Case Number $33$

The New Export Manager

Ever since it was founded in $1924,$ the Ridgewood Tool Company$-$a leading manufacturer of hand tools had been in the export business. For many years an exporting firm in New York City had had the exclusive distribution of the company's products outside of the United States. Then, as exports grew, the company appointed distributors or agents in various foreign countries. An export manager was appointed in $1986$; but he was mainty a clerk handting incoming orders from overseas and arranging for the collection, through the company's bank, of the monies due. By $1990,$ however, the company's export volume had grown to the point where this did not work anymore. And when the old export manager retired, management decided that the export business had to be properly managed and also had to be properly organized. Maybe, one of the directors mused, the company even had to set up its own facility in Germany, where the company's products were well known and popular. But there was no one in the company who knew anything about foreign business; and so a young, energetic fellow$-$Frank Andrews, aged thirty$-$five$-$was hired from International General Electric to become the new export manager. Andrews made a quick trip to visit the company's main foreign distributors and agents. Upon his return, he told the president of the company that he would work out a plan for the company's foreign business. And then he retired to his office. He appointed a veteran clerk in the export department as assistant export manager and gave him the job of handling the day$-$to$-$day business, which proceeded along at its accustomed donkey trot.

But what did Andrews bimself do$?$ He was at the office every dy$.$ People peeping through his office door$-$which he kept tightly clowey most of the time$-$saw big stacks of books, papers, and reports, betiey which Andrews's head was barely visible. BUT WHAT DID HE DO After this had been going on for about four months, pressure on the president mounted to the point where he called Andrews into his offie and said, "You have been here almost half a year $-$ and none of us cag figure out what you are doing." Andrews was clearly surprised. "Doot you see that I am studying?" he came back. "And until I can come in to you with a proper plan, what's the point in my wasting your time?" $"$Mr$.$ Andrews," the president said, "you and we clearly made a mis. take. I think it would be better if you looked for a job elsewhere."

The president, when he recounts this experience, confesses him. self totally nonplussed. "The fellow came to us with a reputation as a dynamic take$-$charge, livewire," he says. "And clearly he must have something. Since leaving us$,$ he has joined a very big company and is now their vice president for Europe and, I hear, doing very well. But he spent six months with us just sitting and doing nothing."

Andrews is not only nonplussed but still quite bitter. "These old fogies," he says, "just didn't realize that one has to plan an interns. tional business. They had no figures, no plans, no organization. They didn't hire me to peddle pliers but to get them into the world market the right way. What did they expect me to do except to work out the right plan?"

But one day when he said that to an old friend $-$ an experienced lawyer with whom he had gone to college$-$he got an unexpected reply: "Sure, Frank," the friend said, "these people were 'old fogits. But the fault was yours $-$ you acted like a young, arrogant fool."

QUESTIONS

Can you explain to Andrews what his lawyer friend meant? And then, cat you perhaps think through what the company and its president might hove done to prevent what clearly was a total breakdown of communications?