingly, while Knowlton was obviously threatened by a new person in the group, he was willing to acknowledge Fester's brilliance. However when someone is so deeply disturbed by a new thing or person, it often causes him or her to be blind to the obvious weaknesses of the person. Had Knowlton saw that there were areas where he was clearly better than Fester, he would have never felt the need to retire. It is now important to analyze the case's various aspects.

Bob Knowlton's strengths:

Bob Knowlton had been working with Simmons Laboratories for two years and had been made project head only recently. He was a leader whom people loved and respected. He had a good relationship with company's head, Mr. Jerrold. He was a capable leader who would enjoy developing relationships with others and encouraged group thinking. He felt that while there were some problems that could not be solved by group thinking, in most cases, the ideas that emerged from such an approach were helpful. Knowlton had been promoted when he had accidentally stumbled on the idea of photon reactor. Knowlton was hardworking and enjoyed staying late in the office. This helped him find some quiet time to think over various problems and to assess project's progress. He was a man with a traditional yet highly admired style of leadership.

Threat of Fester:

person of Bob Knowlton capabilities is however not without his fear of insecurities. While Knowlton felt he knew his job well, he was definitely not looking for someone to come in and make him prove himself. He obviously didn't want his knowledge or style of management to be challenged by someone who was bright and intelligent but nonetheless new to the firm. For this reason when Fester joined the firm to see what position he would like to work at in the lab, Knowlton smelled trouble. For one, Fester was obviously very brilliant. He knew his work and had in-depth knowledge of different analyses and arithmetic calculations plus "some autocorrelation functions of surfaces." Secondly, Fester was fully aware of his capabilities and was way too sure of himself and his intellectual capacity. Knowlton felt threatened because Fester was quick to spot problems, knew about things that he had barely studied at the lab, and could single-handedly solve huge problems- some of which had been abandoned long time back. Fester was intelligent, confident and secure but what Bob failed to see was that he was a poor team player.

How Fester Threatened Knowlton:

From day one, Fester made it clear that he had immense knowledge. He told Knowlton he could tell what his project was about by simply looking at the graphs. Knowlton was quick to acknowledge this when he met Jerrold the next day.

Fester was introduced to other members of the team and went right ahead to tell Link, the mathematician, what he was doing wrong.

Fester challenged the group thinking, believing it only led to mediocrity. Knowlton had always believed in group-thinking and Fester had suddenly come up with solutions single-handedly which made Knowlton question the efficacy of group thinking.

Fester would often come up with analysis and scientific knowledge that Knowlton was unaware of. Instead of helping Knowlton understand what he was talking about, Fester would enthusiastically go on explaining his theories expecting everyone to already know what he was talking about. This gave him a superior status while everyone else felt inferior to him.

During one meeting, he challenged Link's way of thinking and offered solution to a problem that Link had long abandoned feeling that it could not be solved.

Fester also pointed out the weaknesses in various experiments and experimenting method and claimed that if this method were followed, resulted would be inconclusive.

Fester's weaknesses

By the look of things it appeared that Fester was some science god who knew more than anyone else in the business. But he had some inherent flaws, which were never discussed but were obvious regardless.

Fester was a bad team player. He was an individual to the core. The fact that he didn't believe in group thinking was because he couldn't possibly work with others. He was rude to others and often made it clear that he knew more than anyone around.