Report on the case

Wendy Peterson
In partial fulfillment of WAC course

Submitted to: Prof. Madhusri

Shrivastava

Table Of Content

Submitted By:

Abegaonkar Amit Anantrao

Roll No. 01
Memo of transmittal . .. 03
Executive Summary . ... 04
Situational Analysis . ... 04
Problem Statement ... .. 05
Options . 05

Criteria of Evaluation.... .. 05
Evaluation of Options........... .. 06
Recommendation....... .. 06
Action Plan........ .. 06

Memo of transmittal
This document is submitted in partial fulfillment of the WAC course as a submission towards the
individual assignment component. It contains report on the case Wendy Peterson.
The report is structured as per the framework provided, and comprises analysis of the case along
with the various options to resolve the stated problem statement. Based upon the evaluation of
the possible alternatives, it is recommended that, Wendy Peterson should terminate the
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salesperson, Fred Wu, for his consistently irresponsible behavior.

Please let me know in case any discussion is needed, so that a meeting could be arranged as per
your convenience.
Abegaonkar Amit Anantrao
Roll No. 01

Executive Summary
Wendy Peterson, VP sales at AccountBack is facing a troublesome situation where she has to
decide whether to retain or terminate Fred Wu, sales executive, one of the direct reports of her.
Fred who is handling the single largest client of the downtown office has regularly failed to
comply with the rules set up by his boss, Wendy Peterson. The criteria for evaluating this
situation are financial implications for AccountBack and the possible impact on the work culture.
Evaluating on these basis, it is recommended that Wendy should terminate Wu.

Situation Analysis
Wendy Peterson was a Vice President of sales for AccountBacks Plano, Texas office.
AccountBack was an accounting software and service company which was founded in 1988 by
Will Gleason, a former accountant, and Travis Hardiman, a software engineer. The primary goal
of setting up this organization was to serve an underserved market of small and medium sized
businesses, especially those with ambitious growth targets. Later, in 2010, with the arrival of new
CEO, multiple changes were made and many of VP sales were replaced with young sales
directors. Wendy was one of such promoted employees and she had agreed to grow the revenues
of her underperforming office by 40% in two years. Before getting promoted as VP sales, Wendy
had excelled as a sales employee and had brought lots of new business to AccountBack during
the critical phase of global financial crisis of 2008. As VP sales, she believed changing the
culture by making her team closer and the office more collegial- would boost productivity and
revenues. To promote such a culture, she invested both inside and outside the office. Though she
was the youngest AccountBack VP and was younger than many of her direct reports, her
demeanor was approachable and encouraging. However, some of her direct reports, who were
more accustomed to independent routine, found such a behavior to be overzealous and hence
disliked her. Perhaps, Fred Wu was one of such employees.
Wu was hired to target the cluster of fast growing service businesses founded by Chinese
entrepreneurs. He was born and educated in china but had spent a couple of years in US for
college where he studied business and economics. After this, he had a successful printing venture
which helped him C-suite Chinese executives at both established and start-up businesses in
Dallas area, including Plano. Outside of work, he served on the boards of a Plano Chinese
community center and chines school. During his interview at AccountBack, he emphasized on
the point that many of the employees of companies on AccountBacks target client list regularly
attended events at these organizations with their families. This helped him to grab the position of
sales executive at AccountBack. During his interview at AccountBack, Wendy Peterson, the
interviewer, found it difficult to connect with him personally, though she expected that over the
time she will. For the first month, Wu spent a lot of time in office, learning business and building
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his internal network. But, once his sales efforts commenced, it was noticed by his senior, Wendy
Peterson that he spent only early mornings in the office a few days a week. This was not a usual
situation for wendy, when all of her direct reports used to spend most of their time in office
making cold calls and client calls. Though, during the interview, she had made it clear that she
liked to maintain daily contact with her sales staff, Wu was not complying with that. Being the
employee hired for a special task of targeting the Chinese entrepreneurs at Plano, Wendy had
given a few exceptional benefits to Wu though compromising with many of her tenets. She had
even discounted Wu for his sales goal which was an unusual case for her. Despite of this, she
found that Wu was not willing to co-operate with her and it seems that he was challenging the
culture set up by her. His act of invoicing the add on benefits to the client without the prior
approval from her was a proof of this. However, as a sales executive, he was performing well
and was handling the single-largest client of the downtown office. Moreover, he was expecting to
add a few more big clients from Chinese community over the next few months.
The relationship between Wendy and Wu further worsened, during the annual review meeting,
when he demanded a personal assistant for himself. Further, he threatened to leave AccountBack
if his demand is not fulfilled.
Its a dilemma before Wendy, whether to comply with the request from Wu and surrender herself
to his terms or terminate him for his regularly irresponsible behavior. In a more or less similar
situation in the past, Wendy had chosen the latter which resulted in the loss of the largest client
of the terminated employee.

Problem Statement
Should Wendy Peterson terminate Fred Wu?

Options:

Terminate Wu
Comply with the demand from Wu

Criteria for Evaluation

Financial aspects for AccountBack

Impact on the work culture of the office

Evaluation of options
1. Terminate Wu
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If she chooses to terminate Wu, AccountBack may face an immediate dip in the revenue.
This would be a setback for the ambitious target of Wendy to achieve a 40% growth for
her region over the next couple of years. The time, money and energy she had invested in
getting Wu ready for the sales job would go in vain.
However, in a long run, she would be able to retain and promote the collegial and cooperative work culture which she believes to be essential for revenue growth. This action
of hers will act as a deterrent for those edging towards not compliance with her work
culture.

2. Comply with the demand from Wu

For time being, this will be helpful to both Wendy and AccountBack from the financial
point of view. If Wu succeeds in grabbing a few more big clients from Chinese
community, the decision to comply with his terms will get reinforced.
But, over a long run she might have to compromise with the idea of her collegial and cooperative work culture. This action might also ignite a chain reaction and the dormant
hostile sub-ordinates may start challenging her. This may lead Wendy lose control over
her team which will be detrimental for her and AccountBack in long run.

Recommendation
Based on the evaluation of alternatives, it is recommended that Wendy should terminate Wu for
his regular inconsistent behavior. Even the best performer in the team has to abide by the basic
norms set by the leader, failure of which may lead to disintegration of the entire team.

Action Plan

Terminate Wu
Hire at least a couple of sales executives to target the Chinese entrepreneurs (Presence of
more than one sales executives would reduce her dependency on a single individual)