GPS-GO Takes Garmin Analyze the personality and temperament of Joseph Thomas.

Joseph Thomas is fundamentally an optimist and he likes a good challenge. Juxtaposing these two attributes of personality reveals a tendency to let the end goal drive a situation while simultaneously glossing over any details that appear to undermine the desired goal. This is not to say that Thomas ignored important details; rather, it is to say that Thomas allowed the facts and the vision to run on two parallel tracks. While Thomas tracked the cost and design details of the projects, he tried to be responsive to Michael Scott's vision of the production and, importantly, to the targeted completion date that would enable introduction of the project at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Thomas had a strong understanding of the issues related to production, but he did not push hard enough on his case. Certainly, Thomas was in a difficult place as he was challenged to balance his deep knowledge of Global GPS and the intense drive of his new boss. Thomas was sensitive to the issues of attempting to meet Scott's timeframe, and certainly was fundamentally aware of how that was going off track. The cost trajectory for the three products was substantially off-track, and Thomas knew it. He did not push back hard enough with Scott to ensure that the realities of the situation were sinking in. And most problematically, he did not push back early enough -- when there might have been time to make reasonable adjustments.

If, in fact, Thomas' responsibility was to drive the Global Positioning System (GPS) products toward their targeted cost, he had not been given authentic authority (since Scott basically ignored Thomas's expressed concerns and objections), nor did he sufficiently bring the issue to a full court press within the company. Thomas's attempt to mitigate the cost overruns seemed to fall on deaf ears.

1. Separate the four (4) steps in the project...

As the production manager, Thomas was negligent not to keep in closer contact with Joan Dolce of marketing. It appears that the marketing numbers were run early on and debates raged for a time about the feasibility and profitability of Scott's plan. Apparently, neither Dolce nor Thomas were able to prevail, despite the reasonableness of the figures they presented. Once Thomas became aware of how strongly Scott was pushing his agenda down the road, Thomas should have requested regular meetings with Dolce -- and insisted that updates of the market share projections, based on solid fiscal forecasts, be reported directly to Scott as project updates. Instead what happened was that the progress of the project was reported in terms of production benchmarks isolated, apparently, from manufacturing cost reports.
Growth. The case does not detail this step of the product lifecycle since the narrative does not cover the release of the product. That said, the implications are that Thomas would be faced with the reality that some substantial changes were needed in the company's approach to development and manufacture of their products. Importantly, the focus would need to shift solidly to ensuring realistic profit margins and improved market share.

Maturity. The case does not detail this aspect of the product lifecycle since the narrative is focused on research, development, and production. However, there are hints about could occur in the maturity stage. For example, Thomas' conversation with the engineer Mark Smith underscored the possibility of carrying out redesign in parallel to the release of the current line of GPS products. This could be a viable response in the maturity step of the product life cycle, particularly if the market continued not to support the current positioning.

Decline. As with the maturity step above, the case does not…