You Cant Make Stuff Like This Up John once worked as a regional sales director for a large health insurance company called Be Healthy With Us. The company was once quite successful but had become complacent over the past six years. Competitors gained market share using very aggressive marketing and sales tactics, and Be Healthy With Us was selling old-fashioned products and using pretty inefficient processes for settling claims. With falling revenues and margins, Be Healthy With Us became an acquisition target and was bought by Anthum, a Fortune 100 company. At the conclusion of the deal Anthum brought in an injection of cash, a reputation for operational excellence, and a new vice president of sales, Mike Blaylock. The CEO of Anthum described Mike as bright, experienced, successful, and more energetic than the Energizer Bunny. Mike had joined the corporation straight after graduation; because of his potential the company sent him to law school and quickly promoted him into increasingly responsible positions. Senior management had tremendous confidence in Mikes leadership abilities and appointed him as the vice president of sales in Be Healthy With Us, even though he had no previous sales experience. John was initially impressed with Mikes freshness and energy; he was constantly touting midwestern values and the work ethic of the Midwest. However, the sales management team soon became disenchanted with his views: John and his sales team were working 70 to 80 hours a week and becoming exhausted and frazzled. Moreover, Mikes interactions with internal and external clients were lessons in poor human relations. He seemed to seek confrontations, and as time passed, his behavior became steadily more extreme. Mike harangued people, ignored appointments and made no excuses for missing them, made promises he never kept, called sales directors at 6:00 a.m. with insignificant questions, and abused brokers. Those who questioned Mikes leadership were summarily dismissed. One day Mike asked John to arrange a meeting with a broker at 9:00 p.m. The broker was from a large benefit house and was older, and the meeting time was late. However, he was a longtime personal friend of Johns and as a courtesy agreed to the meeting. Mike did not show up for the appointment and would not answer Johns calls to his cell phone. After an hour, John and the broker went home. When John asked Mike why he missed the appointment, he said he was drinking with a friend and did not think the meeting with the broker was important. Mike refused to apologize to the broker and was surprised when business with the brokers organization came to an end. Mike loved working on high-visibility projects and landed an opportunity to convert the membership of another acquired company to Anthum. This was an important project for Anthum, and shortly thereafter Mike set up an elaborate war room in which all sales planning and action would take place. He asked John to lead the conversion project, repeatedly announcing that the acquisition was to garner new contracts and to bring quality employees into the organization. At this point John had over 70 direct reports in five different locations across the state and some aggressive sales targets. It would be impossible for John to hit his revenue numbers and run the conversion project. But Mike cut John no slack, and the computer system intended to convert the contracts did not work. Mike spent no time with any of the newly acquired sales team members, and as a result they showed no interest in working for Anthum. Yet Mike made grandiose statements about the quality of the sales force at the acquired company, which implied the current sales employees were unsatisfactory and fostered a sense of mistrust in both sales organizations. Because of Mikes shoddy treatment, the long hours, and poor sales and invoicing processes, the morale of the sales team began to plummet. Tantrums and tears occurred frequently, and John spent a lot of time smoothing ruffled feathers and telling team members that things would get better over time. But there was only so much John could do, and as team members began to quit, Mike blamed John for the decline in department morale. As the situation continued to deteriorate, John requested that Mike meet with the remaining staff to talk about their frustrations with Anthum. Mike opted to set up an all-employee breakfast at a local restaurant to address their concerns. The night before the meeting a major snowstorm hit the city, and the streets were covered with a foot of snow. Some employees had to drive 40 miles to attend the meeting, but everyone made it to the restaurant. The only person missing was Mike, and John started calling him 10 minutes before the meeting start time to check on his status. Mike did not answer, so John began to call and leave messages every five minutes. Mike finally answered his phone 30 minutes after the meeting start time and told John that the reason he was not at the meeting was that he decided to go skiing and people would have to meet with him another day. He also asked John to quit bugging him by leaving messages every five minutes. John could do little to put a positive spin on this message, and the employees left the restaurant bitter and hurt. Of the 60 people who showed up for the meeting, only one was still with Anthum six months later. Mike never acknowledged his behavior and was shocked at the turnover in the sales group. Despite the turnover and declining sales revenues, Mike was still considered the companys darling, and it was commonly believed that the CEO tacitly condoned his behavior. Questions:

1. If Mike was an incompetent manager, what do you think were the underlying root causes of his incompetence?