Leadership Case Study -- Chattanooga

Leadership Case Study -- Chattanooga Ice Cream Case

What is the effectiveness of the management team at Chattanooga Ice Cream Division?

The Chattanooga Ice Cream Division's management team is not operating effectively at all. It seems that none of the managers has a focus on the forest, but only on the trees. Even worse, it seems that none of the managers is particularly involved in the intellectual process of understanding why the business is doing poorly or how his or her particular business unit has contributed to the decline or what it might do to reverse the situation. Instead, the sole concern of the managers seems to be defending his or her business unit against any accusation of responsibility for any problems and shifting the focus of any negative attention to other business units.

What is Charlie Moore's effectiveness as the leader of this team?

Charlie Moore has not proven himself to be an effective leader at all. His biggest mistake is assuming that the consensus-style of leadership and decision-making that worked in magazine publishing would necessarily work in ice cream manufacturing and sales. In principle, magazine publishing is a much more natural and appropriate venue for consensus decision-making because of the way that various business units must actively collaborate to produce every article or feature. By contrast, the nature of ice cream manufacturing is not necessarily an appropriate venue for decision-making by consensus because of the relative isolation in which different departments work and the absence of regular collaboration in the normal processes that are essential to the success of the business.

Moreover, the fact that Charlie implemented such a fundamental and radically different leadership style as compared to that relied upon for so long (and so successfully) by his predecessor only exacerbated the problems attributable to the change of leadership style. Arguably, even in an industry or business where leadership by consensus would have been more appropriate, it would have been a mistake to implement such a change without considering the existing patterns and relationships among and between key business unit managers. In theory, a consensus-based system could have been introduced where a team had already exhibited a mutual trust and an efficient collaborative environment. Unfortunately, at Chattanooga, the individuals at the head of the various business units did not have an established rapport and had not demonstrated that they were at all capable of working together collaboratively in that fashion. Charlie should have maintained the authoritative decision-making style of his predecessor unless or until he managed to cultivate the appropriate environment and organizational culture at Chattanooga that was more conducive to effective decision-making through a consensus process.

What should Charlie do to move the team toward a consensus on the immediate problems facing the company?

If Charlie wants to move the team toward a consensus style of decision-making in general or toward consensus-based decisions in connection with the company's immediate problems in particular, he must use his position of authority to change the focus of the heads of the respective business units. More specifically, Charlie must announce that his administration will neither reward nor tolerate the "CYA" approach to collaboration in which the principal focus of each business unit head is to make sure that any blame or responsibility is automatically shifted to other business units practically irrespective of any interest in solving the problems, wherever they originated. Charlie must establish an organizational culture of responsibility, in connection with which he must announce that demonstrating the ability and willingness to recognize and correct problems will be rewarded while defensiveness and deliberate attempts to focus blame elsewhere will no longer be tolerated.

In the immediate period, Charlie should abandon the consensus approach to decision-making and take on the decision-making role of his predecessor. He should schedule private meetings with each business unit head with the instructions that the only topic of discussion will be ways to contribute to the solution of the problem within each respective business unit. During those meetings, no discussion will be permitted that pertains to any other business unit whatsoever. Charlie should announce that what will be rewarded will be business-unit-specific solutions and not arguments that fault lies elsewhere.

What could Charlie do to improve the performance of the team in the future?