A Case Study of the Vidsoft Triangle – 2660 Words

 

Are you looking for Vidsoft Triangle Case Study Assignment Questions and Answers? So you come to right place. Hire Assignment specialist by Case Study Help to receive superior assignment solutions. We guarantee 100% original and plagiarism-free assignments. Our professionals ensure that the assignment complies with university requirements. We give you Superior quality assignments through our selection assignment writing service.

 

 

Case Study Help

Alaji Babatunde sipped some fresh brewed black tea as he stared out his office window in January 2001. He had a tough decision to make in the next few days. Babatunde had graduated from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration in May 1998. Jumping on the Internet craze bandwagon, he moved to California after graduation and took a job at VidSoft Technologies. He was now a senior technical support manager at VidSoft. Although it never snowed in the Bay Area, the outside temperature had dropped to a chilly 45 degrees. Even the office temperature had dropped to an uncomfortable 65 degrees. Babatunde shivered as he began to reflect on the events that had led to Alex Hsu requesting a transfer so that he could report to Babatunde directly.

Hsu was a technical support engineer who had reported directly to Babatunde until three weeks ago. Then, Babatunde made public the decision that he had been contemplating for the past couple of months—the promotion of one of his engineers to be a manager. This meant that the organization structure would change and a new layer would be created between the support engineers and Babatunde. Hsu had approached Babatunde a week ago to express his dissatisfaction with his new supervisor, Jennah Li, and had asked to be transferred to another group that still reported to Babatunde.

Transferring Hsu to the other group would be relatively easy in terms of paperwork, but what message would that send to the others that remained in Li’s group? How would Li feel, given that this was her first managerial assignment? A bigger question that troubled Babatunde was: should he be the one making this decision? After all, Li was Hsu’s manager and maybe she should be the one choosing the outcome. However, Babatunde could not shake off the feeling that he needed to be involved, especially since Li was a young, inexperienced manager. Would creating a triangle (“Hsu, Li, and Babatunde”) of relationships and working together solve this issue? Babatunde had told Li about Hsu’s request, and the tension between Hsu and Li was growing stronger each passing day. Babatunde knew that he had to make a decision quickly since Hsu’s resentment towards Li was starting to affect the rest of his engineering team. Gulping the remainder of his tea, Babatunde leaped to his door unsure of just whose office he was headed to—his supervisor, James White, or Li, or Hsu.

VidSoft

VidSoft Technologies was an Internet company based in Sunnyvale, California, and was formed in mid-1996. VidSoft developed enterprise software to solve the procurement needs for its customers. Customers were both large and varied companies and included the likes of Cisco Systems, Johnson and Johnson, and Telefonica Spain. After going public in June 1999, the company grew at a rapid pace in both revenues and employees. Quarterly revenues grew from $50M to over $250M by the end of 2000. Employee base quadrupled from 500 to over 2,000 employees worldwide.

Keith Nash, chief executive officer of VidSoft, was mild-mannered but charismatic. He developed a culture that encouraged employees within VidSoft to speak their minds. Nash’s motto was simple: “If you find something that isn’t right, speak up and then go find a way to fix it!” Employees were encouraged to work hard and to do whatever was necessary to deliver customer satisfaction. Nash always believed that if VidSoft’s customers were successful, the company in turn would be successful. Employees that excelled were promoted rapidly.

Teamwork was highly encouraged at VidSoft. In fact, teams were awarded bonuses based on how they collectively worked together to ensure that VidSoft’s customers were satisfied. As such, VidSoft sought to hire those who were friendly and interacted well with others.

VidSoft’s culture was not always about work. Employees were given a lot of latitude in their work habits as long as their assigned projects were completed. Foosball and ping pong tables were available on each floor at VidSoft’s corporate headquarters. Friday afternoon happy hours were packed with alcohol and appetizers. For the most part, employees seemed to work hard and play hard as well.

Nash believed that all managers at VidSoft should always try to promote from within; this was a useful motivation tool for employees. Only if no one within a department was qualified to be promoted should a manager be hired externally. Moreover, Nash always stated that managers should only hire candidates that were better than them. In fact, Nash made his point clear by saying that if he personally did not hire people that were better than him, he would be now working with a bunch of “idiots.” Nash guaranteed that no one would lose their jobs because they hired smarter people, since there was always something that could be worked on within the company.

