Helen Bowers is the CEO of Bowers Machine Parts, which she inherited from her father, Jake Bowers

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Question:

Helen Bowers is the CEO of Bowers Machine Parts, which she inherited from her father, Jake Bowers three years ago when he died unexpectedly. Although Helen grew up in the family business, she never understood her father's approach. Jack treated his employees like part of his family. Helen believed her father had it all wrong and thought he asked for their advice too much, listened to problems and complaints too often, and let them make too many decisions. Helen believed the workplace was for work and that her father let the employees get away with having too much fun. She vowed to change things and refused to treat her employees with "kid gloves" as her father did.

From the day Helen took over, she practiced an all together different philosophy. She believed the company needed to move aggressively into international markets and pushed up production levels to meet this goal. Helen also began instructing supervisors to crack down on employees who wasted time chatting and wanted them to eliminate all idle time. She even closed the company softball field and shortened lunch breaks. The production goals were her focus and she felt she needed to control employees' workday. Helen even angered a set of workers when she complained to a plant supervisor that she "did not feel like the workers were doing their best."

Helen rarely relied on her managers when making decisions and often got angry and overturned decisions made without her approval. Most recently she stirred up the managers' resentments when she asked the Vice President of Production, Herbert Williams about how to increase plant operations. After receiving his advice, based on 20 years with the company, she completely ignored it and made the decision by herself. Helen was overheard telling someone on the phone, "I'm the boss and I know what is best for Bowers Machine Parts."

The managers at the plant no longer trust Helen or her decisions. Several have left the company after working over 20 years for the company. Performance reports indicate that the plant has not increased production levels, but that these levels have dropped. In addition, personnel costs are adding up as turnover has increased and training costs have soared.

In a desperate move, Helen has contacted your group of human resources consultants for help. She has asked you to conduct a meeting with the HR committee in which you decide on how to identify and solve Bowers Machine Parts' problems. Helen will not be present during the meeting and has agreed to abide by the committee's solutions. Your group's goal is to examine this case and present solutions to the HR committee.

Step 1: What are examples on examples of the problems you see without summarizing the case.

Step 2: What are the consequences/effects of the problem for company? Focus on profit loss, customer loss, etc. End with a Problem Statement that states which specific problem you will focus on. Keep in mind, there are multiple problems in the case, but you want to focus on only 1.

Step 3: What are the guidelines or standards you will use to judge all solutions? Think about time, money and other elements you can use to judge your solutions to see if they will solve the problem. Keep this to 3-5 total.

Step 4: What are possible solutions? Remember this is brainstorming, so focus on quantity and not quality. List as many solutions as possible without evaluating them, so no solution is good/bad, right/wrong, won't work or can't work.

Step 5: Evaluate your possible solutions. First check to make sure the solutions meet your criteria. Next, make sure the solutions actually relate to and solve the problem you identified in your problem statement.