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INFORMATION REPORTS, INC.

Jane Haynes was recently promoted to sales manager for Information Reports, Inc. Information Reports gathers huge business data bases and formulates the data into reports that are sold to business firms. Reports include everything from credit reports to airline schedules to market research. Information Reports’ major competitor is Dun & Bradstreet, a large firm that is considered agile and innovative. Information Reports’ growth has been rapid; about the time Haynes was promoted, eight new sales persons were added to her staff. They were college graduates and eager to make a mark with the company.

Within a few months, one of the new staffers approached Haynes with an idea for a new product. A customer needed specialized data and, if the price was right, this report could be a profitable new area for Information Reports to enter. Haynes helped the new employee develop a proposal for the executive vice president, seeking permission to develop the new product. Three weeks passed and permission was not yet granted.

Haynes decided to go ahead and establish a product design team on a trial basis that would consist of one person each from the sales, administrative services, and information analysis departments. Haynes later received an okay from the executive vice president and talked to other department heads about the change. The design team produced the new report in just three weeks. The customer was very satisfied, and several other customers were excellent prospects as buyers for the new report.

Seeing the success of the new report, other new sales people began to suggest new product possibilities. Some older sales people were skeptical because the new products changed the products they were used to. They gradually agreed to go along if an idea worked out, but were reluctant to make suggestions of their own.

Soon Haynes had several design teams coordinating work on new information products. She even recommended that the teams do special “upset” analyses to look for unusual product variations of existing reports.

Things were going well except for the long-term employees. They seemed to be fearful about the rapid changes and the direction sales was heading. Four senior sales people came to Haynes’s office to protest the pace at which new reports were generated. They pointed out how one idea hadn’t worked at all and that the effort lost developing it had been equivalent to five employees for six weeks. The failure had set everyone behind because several customers were interested, and then Information Reports was unable to deliver. Haynes admitted that she had made a serious mistake in judgment in accepting the design team’s recommendation.

The older workers preferred the slower method of passing a new idea from one department to the next and getting top management approval before starting. This gave the sales people a chance to learn about the data content of a new report and to update the catalogs they used to sell reports to customers. “We don’t want to stifle change,” said one of the senior workers. “We just want to do a good job with the products we have. We don’t see why you should force change through these design teams, and we would like to see them disbanded.”

Haynes wasn’t sure what to do. She believed the product design teams gave Information Reports a fast response that would meet customer needs faster than major competitors such as D&B. She also felt the design team success would give her a good shot at promotion to the position of marketing vice president, which would be open with the retirement of her boss next year. If the established workers were unhappy, however, her promotion was not assured. If she disbanded the design teams, new product innovation would slow down and the younger sales people would be frustrated and would consider leaving the company. Haynes saw that resentment was growing between the two groups, and she wondered what could be done that would satisfy everyone. To make matters worse, at a recent executive committee meeting the president stressed the importance of creating a corporate culture in which all employees felt involved and committed to the organization and satisfied with their work.

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