This attitude prevailed until after VidSoft went public. As the Internet bubble expanded, the demand for qualified candidates grew, and even though there was a mass influx of talent into Northern California, technology companies could not find talented individuals. The few individuals that remained demanded very high compensation packages. As VidSoft grew, managers found that they had to relax their selection criteria of hiring people better than

themselves. They had to start taking chances on average talent with the hope of training them to keep up the hectic pace within VidSoft

Also Checkout: Free Assignment Samples 

Alaji Babatunde

Alaji Babatunde grew up in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States to attend college, graduating with a degree in computer and information science. He moved to Northern California to work at various high-technology companies before he went to Darden for his MBA. Post Darden, he moved back to the Bay Area in May 1998 and went to work for VidSoft where he began as manager of a division within VidSoft Technical Support. Initially, Babatunde did not have any direct reports, but as VidSoft grew so did his responsibilities and staff. He was promoted to senior technical support manager, and in the next eighteen months he managed two product lines in VidSoft’s Technical Support department.

Exhibit 1 illustrates the organization structure in December 2000.

Babatunde’s style of management changed during his employment at VidSoft. Initially, he had a micro-management attitude because he wanted his team to succeed. He oversaw everything little detail of everyone’s work. But he soon learned that would not work as the number of his direct reports increased. As the manager, he and an employee agree upon a set of objectives to be completed in an assigned period of time, usually a quarter. At the end of the period, he and the employee would meet to evaluate and discuss how well the objectives agreed upon were or were not met. Typically, an employee’s compensation was based on meeting a certain number of objectives in each period. Babatunde loved this approach and used it quite effectively to manage his staff.

By end of 2000, Babatunde managed eleven engineers. As his responsibilities grew, he decided to change his reporting structure. He envisioned having two managers reporting to him and all engineers reporting to those managers. Given the culture of promotion at VidSoft, Babatunde decided to promote one of his engineers, Jennah Li, to manage one of his product lines. With the remainder of his staff being relatively young and inexperienced, he decided to hold off on promoting anyone else for the remaining management slot.

Exhibit 2 illustrates the organization structure as of January 2001.

We are provide top-quality assignment assistance by PhD Assignment experts at an affordable price

Alex Hsu

Hsu was of Chinese descent even though he grew up in the Bay Area. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from University of California (UC), Berkeley. Hsu was the first one in his extended family to graduate with a science degree. Although Hsu was not mathematically inclined, he forced himself to think as an engineer would, as he felt that a structured and logical way of thinking would make him climb the corporate ladder faster.

Hsu joined VidSoft as a technical support engineer immediately after he graduated from UC in May 2000. His primary responsibilities included responding to customer issues and debugging¹ software codes. Although Babatunde had some reservations about Hsu in terms of his ability to work within a team, Hsu was hired since it was felt that he could bring varied experiences into the team especially from a foreign culture. Hsu was a hardworking individual and although not a top performer, he produced above average customer satisfaction scores. Hsu kept to himself mostly and did not participate in many of the group’s nonwork-related events. Babatunde tried to instill in Hsu a sense of team camaraderie but was not able to turn Hsu around.

Jennah Li

Li was also of Chinese descent and grew up in Hong Kong. She immigrated to the United States after graduating with a degree in environmental management at University of Hong Kong. Li worked for a variety of technology companies throughout Northern California prior to joining VidSoft. Babatunde hired Li even though Li did not have an engineering background because he was particularly impressed by her skills in managing customer relationships. Given VidSoft’s motto of hiring people better than oneself, Babatunde felt that he could learn a lot from Li’s commitment to and her handling of customers.

Li worked very hard after she was hired to prove her worth. Initially, it took her twice as long to resolve issues and debug software. However, given her determination, she gained the admiration of the rest of the engineers and consistently delivered very high customer satisfaction scores. Given that English was not her strong suit, Li worked diligently to learn how to communicate effectively with the rest of the engineering staff. She was also a team player and made sure that she helped everyone else on the team succeed. She was awarded the best team player award for two consecutive quarters.

