Question

Case M23 -- Excellence in Corporate Training

EXCEL Learning, Inc. was founded in 1988 by Dan Robinson, a renowned author and seminar speaker. Dan teamed up with Walt Irwin, also a corporate consultant with skills in business management. Dan developed his book and seminar topics into several marketable training products, which were packaged into 2 and 3 day workshops, including participant workbooks, trainer guides and PowerPoint presentations. Dan’s reputation in the corporate marketplace guaranteed initial acceptance of his training products by corporate clients.

Dan selected Walt, a former CEO, seminar client and old friend as a partner because they shared strong values of customer service and the influence that training can have on empowering one’s workforce. Walt’s role was to create a marketing plan, recruit trainers, and generally run the business. EXCEL launched its business with Walt as President and Dan as Senior Vice President, hiring 10 affiliate consultants as part-time, sub-contractors to deliver training seminars. In a week-long retreat, Walt and Dan oriented the new consultants to all training products and began scheduling seminars with groups from Dan’s client companies. Dan was pleased with Walt’s ability to articulate their shared vision of service and to strongly communicate the need for consistency in operating from this shared vision in all of their training services.

During the first year, Dan and the affiliates had a full schedule and the company was very successful. Walt and Dan wanted to keep the company small, so only a few new affiliates were added to handle additional clients. Walt handled all the scheduling, finances, and supervision of consultants in the field. Dan agreed that Walt would have complete control over hiring and managing client relations – this was made clear during the orientation and subsequent meetings with the consultants. Walt would have phone conversations with each consultant on a regular basis to initiate client contact and to debrief training events, often relating client comments on the consultants’ performance. Often, these conversations would be late in the evening, and usually Walt would have had a few glasses of wine before he made calls. In conversations with consultants, Dan heard about some of these conversations and was concerned. Cheryl, an accomplished trainer and old friend of Dan, related that Walt had been especially harsh with her about a recent training event and client complaint, insisting that she admit fault. She had since had a conversation with the client and the client was satisfied, even requested that she be the lead trainer for another group. As Dan co-trained with other affiliate consultants, he heard stories of similar, late evening conversations and an all-too-consistent pattern of intimidation with consultants. Some of the younger affiliates seemed to actually appreciate the “coaching,” (Rob Sites, for example, stated “Walt is tough, but he has helped me grow to become a better trainer. I appreciate that.” The more experienced consultants, however, were resenting the treatment. Even though the consultants were part-time affiliates and sub-contractors (working a maximum of 100 days per year), Dan wanted them to feel like partners in the business, with considerable control over exercising judgment with clients.

One evening, over dinner, Dan and Walt were discussing business plans and some overseas training requested by a corporate client. Walt recommended a team of consultants to follow Dan who would launch the training series. Dan confronted Walt about his manner with two of those consultants, who had mentioned their treatment from Walt. Walt at first blew off the concern, but then became angry as Dan discussed the potential of losing some of their best consultants. (Walt) “Do you want me to run the business or not? You know you are just too soft to manage these people. I know our clients and I know what they want from the consultants.” Dan agreed, sort of, but asked Walt to trust the consultants a little more. “You know some of our people are very experienced and the clients are not always right.”

Several weeks passed, the training in UK had gone well. Dan had launched the first day’s training and left Cheryl to lead the remaining sessions with two other consultants. Dan and Walt followed the training with a conference call with the VP of European Operations who was very pleased with the results. Then Dan received a call from Cheryl – she was in tears and was announcing her resignation. She had just finished a difficult conversation with Walt the night before where he had raked her over the coals for being too soft with the finance group in London. (Walt) “They didn’t hire us to hold their hands, you know, they hired us to kick butt! You really blew it. “ Dan begged her to calm down and he would talk to Walt. Cheryl said she would not reconsider and thanked Dan for his kindness.

1.      Analyze this case using models and principles from Organizational Behavior/Management. Describe the players, their styles/behaviors and relationships. Focus on management and leadership.

2.      What is your recommendation to Dan, the primary stakeholder and person responsible for the business? Include your rationale.

Answer 1

1. The main players in this case are Dan and Walt. They are assisted by consultants who work on part time basis conducting trainings and seminars on the behalf of the company Excel Learning Inc. The employees with whom Walt had issue is Cheryl who has been an experienced consultant and she has been upset about the rude and strict behaviour of Walt towards her.

Dan and Walt are the senior management for Excel Learning Inc. Both are accomplished in their fields of seminars and customer service. They hired part time consultants to conduct corporate seminars. The consultants are experienced and were given orientation with the company's products.

Dan had assigned most of the responsibilities like managing finance, client relations and hiring and supervisions to Walt. There have been complaints about Walt's strict behaviour and tough language used by him while interacting with consultants. The consultants who work on part time basis are upset over this behaviour from Walt and have complained to Dan about the same.

The case highlights Walt's behaviour can be explained using Autocratic Organisational behaviour model. The model constitutes the senor management and owner taking decisions and dictating the duties to managers or employees. The employees are supposed to perform and obey the orders while the senior managers and owners do all thinking and decision making.

This model is not working with Excel Learning Inc. considering the consultants are experienced staff and are hired on part time basis. The organisation needs to have supportive model which encourages employees to take initiative and managers need to develop an understanding of personality and behaviour of employees for motivating them and supporting them to perform.

2. Recommendation for Dan is that he should actively participate in sharing the responsibilities with Walt and can assign him responsibilities related to finance and business development and reducing his interaction with consultants for supervision and feedback. At present Dan is playing the role of orientation with consultants and launching seminars and workshops. He needs to supervise the consultants and interact with clients so that he can deliver the orientation and training to consultants in an effective manner while supporting them based on his own experience.