more than five years ago when she joined the company. Neil, however, has had a long career at WTI, evidenced by the visible display of his crystal “20 year” plaque on the wall. Freda sat down. As Neil’s human-resources partner, Freda was responsible for not only the day-to-day employee problems, but also for organizational effectiveness.
“I know how busy you are, Neil, and I was pleasantly surprised to get your call. But it sounded urgent, too,” Freda hinted. “What seems to be going on?”
“We’ve had conversations about my team before, so none of this will come as a surprise. Last year we completed the 360 assessment where each team member gave the others individual feedback on their strengths and weaknesses as part of the assessment. My hope in doing this was that they would grow to appreciate the challenges that other members have to face because we’re all under incredible pressure. For a time, things were better. But lately, it’s the worst it’s ever been,” Neil sat back in his chair and sighed.
“Remind me who the team members are and what they do?” Freda inquired.
“Sure. As you know, I have an organization of more than 400 sales executives in the entire northeast, from New York and Pennsylvania to Maine. My management team each handles a set of states in our region, and I also have a sales operations division to support the whole team. Here, it might just be easier to walk through the organizational chart.” Neil swiveled his chair around to pull a binder off of his shelf. He tore out the first page and handed it to Freda (Figure 1).
“I’ll cut to the chase. My biggest problem is with Renee. She’s incredibly difficult. At times, I would say she is toxic to this organization. In our staff meetings, she will start yelling at people, saying that they are purposefully getting in her way.” Neil paused.
“Can you give me an example?” Freda asked.
“Sure. In fact, this happened just the other day. She came to me complaining that Melissa’s operations team was incompetent. Her specific complaint was that the sales reports from each of the last several months contained serious errors. It seems like Renee and Melissa are a case of oil and water. The two just don’t get along. Melissa happened to walk by my office when Renee was having one of her tirades, and Renee yelled out ‘you might as well come in here because I’m talking about you.’ Then Melissa walked in, and Renee proceeded to rip into her right in my office.” Neil said.
“Based on what you’ve said, using descriptors such as difficult, toxic, yelling, and tirades, this is a serious issue. What have you said to her so far?” Freda asked.
“Well, this was one of the reasons why I wanted everyone to get feedback from their peers a year ago. I wanted Renee to know what effect she was having on the rest of the team. She calmed down for a few months, and we didn’t see much in the way of outbursts. But then it all started up again heading into the last months of our fiscal year. I told her that if she couldn’t manage to improve her behavior, we were going to do something,” Neil said confidently.
Figure 1 Organization Chart
“My first reaction is that she might need more specific direction, Neil. Words such as ‘improve’ and ‘going to do something’ are vague threats. But this is similar to what you mentioned a year ago, so why has this been tolerated for so long?” Freda asked pointedly.
“I know what you’re saying, Freda. Renee has been with me for years and is my top salesperson. She runs the largest territory in my division. Her team overachieves their sales every year without question. It’s fair to say that our entire region’s sales bonuses last year came directly from the success that her team had with new customer accounts in New York and Pennsylvania. If we asked her to leave, the company would quite literally suffer. I mentioned Renee’s latest incident to Avery, our global head of sales, to see what he thought, and I got the clear message that I had better not fire her. I just keep hoping that she will improve the sharp sides of her personality,” Neil admitted.
“Apart from the interpersonal conflict between Renee and Melissa, how does the rest of the team work together?” Freda asked.
“Well, Al, Tracey, and Leo all have their complaints about Melissa, too. Mostly, they get worked out among the group. It’s Renee who seems to be unable to get along with Melissa,” Neil said.
“What can you tell me about Melissa?” Freda asked.
“Melissa has been in this job for about 18 months. Her predecessor, Savanna, could not take the stress of the role, and I promoted Melissa to the operations and compensation job. She is determined, process-oriented, and a stick-to-the-books kind of person, which is why I promoted her. We needed more discipline in my organization,” Neil said.
“Tell me more about the responsibilities of her team,” Freda asked.
“Her team plays two major roles. Part of her team is responsible for sales operations, meaning that they ensure that all of our sales orders go into the order entry system with the correct approvals and processes followed accurately. Every order that a salesperson places must have a hard copy customer signature in place, an accurate purchase order number from the customer, a credit check, no inappropriate discounts without my permission, and approval from the sales director on my staff. Melissa’s team also handles the distribution of sales compensation and they conduct audit checks on the entire process. Our salespeople are paid their sales commissions when they meet their quotas and when they meet the approval conditions. If they miss any of the items that I have just mentioned, they will not be paid, or they will have a payment penalty. For example, they get paid 20% less if they fail to conduct a credit check or if they do not have the purchase order from the customer. They get no commission at all if they discount the product without my approval. I am proud to say that when I put those rules into place in my region two years ago, we made a huge improvement in our discipline. We are now the top performing region in our annual compliance audits,” Neil said proudly.
“I’d like to learn more about this situation from other members of the team,” Freda said. “Would you mind if I set up some time to speak with each one of them?”
“Please do,” Neil said, relieved. “I’m eager to hear more about what you learn.”
Meeting With Al Perez
“My perspective is that there are a lot of areas where this team could improve. The operations team is, frankly, a disaster. On average I think they return back to us roughly 75% of the sales orders that we put in the system. For example, this just happened an hour ago. My sales rep put a purchase order number in the system as required, but because it did not have a dash between the first two numbers, the system called it an error. The operations rep on Melissa’s team could have hit one button and sent it through. Instead, he rejected the entire order and told us to go back and resubmit it, which wasted about an hour of my salesperson’s time. Sometimes it feels like they are treating us like children.”
“Another time our salesperson put the customer credit check through for $100,000, but our order was for two shipments of $50,000. So, Melissa’s team wants us to do the credit check twice. Some of their rules make no sense.”
“When we bring this up to Neil, he says that he will deal with it, but he never does. He refuses to control Melissa’s team. I’ve worked with Neil for 10 years, so I expect nothing because I know his preference is to avoid conflict.