Also Read: Latest Case Study Topics for Students

James White

White had been with VidSoft ever since its inception. His mechanical engineering background came in handy when solving customer issues. He was the first employee hired to run the Technical Support department and was responsible for hiring all the employees that eventually became managers. White grew up in a middle-class family in Ohio and had to work for everything he wanted.

White’s upbringing made him have a no-nonsense approach to management. He stipulated certain goals that he wanted met each quarter. Achieving those goals was his key concern—he did not particularly care how his employees went about meeting the deadlines.

However, this did not mean that he did not care about his staff. To the contrary, he did everything he could to make his staff succeed in their endeavors. White was also very competitive, and he always wanted to win at everything he participated in. If one of the groups he managed was not doing well, he took an active role at managing that group until it met his standards. When a group excelled, White had a very hands-off approach to managing that group.

White hired Babatunde initially to manage one of VidSoft’s three product lines in the United States. White was particularly interested in Babatunde—even though Babatunde had limited managerial experience—because of his MBA training. Given Babatunde’s high- technology background, White felt comfortable with Babatunde getting up to speed and learning the ropes of growing and managing a team. Initially, White spent a long time coaching Babatunde on how to lead a team and how to hire the right people. As Babatunde seemed to catch on, White spent less and less time with him, and by mid-2000, Babatunde was given free reign to decide how to best organize his team.

We provide the best Assignment Offers for students all around the world.

The Promotion

As the number of customers increased, Babatunde’s staff grew. Babatunde had taken the time to hire each one of his engineers personally. Every one of his engineers continued to excel at work. Even with Hsu ’s nonteam player attitude, the team performed beyond expectations. Babatunde’s group frequently received accolades for receiving the highest customer satisfaction scores in all of Technical Support (see Exhibit 1 for the organization chart).

A year after joining VidSoft, Babatunde was promoted to a senior manager role and was assigned the task of managing another product line. Babatunde spent the next several months hiring for his new group. By late fall of 2000, Babatunde decided to add a layer of management between him and his employees. He needed to do so as he discovered that he could not allocate his time effectively among each of his employees, whose number had now increased to eleven. Given VidSoft’s continued growth, he needed to continue hiring. Babatunde’s plan was to split his team into two groups to work on two distinct product lines. Babatunde looked at his staff and he found only one candidate that he felt comfortable promoting to management. That individual was Li. He would need to hire another manager from outside VidSoft to manage the other product line after splitting the group.

Babatunde deliberated over this decision for several weeks; he knew that Li did not have any prior management experience. Moreover, he was not sure that even if he offered the position to Li that she would accept it. Babatunde had chosen Li for the promotion because he felt that she would be able to grow into that position and that the chemistry of the group would not be as negatively affected as if he had brought in an external manager. He felt comfortable in his choice of Li, given her hard work and devotion. He knew, given his experience, that he could train Li to be an effective manager. Babatunde did not make this decision lightly and sought the consensus of his supervisor, White. White, too, felt comfortable with Babatunde’s choice of Li.

managing one of the product lines. In addition, Babatunde had to make a decision as to which employees he would put into the two groups. This decision was quite simple: most employees only handled one product line’s issues, and as such it was easy to identify the two sets.

After Thanksgiving, Babatunde approached Li and made her the offer of managing one of the product lines. Initially, Li was hesitant at accepting the role of manager since she was unsure whether she would be able to do a good job in that position. Moreover, that meant that some of her counterparts would now report to her. She was unsure how her colleagues would feel about this and whether there would be any resentment to her promotion. Li finally accepted the job before Christmas. The next step of the transition to her new role would be tricky.

Babatunde decided to wait until the New Year to introduce it to his team. Everyone in his team loved the idea and Li got a resounding round of approval.

Exhibit 2 describes the new organizational chart. Over the next several weeks Li spent a lot of time with Babatunde learning the ropes of being an effective manager. Both Babatunde and White were pleased with Li’s development and comfort in her new role. At the same time, Babatunde had to learn how to delegate some of his duties to Li and to let her manage her group the way she saw fit. He had to come to terms with this style when managing Li, and he did not want to interfere with Li’s management style.

managing one of the product lines. In addition, Babatunde had to make a decision as to which employees he would put into the two groups. This decision was quite simple: most employees only handled one product line’s issues, and as such it was easy to identify the two sets.

After Thanksgiving, Babatunde approached Li and made her the offer of managing one of the product lines. Initially, Li was hesitant at accepting the role of manager since she was unsure whether she would be able to do a good job in that position. Moreover, that meant that some of her counterparts would now report to her. She was unsure how her colleagues would feel about this and whether there would be any resentment to her promotion. Li finally accepted the job before Christmas. The next step of the transition to her new role would be tricky.

Babatunde decided to wait until the New Year to introduce it to his team. Everyone in his team loved the idea and Li got a resounding round of approval.

Exhibit 2 describes the new organizational chart. Over the next several weeks Li spent a lot of time with Babatunde learning the ropes of being an effective manager. Both Babatunde and White were pleased with Li’s development and comfort in her new role. At the same time, Babatunde had to learn how to delegate some of his duties to Li and to let her manage her group the way she saw fit. He had to come to terms with this style when managing Li, and he did not want to interfere with Li’s management style.

The Situation

Li’s group of engineers worked with her and began to get used to her style of management. A few weeks after Li’s promotion, Hsu approached Babatunde and wanted to speak candidly about Li. Hsu told Babatunde that he would like to be transferred to the support group that supported the other product line (the one that did not have a manager yet). Hsu mentioned that he did not want to report to Li any longer for several reasons. First, he did not respect Li and could not learn to respect her, given that she did not have a technical background (like he did). Hsu alluded to the fact that since Li did not graduate with a science degree, there was no way she would be able to understand the hardships that he went through to get his degree, and as such he could not see himself reporting to a nontechnical manager. Second, Hsu claimed that he joined VidSoft because he was very impressed with Babatunde and his management style. As such, he should not be made to work for a manager that he did not know he would be working for when he originally accepted his employment offer. Finally, Hsu expressed his frustration given that Li was inexperienced at managing people—how could Hsu hope to learn anything from a “new” manager?

After the conversation Babatunde was perplexed. He thought he had covered all the bases in terms of getting the right approvals for Li’s promotion. Everyone in the team seemed to get along with Li. White had given his nod as well. No else except Hsu had come forward to discuss this. Could there be others?

Babatunde felt that Li should know about this. He asked Hsu if Hsu would have any issue if Babatunde spoke with Li, given that Li was Hsu’s manager. Hsu agreed to have Li involved regarding his request. Babatunde met with Li and was rather surprised when Li burst out crying during the meeting. Li told Babatunde that she felt that her worst nightmare had come true. She considered herself a failure because she felt that she was not doing her job correctly as a manager. She was also surprised that Hsu had not even hinted about his true feelings about her during their regular weekly meetings. After consoling Li, Babatunde told her that he would advise both of them individually to think about their choices.

After considering several options, Babatunde and Li decided to have a three-way meeting with Hsu so that he could air his views. Hsu agreed—he wanted a speedy resolution to his request. Even though several meetings were held over the next two weeks, neither party wanted to budge. Hsu remained steadfast in his resolve to be a part of the “other” group managed by Babatunde, even though there was a possibility that the manager hired for that group could be someone that Hsu did not like or respect. Li remained determined that Hsu continue to report to her. She felt that, as a first time manager, she had a lot to learn and that she could not accept his transfer because that move might be viewed negatively by her remaining staff. She would be viewed, as she called it, “a namby-pamby manager.”

To Babatunde, the world seemed a lot easier when he was just a manager. Everyone respected him, liked him, and seemed to get along with each other—at least most of his staff. What should he do? Should he let Li fend for herself and resolve this issue to her liking? Was it proper to not honor Hsu’s request? Should he intervene and let Hsu join his other group? How would his other staff members, including Li, feel about him doing this? After all, would this transfer set a precedent for others? He had to make a decision by the next day.

Question

1. Could Vidsoft have avoided this problem? How?
2. What can Vidsoft do to prevent these issues from occurring again?

Casestudyhelp.com offers the best case study writing services by professionals with 100% plagiarism free work.

For REF… Use:#getanswers2002598